Reagan's Glass House

THE SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD President of the United States has repeatedly promised that he will take care of his peer group. From his State of the Union address in January to the recent announcement of a "White House Conference on Aging," he has assured all that his vaunted "safety net" of social services would be more than adequate to catch any aged Americans falling toward uncertain futures. But these gestures represent a consistently misleading sympathy for the elderly--a fact that will become painfully evident when President Reagan's economic package takes effect.

By appearing to protect the aged, this administration has appropriated a potential weapon from the American left. While the aged have seldom voted as a cohesive interest group, sympathy for the elderly has been a potent political force before. In 1965, such sympathy lead to crucial support for the Medicare program and, in years since, for expansion of that and related programs. But today, as liberals ready themselves for fights over the allocation of Federal resources, they probably won't be able to find the same feeling in the nation. Congress has seen the "mandate" of November 1980, and doesn't care what it tramples in its effort to fulfill the voters' wishes.

Reagan took special note of the elderly during his campaign. While he railed against social spending in general, he carefully avoided assaulting the programs aimed at helping old people. Most noticeably, he veered away from his own previous condemnation of the Social Security System, retreating from his suggestion in 1976 that participation in the Social Security program should become voluntary: he went out of his way in the debates to say that he would guarantee maintenance of social security payments. Like other candidates. Reagan argued that elderly people stand among the most vulnerable to inflation, because so many senior citizens rely upon fixed incomes. Then, in comforting tones, he said--again and again--that government caused inflation and that under him, the government would stop it.

Lactically, Reagan's public pro-elderly stance has proven successful in quieting controversies about the welfare of old people in America. The media has given less coverage to such issues as the Social Security crisis and the sky-rocketing costs of health care, since the election, and, as people turn their attention away from Reagan's wounds and Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig's megalomania, they probably won't think about reductions in support for old people.

UNFORTUNATELY, while most people may accept the administration assurance. American old people of today and of the immediate future face dismal prospects. Medicare is the cloth of Reagan's "safety net." In allowing this program to survive, he argues that the government was providing adequate protection against the serious hazards which accompany old age. But this net is flawed. The boundaries of Medicare keep it from addressing even some of the most common medical problems of the aged.

Chronic illness plagues old people far more than acute short-term illness. Medicare, which ends after only ninety days, scarcely aids chronically ill patients. Traditionally, as the costs of long-term care impoverished old people, Medicaid, a medical support program for the poor, took up much of the coverage slack. But the Reagan administration wants to cut federal funds for the state-run Medicaid programs.

Nor is this the only way in which the safety not will be severed rather than secured. A recent study indicated that as much as one fifth of all old people in this country need home-care services, and, as the elderly population continues to grow, so too will the number of people needing that kind of attention. But plans have just been announced to place a one-year freeze on enrollement in all home-care services.

As the government fails to provide such services, many elderly will be forced into expensive and dehumanizing institutions. This push towards institutions will lead to tragic consequences worse that unnecessary costs. Constrained by a lack of staff, some institutions administer nearly lethal levels of tranquilizers: these drugs are often prescribed for the new malady of "institutional anxiety." In other institutions, patients face little physical danger, but they meet with almost equally insidious bureaucratic indignities. For example, one nursing home responded to complaints about its policy of separating husband and wife by setting aside one suite where a couple could enjoy undisturbed privacy. But the nursing home managed the suite like a cheap hotel: patients could sign-up to use the room for forty-five-minute blocks of time. The increase in forced institutionalization represents both personal indignity and false economy.

REAGAN'S ASSURANCES to the elderly in non-medical policies may also prove misleading. Though publicity about the problem has decreased, the Social Security system still faces crippling demographic pressures. The over-65 age group is growing faster than any other section of the American population, and as it grows, the work force shrinks in comparison--and in its ability to support retirees. In twenty years, continued Social Security payments along current benefit standards would require a 33 per cent Social Security tax. Since such a tax would almost certainly prove unsustainable, the Social Security administration will have to reorder both its benefit levels and tax structure.

As for President Reagan's inflation-busting rhetoric: this administration has submitted a fiscal plan which actually increases the government's role in pumping up prices. During the next five years, this administration hopes to increase military spending by $181 billion--which amounts to about ten times the current total payments of Medicare and Medicaid for services to the aged. Correcting for inflation, economist Lester Thurow calculated that this planned increase in military spending is roughly equal to three times the inflation-fuelling amount added to the military budget during the Vietnam-years of 1965 to 1970. And Reagan's planned tax cuts also threaten to aid inflation. Unless Americans somehow start saving at vastly higher rates, the income-tax cuts will not, incidently, offer much to the elderly. A study done in the 1970s concluded that 60 per cent of those over sixty-five received an annual income of less than five thousand dollars. For those old people, a 10 to 30 per cent income tax cut--about $50 to $100--would mean little indeed.

A shrinking system of medical aid, a collapsing Social Security structure, and a surging rate of inflation all contribute to the problems of old people. But the increasing strains facing America's elderly do not find fully adaquate explanation in purely economic terms of resource allocation. Many other problems such as stereotyping, segregation, and discrimination reveal more deeply ingrained biases in our youth-oriented society. But President Reagan has promised economic redress, and his plans offer false comfort to his peers. His insidious reordering of American policy towards its senior members will be not only a tragedy for the aged--but also for the ages.