Elders' self-interest is to vote for Obama

October 11, 2008

With less than a month before this most important election in my lifetime, I'll leave it to the professional pundits to provide the differences between the major candidates on the cosmic issues of war and peace, the future of the economy and climate change.

Recent columns

• Government programs that keep us off our backs

  October 4, 2008

  Social Security had its 73rd birthday in August, but there was another commemoration this summer that has special importance this year. That was the 75th anniversary, on June 16, of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

• Boomers' Social Security still secure, experts say

  September 27, 2008

  I can remember a dozen years ago, when the usual Chicken Littles clucked over a phony poll suggesting that boomers were more likely to believe there was life on other planets than that Social Security benefits would be there for them.

• That lack of energy isn't just old age

  September 20, 2008

  Here's another September, when horrors happen, wars begin, the summer ends and it grows a little darker and colder each day. During that terrible September of 2001, when I asked my doctor, an old-fashioned fellow, how our readers could best cope with the winter to come, he said, "Tell them to get a dog to pet."

• Reverse mortgages can be good deal for elderly

  September 13, 2008

  This week's column is devoted to the details of recently passed legislation that most of the press missed or ignored. For there is good stuff of special importance for aging Americans.

• Age and the presidential candidates

  September 6, 2008

  A few weeks ago, I rejected age as an issue in the presidential campaign. But I added, "If age is to be a factor in the coming race ... perhaps the most important issue may be whom Sen. John McCain chooses as a running mate."

• Oldsters think feds should do more to help

  August 30, 2008

  One could almost hear the sad sigh in the words of Herbert Ris, of Farmingdale, when he replied to my request of a few weeks back that readers tell me how they're making out in these troubled days and what they see in the near future: "I tell my kids I'm glad I'm old and I feel sorry for the young of today. I feel I lived in the best times this country has seen."

• GRAY MATTERS: Overriding Bush veto to save original Medicare

  August 23, 2008

  Now that the sound and fury is done, and a good Medicare reform bill has been passed over the president's futile veto, it's time to take stock. For the bill was not simply about stopping a 10.6 percent cut in fees for Medicare doctors; much more was at stake.

• GRAY MATTERS: AARP flexes its muscle on Medicare, support for gays

  August 16, 2008

  Let's have a round of applause for AARP.

• Access to hospice care beneficial in final years

  August 9, 2008

  I have a serious problem with those studies and stories that suggest Medicare is spending too much money caring for beneficiaries in their last two years of life.

• Gray Matters: SOLI: a stranger is your beneficiary

  August 2, 2008

  We were among the first, more than a year ago, to call your attention to "life settlements."

• GRAY MATTERS: America the different

  July 26, 2008

  I was not yet 21 when I saw the original Broadway production of "South Pacific." I could not have known then, as I know now, that it represented what was best and also not so great about the Greatest Generation.

• GRAY MATTERS: Are you making out OK in this slow economy?

  July 19, 2008

  I got this idea from Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent socialist who is one of the real mavericks and straight-shooters on Capitol Hill. His idea seems most appropriate as we head into the finals of the presidential and congressional campaigns.

• Are the wealthy deserving of Social Security benefits?

  July 11, 2008

  Sheila Reich of Boca Raton raises an interesting point in her letter to a Florida paper: "Why are we allowing millionaires to collect Social Security checks? They certainly don't need the money. Why can't we ask them to choose not to receive their monthly check?"

• The battle to save Medicare

  June 26, 2008

  Reader Jack Wajda, 69, of Orlando, a retired AT&T executive and financial planner, identifies the single greatest problem with the American health-care system as well as anyone. He writes: "To allow private for-profit insurance companies to decide whether and what type of care we receive is incomprehensible to me."

• Summer’s coming, relax

  June 13, 2008

  The summer solstice, the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere, comes to us next week.

• Don't be computer illiterate

  June 6, 2008

  Here's a question for those of you who can afford a computer but refuse to use one because you have no time, you don't think you can learn how to use it, or some other excuse. Do you know what you're missing?

• When the health care system falls short

  May 30, 2008

  The next time someone claims American health care, based on private insurance, is the best in the world, or echoes the president's advice that the sick can always "go to the emergency room," consider the family of William Baxter of Manhasset or Catherine Pascucci of Oyster Bay.

• McCain, Medicare and nerve

  May 23, 2008

  My favorite Yiddish word, I think known to most New Yorkers, is "chutzpah."

• Rising insurance costs may force MDs to quit

  May 9, 2008

  Let's hear it for doctors!

• Financial meltdowns make case for regulation

  April 18, 2008

  Here is one difference between the generations:

• Let's change Medicare into a plan for the ages

  October 2, 2004

  It's time Gray Matters put up or shut up, instead of merely complaining about what passes for the American health care system. And if one day we get a responsive president and Congress, what is a realistic alternative to the nation's dependence for its health care on the private health insurance business?