The anniversary forensics into the lasting implications of Woodstock were completed this weekend, with one critical oversight.
There was no commentary about the utter absence of baby boomer support for health care reform. The generation that sought to spread peace and love throughout society seems completely disinterested in spreading mammographies and diabetes screenings.
Where the hell are they? The boomers, after all, were the demographic cohort that turned protest against inequity into a generational branding statement. There are roughly 70 million of them, so imagine what would happen if they adopted the fight for the extension of health care as another civil right -- as part of the ongoing struggle for social justice, no different than civil rights and women's rights? The entire national dialogue would be different.
If you were 25 at Woodstock, you're 65 today -- one year past Paul McCartney's archetypal Age of the Elderly. You should be on the vanguard of change. Boomer endorsement of health care reform would be a powerful validator. But times pass and hypocrisy hardens. Consider the visual picture of the debate: young families and middle-aged people telling heart-wrenching stories of lost insurance, or no insurance, and the ghetto of pre-existing conditions versus older people ranting about government bureaucrats making decisions for them.
How many of those objecting seniors looked back nostalgically on Woodstock this weekend? Now, they are reacting just like their frightened, defenders-of-the-status-quo parents back in the sainted 60s.
So the synchronicity of the Woodstock anniversary and the raging health care debate shouldn't be overlooked. Much has been written about the narcissism and self-involvement of the boomers, and the way in which the undisciplined indulgences of the sixties -- sex, drugs, rock and roll -- became sublimated into a parallel consumer world of undisciplined, indulgent consumption.
If you're going to reward yourself with everything NOW, and scorn the future (just take a look at the dismal stats about boomer savings) -- then you're going to have an equally selfish view of health care. Which means a reluctance to share it; a very anti-Woodstockian value
Indeed, the boomers consume health care in the same guzzling fashion that they bought homes and cars and electronics and designer everything. And they're worried that their God-given right to consume often and endlessly is being threatened by the Obama plan.
Can we blame them for this expectation of everything? From the time they were born, and their Spock-trained parents catered to their every whim, boomers were spoiled and privileged. Society existed to dandle them and indulge their fantasies.
They also grew up as children (and adults) during the largest expansion of employer-based health care in history. Corporations may have been boring (and sometimes evil), but they were generous. Boomers' white-collar and blue-collar parents had great benefits. They never had to deal with scarcity, with limits, with tough resource decisions. They always had plenty of toys, plenty of jobs, plenty of choices. So when opponents of reform use trigger words like "rationing", boomers get all twitchy and shrill.
Then there's the "Unplug Granny" distortion. The reason it's so contagious is that it strikes at the essence of boomer anxiety, the inevitable march to mortality. They want to go on forever. They see themselves as adolescents, they dress like adolescents,they listen to oldies music that suspends them in adolescent amber.
The free-love, communal mud-spirit of Woodstock has wizened and twisted into an forever young ideology that is making it difficult to have any intelligent conversation about end-of-life decisions. If it's going to cost a million dollars to keep me alive for another month, that's my boomer right.
Of course, there are yowls of protest about health care reform from the generation that precedes the boomers. But I haven't seen any meaningful segment of boomers talk about the need for reform, even if it means some degree of sacrifice. Talk to physicians in any area with a high concentration of those on Medicare and you'll hear the same refrain: every little ache and pain is an occasion (even a social occasion) for a trip to doctor, since Medicare pays anyway. That's the boomer ontology.
Gen X and Gen Y, as we know, have very little patience with the boomers. They see them as a self-involved generation that's leaving them a sick planet and a distorted set of values. Health care reform is the last chance the boomers have to live up to the promise of Woodstock, but it seems like they're still stuck in the mud.
Using the census definition, the oldest baby boomers would have been 23 then and 63 now, so the we are not quite seniors yet. None of us are covered by Medicare unless we are disabled. The youngest boomers were eight years old the weekend Woodstock took place. Many of us boomers are struggling today to support our truly aged parents. My mom turned 90 this year, is blind, deaf, suffers from dementia and has just moved up to her third level of assisted living. Despite Medicare, her out-of-pocket medical expenses totaled over $31,000 last year, about 71% of her total income. This year her out-of-pocket medical expenses will exceed her income.
Another slam the elderly for the worlds problems essay.
Someone will blame Adam Hanft's generation for something equally ridiculous someday.
