The Way America Treats Its Elderly Is Unconscionable

The Crisis America Doesn’t Talk About, And Its Warning for the World

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There are many ways that America’s a uniquely failed society, from shootings to rising authoritarianism. But of all these ways, one still flies under the radar much more than it should. The way America treats its elderly. It’s unconscionable. A scandal. A failure of grave — and terrible — proportions. So much so that as I tell this story, it’ll likely barely even make sense to people from the rest of the world.

By now, America’s famous for million-dollar medical bills. Everyone — Canadians, Europeans, Asians — knows about it and shudders. It took a decade or more for that to really sink in around the world. It wasn’t so long ago I’d tell people that yes, really, just going to the hospital for a routine procedure in America can bankrupt you — and they’d be incredulous. I raise that because the same thing is going to happen with elderly care. Our societies are now aging, and there are a few paths before us. One of those is the American one. Indifference and neglect.

To tell this story, let me begin with an article I read in the Post. It was one of the scariest things I think I’ve ever read, and no, I’m not kidding.

Beth Roper had already sold her husband Doug’s boat and his pickup truck. Her daughter sends $500 a month or more. But it was nowhere near enough to pay the $5,950-a-month bill at Doug’s assisted-living facility. So last year, Roper, 65, abandoned her own plans to retire.

Like I said, the rest of the world will be baffled. Just like they once were by the million dollar medical bill. But how can this be? Why…what? And yet the moral of the story is already clear, in just these two bare sentences.

Elderly care in America? There isn’t any — at least not in the sense of a system or institution for it. It’s just…every person for themselves. At the end of their lives.

So what happens goes like this. If you have a little bit of money, you get fleeced, but maybe you get to stay alive. You’re milked, basically, for every last penny, by “senior living facilities” that cost more than a home, education, anything, really, in the economy, short of a superyacht or mega mansion. If you don’t have money? Well, basically, you die. Of neglect and indifference. Hence, America’s life expectancy so much shorter than every other rich country.

This is — let’s just call it what it is — exploitation. Of a particularly disturbing kind. At the end of people’s lives.That is when we are all — all — at our most vulnerable. As babies? Most of us have parents or caretakers. But as elderly people? There’s no guarantee you have anyone. This is the most vulnerable thing a person can be: old.