TV Reviews : ‘Can’t Afford to Grow Old’ Topical and Unsettling

Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm says that the elderly are getting more than their fair share of the nation’s resources, while children are going to bed hungry.

Policy analyst Peter Ferrara says that public-home health care for seniors would cause families to “shirk responsibilities” and want government-paid “maids and cooks.”

Seventy-two-year-old, disabled Helen has enough savings to live in her small apartment for 10 more months. When she is officially impoverished, Medicaid will support her in a nursing home. She will lose her beloved pets, her privacy and her independence. “When you outlive your money,” she says, “you’re nothing.”

Helen, Lamm and Ferrara appear on tonight’s PBS documentary “Can’t Afford to Grow Old” (7 p.m. on Channel 28). In light of the devisiveness spurred by the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, which the House of Representatives voted to repeal Wednesday, this is one unsettling hour.

Hosted by Walter Cronkite and written, produced and directed by Roger Weisburg, the program inexorably addresses the aging of America through real people facing hard choices. We see a few of the millions of elderly coping alone or cared for by relatives whose own physical, financial and emotional resources are desperately strained. We hear arguments from those who feel that there should be no public, long-term, home health care plan. As is obviously intended, the dichotomy is shocking.

By the middle of the next century, 22% of us will be elderly. Estimates are that our long-term care needs will triple; costs will increase 10-fold.

An innovative Medicaid plan in Oregon has reduced its nursing home population by 33% (to the dismay of the nation’s nursing home network), providing foster home and other alternative care.

This has saved the state’s taxpayers millions of dollars, we’re told. If human dignity is hard to quantify, money isn’t.