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Last spring, Frank Turkaly tried to kill himself. A retiree in a Pittsburgh suburb living on disability checks, he was estranged from friends and family, mired in credit card debt and taking medication for depression, cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure.

It's High Time America Did Away With Senior Discounts Alex Mayyasi, Priceonomics Blog May 29, 2013, 10:44 AM You’ve seen them on the bus, in museums, and at movie theaters: senior discounts. As a reward for being old, senior citizens pay a quarter less for bus fare, a small fortune less for movie tickets, and receive discounts generally all over the place. If you’re a twentysomething, or part of what some journalists have colorfully called “the screwed generation,” you may be wondering: why not me? The idea that seniors are a group in need of help and protection dates back...

With Congress increasingly unable to resolve budget disputes, federal programs on automatic pilot are consuming ever larger amounts of government resources. The trend helps older Americans, who receive the bulk of Social Security and Medicare benefits, at the expense of younger people. This generational shift draws modest public debate. But it alarms some policy advocates, who say the United States is reducing vital investments in the future. Because Democrats and Republicans can't reach a grand bargain on deficit spending — with mutually accepted spending cuts and revenue hikes — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid keep growing, largely untouched. Steady expansions...

Medicare Already Means-Tested, Retirement Expert Says 01 May 2013 The Obama administration's controversial proposal to "means-test" Medicare recipients is ostensibly aimed at generating more cash for the government from those who can afford it - or squeezing more money out of upper-income seniors, depending upon one's point of view. But according to a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits, the Medicare program is already means-tested. Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says whenever the issue of cutting Medicare emerges, one of the first ideas to "fix" the program is to make its upper-income beneficiaries pay more. "Indeed, the claim is...

2014 retirements: Dems heading for the hills By: Alexander Burns April 23, 2013 04:49 PM EDT Doesn’t anyone want to run for Senate in 2014? Midway through candidate recruitment season, the bad news for Democrats is this: They are watching a generation of talent leave the Senate and head for retirement. The less-bad news: So far, few marquee-name Republicans are interested in these seats either. When Montana Sen. Max Baucus called it quits on Tuesday, he became the latest in a long series of senior legislators to announce that they’ve had quite enough of life on the Hill. National Democrats...

Martin Smith, an Emmy-winning correspondent for PBS’ Frontline, is worried about his retirement — and yours. In his excellent Frontline documentary airing Tuesday, April 23, on PBS, The Retirement Gamble (check local listings), Smith, 64, says: “I started saving for my retirement in my late 20s. But along the way I dipped into my nest egg … not once, but several times. And now, like millions of other baby boomers, I, too, don’t have enough. Most of my savings went to pay for my kids’ educations. A divorce and the crash of 2008 didn’t help either. I’m now planning to...

If you think it’s hard saving for retirement as a couple, trying doing it as a single. According to a study—described by one expert as the most intriguing of 2012—the amount of money singles in their late 60s have saved up for retirement is dramatically less than that of married-couple households. In fact, the median married household had in 2008 nearly 10 times more saved up for retirement than the median single-person household, $111,600 vs. $12,500. (Savings, for the record, included 401(k)s and IRAs and all taxable savings and investment accounts, but it did not include Social Security, pensions, or...

If you watch daytime TV or have been stuck watching daytime TV while visiting your parents, surely you’re familiar with The Scooter Store. The power wheelchair vendor has had some trouble lately, including accusations of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, a raid by the FBI, and even a lawsuit from the company’s hometown, of New Braunfels, Texas. The company laid off most of its employees, and plans to deal directly with health care providers, rather than blanketing the airwaves and selling directly to consumers. Those investigations came after a scathing investigative piece by CBS News about the company. (Warning: the video...

A growing number of House Democrats are concerned that President Obama's proposal to cut Social Security benefits will haunt the party at the polls in 2014. Although Democrats have long-championed the retirement program, they say Obama's plan to reduce payments for future beneficiaries through a chained consumer price index (CPI) has weakened their stance and opened the door for Republicans to vilify the president. The leader of the campaign arm for House Republicans, Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.), on Wednesday called Obama’s plan a "shocking attack on seniors." Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign...

The National Council on Aging (NCOA) today launched JobSource, a new online portal to help older adults assess their work skills, identify job training opportunities, and find employment. Last month, 1.8 million adults aged 55+ were actively seeking employment, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly half of older workers looking for jobs have been without employment for over a year. “For many older Americans, employment is necessary to remain financially secure, healthy, and independent,” said Nora Dowd Eisenhower, senior vice president of economic security at NCOA. “But as industries and workplaces evolve, it is vital that older adults...

