Health Care and the Black Elderly
Abstract
While I could have picked any subject concerning the elderly,
this paper mainly focuses on the health care system and how it
affects the elderly, and in particular the black elderly. The
federal government has said that the elderly are becoming a
burden. More money is being spent taking care of the elderly than
ever before because the elderly need more medical attention than
any other age group, and because more elderly people
advantage of government help like Medicare and
are taking
Medicaid.
Therefore, the government finds itself spending more money to
provide health care for the elderly. As this concern has grown,
researchers begin to take a long critical look at the entire
health care system. The intent of this paper is to present an
overview of the information already published while focusing on
four aspects of the health care system. 1) How the high cost of
health care has affected the health care field, and what are some
of its repercussions; 2) How Medicare and Medicaid contribute or
do not contribute to the health care that the black elderly
receive; 3) The quality of care the black elderly receive; 4) The
access/utilization of health care by the black elderly. Finally,
I will to try to offer some reasonable solutions. Dr. Morris
said we have to find a way to get money into these people's hands,
and a sense of power into their minds, but this is not easy. I
think it is important to know where we have been, and where we
are, in order to figure out where we are going to go from here.
This paper is not theory oriented paper, but rather it is a
practical application paper. Working in Ann Arbor at the
Institute of Gerontology presented my with a great opportunity to
use books that I otherwise would not have had easy access to. The
main authors that I used was Robert Taylor, Linda Chatters, LuAnn
Aday, Ronald Anderson, Gretchen Fleming, Laura Berman, Michael
Wagner, and Jacquelyne Jackson. All of these people except for
Berman and Wagner are noted in the gerontology field , and most of
their views concerning health care and the black elderly are for
the most part consistent. I will expound upon the main points of
their research, and hopefully be a little creative with my own.