Over 65 blog

Tag: Daniel Callahan

  • Aging, Stereotypes, and Reality

    I have heard for many years, informally and in scholarly journals, that ageism reigns in our society, and in particular that employers are biased against older workers. That last point is frequently made by many observers, who can cite a good bit of data showing that those over 50 who have lost jobs in the…

  • Setting Generational Priorities

    In the mid-1980s, just as I was becoming interested in health care for the elderly and the future of Medicare, Samuel Preston, a distinguished social scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, give a 1984 presidential address to the Population Association of America. His topic was the growing disparity between health and other resources for children…

  • The Medicare Showdown

    A distinct advantage of writing for my Over 65 colleagues and readers is that I can safely refer to bits of popular culture now long gone. In this case, I want to invoke the “perils of Pauline,” the troubles of a famous heroine in the silent film era. She went from one likely disaster to…

  • By Any Other Name: Physician-Assisted Suicide

    Some 30 years or so I was far more sympathetic to euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS) than I am now, and will use this occasion to say why I changed my mind, growing slowly disillusioned.

  • The Passing of the Generations

    Probably like everyone else, the older I get the more conscious I become that I am part of a generation whose time came – and is going. My parents died some years ago as did my uncles and aunts. The “greatest generation” is rapidly dying off. The tears and memories of parents whose children died…

  • Medicare and Social Security: Conjoined Twins

    Although I grew up in a middle class family in Washington, D.C., my father, one of the pioneers in the early days of radio, was in and out of jobs over the years, usually fired. We went from elegant parties with small orchestras in our home one year to taking in a boarder the next.…

  • Living and Learning: The Academy of Aging

    I entered the Academy of Aging – an informal but ancient and rigorous school – the easy way, reading and writing about it. I was drawn to the subject in my mid-50’s by working on the future of Medicare and its predictable economic crisis in the years ahead. I gained a good academic knowledge of…