During a forum on gun control in Colorado hosted by The Denver Post, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) mocked the concerns of a senior citizen who said that his impairments would put him at a significant disadvantage in a firefight under the state’s new gun laws. She drew laughs from the crowd when she reminded the questioner that he can take advantage of the Denver Police Department’s services. She added that, in the hypothetical situation the questioner described, “you’d probably be dead anyway.” At the Tuesday night forum, the elderly questioner described his unique circumstances and asked DeGette about how he...

Though Democrats denied it during the 2012 campaign, Obamacare cut Medicare by $716 billion in order to partially fund $1.9 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next ten years. A big chunk of those Medicare cuts came from the market-oriented Medicare Advantage program. Cleverly, the Obama administration postponed the Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election, so as to persuade seniors that everything would be just fine. But the election is over. On Friday, the administration announced that it would be significantly reducing funding for the popular program. Obama’s proposal, according to one analyst, “would turn almost every plan...

The US Census Bureau, in "The Older Population" indicates that Baby Boomers are defined as follows: 6 The Baby Boom includes people born from mid-1946 to 1964. The Baby Boom is distinguished by a dramatic increase in birth rates following World War II, and is one of the largest generations in U.S. history. For more information, see: Hogan, Perez, and Bell, 2008, Who (Really) Are the First Baby Boomers? In Joint Statistical Meetings Proceedings, Social Statistics Section, Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association, pp. 1009–1016. You are now from about 50 to 67 years old, and you are the glad result...

Now that Obama has secured another four years in the White House, it is time for the administration to crank out more Obamacare propaganda, specifically arguments about the cost ineffectiveness of keeping old people alive. Enter the internet’s liberal bellwether, Salon.com. Earlier today, the website posted an article by Matthew Yglesias, a blogger and Democrat operative who spent time at the Soros’ project, ThinkProgress. According to Yglesias, old folks are “the key issue in the federal budget” and their welfare accounts “for the remarkable lack of apparent cost effectiveness of the American health care system.” “When the patient is already...

Taro Aso TOKYO, January 23, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The recently-elected government of Japan has made itself heard on the life issues. Finance minister Taro Aso, said on Monday that elderly and financially dependent Japanese have a duty to die quickly to take pressure off the government-funded social service system. “Heaven forbid if you are forced to live on when you want to die,” Aso said. He described elderly people in need of care as “tube people” and complained that it costs “several tens of millions of yen” a month to care for a patient in the final stages of life....

The Worldwide Demographic Cliff Is Going To Be Brutal The EconomistJan. 22, 2013, 8:56 AMTHE post-war generation of baby boomers - those born between 1946 and 1964 - have had a huge appetite on the world, creating "youth culture", changing social attitudes from the sixties onwards, boosting economic growth as they entered the workforce and so on. Now they are starting to retire and this blog had banged on about the effect this will have on issues like pensions, asset markets and economic growth. not to worry, say some folk, since although we may have more elderly to look after,...

A good jobs report? Sure, if one is 55 and over. In December the American jobs gerontocracy continued its relentless course, and as the two charts below summarize since Obama's first term, some 2.7 million jobs in the 16-55 year old category have been lost. The "offset": 4 million jobs for Americans between 55 and 69. For all those young people graduating from college (with $150,000 in student loans) who are unable to get a job, here is our advice: tell your parents, and grandparents, to retire already. Oh wait, they can't because Bernanke destroyed their savings. Oops -...

Michael Moore on Reagan voters: They're dying By: Patrick Gavin December 13, 2012 09:16 AM EST Michael Moore thinks the country is getting better — “I’m very optimistic about the future” — he says, and what explains that? Reagan voters are dying. In a discussion on Current TV about Sheldon Adelson on Wednesday, Moore told host Jennifer Granholm, “Adelson and all those people will be gone, just like the people who voted for Reagan, the older generation that was really behind Reagan.” “If you were 55 or 60 years old in 1980 when Reagan ran, you’re dead now,” said Moore....

Interested in knowing about conservative alternates to AARP.

Sometimes the worst drivers just never ask for directions. If they were truly lost, they’d never admit it. Sound familiar? The same principle often applies to financial fraud victims. They’re often just plain overconfident and won’t admit their lack of knowledge. According to the fine “Squared Away” blog of the Financial Security Project at Boston College and researchers from DePaul University in Chicago, “The seniors who are most confident of their knowledge about money and investments are also the most likely to fall victim to fraud.” Citing the DePaul study, the Center infers that the rising incidence of elder financial...