The core of every joke about baby boomers is a seed of jealousy. Unlike younger generations, they have largely been able to walk a simple path to prosperity, safety and power. They were born in an era of unprecedented economic growth and stability. College was affordable and they graduated in a thriving labor market. They were the first generation to pick the full benefits of a golden age of medical innovations: contraception, robot surgery, mapping the human genome, effective cancer treatments, ozempic.
But recent policy changes are ready to make life considerably more difficult for baby boomers. “If you are in the 60s or 70s, what the Trump administration did mean more uncertainty for your assets in your 401 (K), more uncertainty about sources of long-term care, and for the first time, uncertainty about your social safety benefits,” Teresa Ghilarducci, an labor economist told the new school, me. “It’s a triple threat.” After more than half a century older in political and economic trends that worked to their advantage, the generation has become particularly vulnerable at exactly the wrong time in history.
Perhaps the biggest threat to boomers in the second Trump administration is a revision of social security, which offers advantages Up to almost nine out of 10 Americans aged 65 and older. In an e -mail statement, social security commissioner Frank Bisignano wrote: “I am fully committed to protecting and strengthening social security to protect and strengthen social security. Besides that their benefits are safe.” But in February, doo announced plans to reduce social security staff by around 12 percent and close six of the 10 regional offices; A quarter From the IT staff of the desk has stopped or fired. The long -term provision of social security was already worried for Trump, and these drastic reductions make the understood agency even less equipped to support those trust. Closing field offices means that seniors cannot get help personally; Fewer staff means longer waiting times when they call and crash more frequently. “When you add obstacles, or cause a delay in terms of processing claims, you will see losses in terms of benefits,” said Monique Morrissey, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. In fact, during the first two years of the Coronavirus Pandemie, closures of field offices corresponded to Reduced registration In both social security and a disability insurance from social security, which is available to Americans younger than 65 hours that can no longer work for physical or mental reasons.
Disguins on social security will damage the most of the boomers with a low income, which are the most low to rely on benefits to cover their entire costs of living. But even people with more financial assets can depend on social security as a safety net. “It is important to understand that many seniors, even seniors in the above income, are only one shock to fall into poverty,” says Nancy J. Altman, the president of Social Security Works, an organization that argues for expanding the program. As a whole, seniors have more medical needs and less income than the general population, so they are much more financially more vulnerable. If you are comfortable middle class in your early 60s, at the height of your earning potential, that is no guarantee that you will stay comfortable middle class in your 1970s. In the coming years, Boomers who experience more medical accounts when working, for the first time in their lives, they can not easily pay them.
Seniors in the middle income will probably also feel the impact of a volatile market. “They tend to have modest investments and fixed income instead of shares, so the type of wealth that will work out over a high inflation period,” said Laura D. Quinby, who studies benefits and labor markets at the Center for Retirement Research to Boston College, me. After Trump announced 10 percent rates for all imported goods in April, the three large stock indexes fell by 4 percent or more. They have been recovered since, but the whimsical market-round proclamations shifted by Trump’s pric lamations about rates, many boomers from the middle class, who keep an eye on their pension savings.
In the near future, older Americans can also pay more for medical care. Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’, which has passed in the house but waiting for a vote in the Senate, would considerably limit Medicare Access for many documented immigrants, including seniors who have paid taxes in the United States for years. The bill would also reduce the Medicaid registration by around 10.3 million people. Although Medicaid is for people with a limited income of all ages, it supports much older Americans and pays more than half of long -term care in the US Most seniors require a kind of nursing home or medical care at home; One study showed that 70 percent of adults Who live to 65 requires long -term services and support.
That support can not only be not only more expensive, but also more difficult to find. The long -term workforce consists of disproportionate immigrantsSo the immigration realing of the Trump government is likely to reduce the number of available people to take care of seniors – and increases how much it costs to hire them. “If you don’t have money, you will be in a nursing home on Medicaid, and that is that. But if you try to avoid that fate, you will now run faster through your money and be more vulnerable,” said Morrissey.
Seniors with some financial certainty live rather long enough to contend with the diseases of old age, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. The Trump government has reduced financing for promising research into these diseases. “In the future you will find fewer treatments that flourish,” said Thomas Grabowski, who leads the Memory and Brain Wellness Center at the University of Washington, told me. For the time being it is your memory and brainwellness center, where Grabowski works on therapies for Alzheimer’s, stopped bringing in new participants; As time passes, he said, they will have to tighten more. (Kush Desai, a spokesperson for the White House, told me in an e -mail that the cutbacks on research that are financed by the National Institutes of Health are the agency ‘Better Positioning’ to deliver medical breakthroughs that actually improve the health and well -being of Americans. ”)
Changes in the Your Memory and Brain Wellness Center can have dramatic effects on current patients, including Bob Pringle, a 76-year-old who lives in Woodinville, Washington. In April he started to get infusions from Donanemab, an anti-amyloid medication that was approved by the FDA last year. The drug does not heal the Alzheimer’s; It is designed to slow down the progression of the disease, although the usefulness of Donanemab and other medicines from Alzheimer’s remains controversial with experts. For example, Pringle has found Donanemab useful. “With the medicine, my deterioration is a soft slope, instead of a rapid decline,” says Pringle, whose mother died on Alzheimer’s and whose sister lives in memory care. “You are always hopeful that someone with a larger brain than you have worked on a remedy, and the medication gives us some time until then,” said Bob’s wife and caregiver, Tina Pringle, me. “But at the moment, because of the cuts, our prospects are grim.”
The unknowability of the future has always been a scary part of aging. The enormous revolution that the Trump administration has created will only increase that uncertainty for boomers. After a historic arch of happiness, their golden generation has to compete with bad timing.
However, younger generations, including mine, should not shine: cutbacks on social security and a stop for medical research can deteriorate the experience of aging for the coming generations. Younger Americans will probably also grow old under challenging circumstances. Unlike the Boomers, we have enough time to get used to the idea.
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