I’m 86 years old and James Surowiecki has labeled me and a handful of my contemporaries who have long beards, walk with canes or walkers, or are pushed in wheelchairs as “Greedy Geezers.�
Indeed, Surowiecki, The New Yorker’s financial writer, devotes an entire page in a recent issue of the magazine to whining that once we’ve become old and infirm we are an unfair drain on the economy. He doesn’t say it, but the inference is if we didn’t require so many drugs and treatments by the latest medical technological wonder machines, but just passed away quietly, the country would be better off.
Sounds more like the battle cry of the Tea Partiers than the thinking of a usually thoughtful and fair-minded economic pundit.
Yes, James Surowiecki, I confess: The only specialist I haven’t seen in the last five years is a gynecologist!
But then no one is more surprised than I am that I have lived so long — and still serve on committees to help children, am writing a play about General Israel Putnam and have just finished a children’s book and am looking for a publisher.
I also pay taxes and for heat, electricity, insurance, cars, food, some clothing, admissions, magazines, newspapers and a hire variety of tradesmen and handymen, et al.
I had figured that sometime in my late 70s I would have crossed the River Styx and joined my ancestors. But no, people like Mr. Surowiecki, and the rest of the taxpayers in modern America (excluding Wasilla), have been more than happy to fund the scientists who have invented the miracle machines, e.g., the MRI, CT scan, and cures for cancer and other diseases that were incurable in the not-too-distant past.
But no one asked me when I was 40 years old if I wanted to live to 86. When I didn’t feel up to par in those days, I took what is still a miracle drug, an aspirin.
These days I gobble down at least a dozen pills a day, not because Pfizer and Glaxo and the other pharmaceutical giants give a hoot about my health. By convincing doctors to feed me their wonder pills, they are also feeding their cash registers. Ah ha, that’s the bottom line: profits.
And to keep us geezers alive longer we spawned a herculean breed of specialists, to the detriment of ordinary folk who just need a primary-care doctor. And because specialists make more money, too many medical school students are opting out of primary medicine and choosing to become specialists.
Time was when we needed something from the government — in this instance, more primary docs — we could say with impunity, “There oughta be a law.� But that’s not popular, or funny, anymore because the tea drinkers want to shrink government, except, of course, when it affects them and they need help.
I have a plan. It has been bruited about that when the average medical student finishes training he/she is in debt to the tune of $200,000. This is another incentive for them to join the growing ranks of the specialists.
And then there is the horrendous cost to doctors of frivolous malpractice suits. That in addition to legitimate malpractice litigations has raised the cost of insurance premiums to as much as $100,000 a year, chasing many much needed doctors out of the profession.
So, what to do? Instead of waging wars in far-off places that are draining our treasury, why not pay off the medical students’ debt? But only on the condition that they become primary-care physicians in communities where the nearest family doc is miles and miles away.
If the primary doc eventually still wants to become a specialist, they pay back the subsidy — with interest.
As for me, I’ve been asked to mentor a chess club in our local elementary school, so I had best get out my chess set and tune up my board skills so the young members of the club don’t beat me.
And to the mean-spirited New Yorker financial writer, I say just wait until you become a geezer. You’ll be singing a different tune.
Freelance writer Barnett Laschever of Goshen is the author of five children’s books, two stage plays, a radio play, a guide book and numerous essays.
