For Seniors : Seniors’ Goal: Preserve, Protect, Change

They came to the nation’s capital, 2,300 strong, to keep what they have, change how America’s elderly spend their final days and protect the health of future generations.

They are America’s senior class, and the occasion was the White House Conference on Aging. Their contract with America began 60 years ago, during the Great Depression. They’ve stood in bread lines, served in two wars and sent sons and daughters to other conflicts. Many have experienced the wretchedness of internment camps, concentration camps and segregation.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised that they would have security when they couldn’t work anymore. And those who gathered this year want their government to live up to that contract before new ones are made.

There were no funny hats or balloons falling from the ballroom ceiling. Some did wear buttons with sayings like “Senior Power” and “Enjoy Your Age.” On the whole, they were a serious crowd.

“I anticipated conferees would affirm Medicare and Social Security,” said Dr. Robert Butler, chairman of the conference’s advisory committee and founder of the National Institute on Aging. “But I also hoped they would move beyond ‘Keep what I got’ into an intergenerational tone with strong resolutions for child advocacy with an emphasis on health care for children.”

Butler was not totally satisfied. As he predicted, keeping Social Security sound for now and the future was the No. 1 vote-getter.

“This conference will not create new policy,” said Sandra King, director of Los Angeles’ Jewish Family Services. “Success is about maintaining what we have and stressing the need for community-based care.”

This was the fourth White House Conference on Aging, the last of this century. The first two, in 1961 and 1971, generated support for Medicare, Medicaid-funded nursing home care, meal transportation and social service programs. The 1981 conference disintegrated into partisan politics between delegates appointed by then-President Carter and the new ones appointed by newly elected President Ronald Reagan. There were no new policy recommendations.

This year, the Clinton Administration practiced the politics of inclusion, holding more than 700 events nationwide to plan the conference agenda. “Trickle-up,” said conference executive director Robert Blancato.

Members of Congress were permitted one delegate each and governors appointed a group according to the size of their senior population. Half had to be seniors, half had to be women, and minorities were appointed according to their share of a state’s population. Assistant Secretary for Aging Fernando Torres-Gil, a UCLA professor of social research on leave while he works in the Clinton Administration, says a key concern of the conference was community-based care.

“Their No. 2 concern was preserving the Older Americans Act, which essentially called for community-based programs,” he said. “These delegates did not ask for expansion of entitlements, so the future is about using our limited health-care dollars to keep people at home when they become ill. . . . This applies not only to older people but to young people with disabilities too.”

California’s 124-member delegation spearheaded the only resolution calling for additional funding--$50 million more for Alzheimer’s research.

“There is a power to the word Alzheimer’s now,” said Peter Braun, executive director of Los Angeles Alzheimer’s Assn. “What with the announcement of former President Reagan, the demographics, 4 million afflicted in the U.S., combined with the fact we’re all living longer.”

Research promises to yield a means of identifying potential Alzheimer’s sufferers, he said, so delegates felt that the additional funding was justified in a time of cost-cutting. “This money will not go down an empty hole,” Braun said.

Throughout the conference there was an awareness that senior issues will become progressively more complicated--especially when baby boomers swell the ranks of older Americans. By 2030, 22% of the population will be 65 and over, compared with 11% today.

Baby boomers are the new old, the next senior class. They’re also the self-help, how-to, aerobic, fat-free generation. They’re healthier and they’re going to live longer. Somehow, it’s difficult to visualize them being happy with 200 square feet in a nursing home.

Perhaps this White House Conference on Aging didn’t create new policy, but the symbolic torch has been passed and the inscription says, “If you’re lucky, you’ll get old too. We’re all in it together.”

Fernando Torres-Gil will speak about the White House conference at the UCLA Center on Aging, Thursday at 4:15 p.m. For information: (310) 794-0676.