Demographic Paper
Demographic Paper: With the aging population
HCS/490
January 16, 2012
Demographic changes have effects on everything and most of the time people may not consider the extent of this or how it will affect others such as what the changes will have on the aging population. Changes may include the effects of his or her medical benefits, employment options, retirement, social security, housing, and most important who will provide care for the aging family members.
Since entering into the new millennium, The United States has been challenged with the meeting of many demands that our aging population requires. For example, the increase there has been in the health costs, financing and delivery of health care for the older population, and the worries about health care quality is a serious challenge for health care. Health care is researched, and this is needed to help the aging population benefit from the advances in clinical, biomedical, and behavioral research.
Aging adults face the challenges of chronic diseases that contribute to the diminishment of life, disability, and the increase that is seen with the cost of long-term health care. The number of older individuals is expected to increase always over time because somewhere someone is aging, and this will affect the penalties for public health, delivery systems, health care financing, informal care giving, and pension systems. Furthermore, other Countries around the world have been known to pay much more attention to the aging population, and an extensive number of these individuals and growing amount of chronic disease will place tension on resources in countries where simple public health concerns are yet to be tackled fully (S. Jacobzone, 2000).
Baby boomers have to face challenges and changes that he or she will endure as they age and enter a new stage in life. New issues will arise for people as he or she ages such as an increase in his or her health problems, and expenses some may face issues with earlier decisions that were made in life and as he or she ages this will have an enormous impact later in life more than ever with economic wellbeing. The Baby Boomers are those born between 1946 and 1964 this is about 78 million people and according to the U.S. Census Bureau 2006 the number of those whom will turn 60 each day was about 7,918 this information reveals the increase that will be seen over the next two decades with the aging population. The prediction of 65 and older population will be triple and the 85 and older will increase fivefold by 2070 (Rood-Wilson 2010).
It seems that more of the aging population is living to the age of 65 this has been the normal accepted age for retirement, and it has been shown that if a person reaches age 65 the men will live to 82 and women will see 85. One must factor racial and ethnic background as well this always makes a difference for example, there is a two year gap between a White man, and an African American man and a 1.4-year difference between a White women, and an African American women. As people age he or she and family may believe that Medicare will cover the greater part of his or her health care costs and the hopes that Medicaid will take up the long-term nursing care one may need, but with the rising costs that have been seen in health care, and the growing demands for public services such as Medicaid, and the decline for the working age laborers that have invested in the "pay as you go" pension systems are causing alarm for those entering retirement age and the fiscal pressures that the state and federal government are facing (Rood-Wilson 2010).
Additionally, Michigan's residents shown that in September 2009 there were 11.7% or 1.15 million people that did not have health care coverge, but only 1.7% of those 65 and older were uninsured although most of this group was covered under Medicare, but people must remember that the absence of health coverage for people during the early and middle