Future Society’s Outlook Toward Aging, Illness, and Health Care of the Aged

Summary

In the past 30 years, the societal view of aging and health care of the elderly has changed dramatically. Not only have the enactments of Medicare and Medicaid illuminated the public role in health care delivery, but changing demographics and technology have added to increased demand for service and aggregate cost of care. These factors, combined with growing concerns regarding family responsibility, intergenerational relationships, and quality of health services, have called into sharp focus societal values and individual attitudes influencing care of the aged.

This chapter examines sone of the ethical issues and value decisions which are part of the older person’s experience in obtaining health care, the family’s experience in continuing to assume the primary role in caring for older people, and society’s role in determining the distribution of limited public resources to a growing population in need. The crises of the future are here and the hope for providing cost effective humane care for older people rests in society’s ability to apply improving knowledge of geriatric health care and resolve some difficult problems of resource allocation and coordination of care.