Rise Up, Boomers

My older sister retired last summer from 28 years of civil service. She’s fifty-five. Why retire at 55? Don’t you still have at least ten good years left in you? The situation was, the pension fund in which she was vested was bleeding so badly, she felt that if she didn’t retire the moment she was eligible to lock in her benefit, she would do nothing but see that benefit shrink as time went on. Work ten more years to retire with less income? Doesn’t make much sense to me, either.

We were walking the other day...talking. The conversation went something like this:

D: I just found out my health insurance is going up to over $600 a month. When I retired last summer, they told me it would be more like $400.

Me: Oh, my God! What are you going to do?

D: Dunno. I can sign on to my husband’s plan, and that will save us money right now. But he’s only gonna be working for a couple more years, and if I give up my insurance now, I lose it forever. I can’t get it back.

Me: That’s a helluva choice.

D: Looks like I’m going to be looking for a job. Maybe I can find one with health benefits…

Me: We’ve got to do something about this. The health care/insurance situation in this country has gotten completely out of hand.

D: That’s just not what I do. I’ve never cared about being politically active...

Me: I don’t see where we have a lot of choice. We boomers need to start making noise, or resign ourselves to a destitute retirement. Is that what you want to look forward to?

D: No.

Me: Then I guess we better get off our asses and become politically active…

I guarantee, similar conversations are taking place every day, all over the country, among incredulous baby-boomers blindsided by the fact that a lifetime of nose to the grindstone, paying their dues, is going to end in poverty. What can we do?

It seems to me that we are still one of the largest blips on the demographic radar. And, unless someone has changed the rules somewhere, you don’t get too old to vote. So, rather than go gently into this bleak good night, I would suggest that we set ourselves to reprise our performance as the political force that ended the Viet Nam War, swept civil rights legislation across the nation, and irrevocably changed the role of women in America before we reached the age of thirty. Let’s stop obsessing about our bags, sags, and wrinkles, gray hair or no hair, erectile dysfunction, hot flashes and night sweats. Let’s throw our considerable weight behind a new wave of social change. We must create a society that values its elders and cares for its indigent; one that assures that the wondrous medical advances we’ve bought with the last two decades of skyrocketing costs will be made available to all the people. We’ve earned it. All we need to do is claim it. How loud can we "boom?"

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