Retirement News : Seniors : Conference aims to address needs of senior citizens

Conference aims to address needs of senior citizens

Date Added: 26-09-2005

January, 2006! Happy New Years!  The first of the baby boomer generation turns 60!  That means economic pressure to meet the needs of this growing, aging population is growing.  Read the excerpt below.

The Journal News.com - Westchester,NY,USA

By LEN MANIACE
lmaniace@thejournalnews.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: September 24, 2005)

Aging baby boomers, who begin turning 60 in January, will strain the nation's health care system and tax the nation's finances unless officials from local to national levels begin planning now, according to speakers yesterday at a Westchester County conference on aging.

"We all would like to think that we are going to be very healthy into our old age because we took care of ourselves and exercised, but it is denial to think we are going to live until 100 or 90, and then drop over one day without having had disabilities or a decline," said Sandra Timmerman, a nationally recognized gerontologist and director of the Mature Market Institute at MetLife in Westport, Conn.

Timmerman's remarks came during the conference at the Hilton Rye Town that was the culmination of an 18-month county government study designed to lay out a Westchester agenda for the White House Conference on Aging that will be held Dec 11-14. The White House conference is a roughly once-a-decade event has led to major new federal initiatives aimed at older Americans such as Medicare, from the 1961 conference, and cost-of-living increases for Social Security, from the 1971 meeting.

For More Information:

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050924/NEWS02/509240302/1018