The post-WWII era known as the Cold War had tens of thousands of casualties between conflicts in Korea and Germany. But decades after “tear down this wall,” Cold War casualties are still being created daily out of adults with dementia and their caregivers, said Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish.
“They’re casualties because the healthcare system fails to deliver the care they need,” Karlawish wrote in a Forbes column. “Few physicians are trained in geriatrics and even fewer as Alzheimer’s doctors. Older adults with cognitive complaints are typically consigned to a hasty diagnosis and even when they receive a diagnosis, they find minimal guidance on how to live with the disease.
“Many patients don’t even receive a diagnosis. They come to my memory center taking the mildly effective Alzheimer’s drugs and asking whether they have Alzheimer’s, or it is dementia, or just aging, and what’s the difference between them? Their experiences kindle fear and even suspicion about the healthcare system, feelings reinforced when they go out into the world and experience their autonomy under siege. Assessments of their capacity to make life’s important decisions are reduced to a single score on a simple test of cognition. And the system expects them to pay the majority of the costs of their care.”
Karlawish goes on to detail that battle waged between President Lyndon Johnson and the American Medical Association over the establishment of Medicare.
“The charge that a policy would lead to socialism summed up crippling opposition to a program like Medicare,” he wrote. “The argument was fetchingly simple. Our democracy is supported by capitalism and so if a policy threatens capitalism, it threatens democracy and, in turn, fundamental freedoms. Programs that relied on government organization and support were particularly suspect.”
Read the entire column on www.forbes.com.