How about "Gen [ fill in the blank ] er's responsible for 500,000 deaths in Iraq."?
Yes thats stupid and unfair Mr. Hanft.
Michael
Yes, some of us did take out second mortgages -- to pay for college educations for next generation.
I can't tell you how angry this article has made me. Total lack of understanding about what concerns seniors. We DON"T want our Medicare slashed anymore than it already has been slashed -- and we seniors have felt it!
This article doesn't help -- it hurts.
By the way, I support single-payer. But that's "off the table" Single payer advocates were not permitted to speak and have been effectively ignored. So much easier to blame senior citizens -- who are, in fact, among the most vulnerable in our society. This is what USA has become. Crass and cruel.
The article is cruel. And utterly un-helpful.
Turning AZ blue
Gen X & Y don't exist except in the minds of superficial, glib, unthinking writers - unfortunately, they seem to be in the majority, as they always have been. for one thing - the benevolent corporations only covered health care to stave off the very government healthcare that many are calling for now. They were afraid of socialism, both before and after the war.
Looking over this column, this guy has a problem with mum and dad - he's certainly pissed off about something deeply personal - it's got little to do with politics or ideas - but
I'm 100% in favor of single-payer nationalized health care program -- similar to the health care enjoyed by my generation in Europe and Canada and Australia and Israel and ... every other first-world nation.
But that is not what is being offered.
Obama would not even listen to any expert on single-payer. I wouldn't mind Medicare for all -- but that is not what is being proposed. Also, Medicare needs to be improved -- dramatically . I'm on Medicare (disability) and I know It's not the greatest.
You talk about my right to end of life treatment -- well, guess what, I DO want to live!
I was given 4 months to live when I was diagnosed with cancer. I received treatment -- expensive treatment -- I am now in remission. You would pull the plug. We boomers understand very well that people like you would pull the plug. Yes, we want to live. You call it "entitlement" with a sneer. Go sneer at your own mother.
Read this article, it pretty much says what I, and many other seniors, think. You can't fool us.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cramer08182009.html
Yes the sixties are usually portrayed as sex, drugs, and rock n roll pure self indulgence. But this was also the time of the civil rights movement, womens' rights and the beginning of gay rights. So maybe it is the Woodstock crowd that is in favor of single payer insurance. And maybe it's the people that were on the side of the Chicago police and the National Guard that are the older ones screaming at these town halls. They have finally found their activism.
By the time I entered the workforce (1972 -- after USAF), it was NOT generally true that "you could work for the same company for many years and retire with a pension and social security to support your last years on earth." Certainly, there were still some jobs that had pensions -- as there are today -- but that was no longer the dominant paradigm. In fact, it is mostly boomers who have experienced the thrill of working for one company for many years in the EXPECTATION of an eventual pension, only to have the pension plan blow up and leave them with nothing.
The earliest boomers (like me) are just now becoming eligible for Social Security, and are still at least a couple of years away from Medicare. I've paid into SS and Medicare for almost forty years, and I don't think it's unreasonable to want to collect the benefits.
BTW, I favor single-payer (e.g., Medicare for everyone).
There may be some of the Woodstock generation who have become selfish and inhumane. But it is not all of us. Some of us have lived with the ideals for a better society since 1969. That is we have opposed war and bloated military spending in favor of education for our children, and health care for those less fortunate.
Real hippies were also for personal responsibility. They have become the hardworking regular families all over the nation. The boomers includes non-hippies too, and conservatives cynics have destroyed America.
"and their Spock-trained parents catered to their every whim,"
not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Spock#Claims_that_Spock_advocated_permissiveness
I saw this work on my 88 year old parents during the 2008 election, they almost voted for McCain out of fear.
He raises poor old Dr. Spock from the dead to administer a beatdown, and blames boomers for being fat selfish nodes of instant gratification and indolence. Look at boomer's savings rates! Perhaps the author might consider that there is no boomer savings because the boomers spent all their money on crazy stuff like college for their children, you know, the generation x and y'ers 'who have no patience for the boomers'. And precious little gratitude.
The media and politicians have found it helpful for marketing purposes to set these fake generational classes against eachother. And we who have been around the block a little bit can see what's behind all the noise: The young folks, who probably imagine they're fierce libertarians, but are merely young andselfish, don't want to have to pay for the retirement and health care of the boomers, and class and age resentment is their ticket to justification.