James Firman, president and CEO of the National Council on Aging, was in town last week as the keynote speaker at a conference, “Aging Well in Dane County,” held at the Madison Senior Center. Firman was introduced by County Executive Kathleen Falk.

The conference was the brainchild of two of the brightest and most accomplished leaders in the aging network on the local, state and national levels. Christine Beatty is the director of the Madison Senior Center and Barbara Thoni is the director of the Area Agency on Aging of Dane County. Together, with their conference committee, they orchestrated a day of celebration at a time of financial discouragement. Many of the leaders and staff of the various programs and services for older adults and their families in Dane County were in attendance.

Firman presented an absolutely inspiring speech that affirmed the frustrations of those attempting to provide services with tighter and tighter budgets while offering concrete solutions to the problems. It was definitely a “think outside of the box” method of planning and achieving goals based on outcomes.

In his description of wealth, Firman included older people themselves as providers of volunteer time and actual dollars in donations and fees for services.

“Ah, the possibilities.” I could almost hear the attendees sigh as they furiously took notes, eager to take these ideas back to their boards.

I was particularly interested in Firman’s take on health care reform and what it will mean to the Medicare recipients. He presented the good news and the bad news about the proposed legislation. On the bad side Firman explained that the total Medicare budget would be cut to help pay for insuring nontraditional patients, those under age 65 and those without disabilities.

The good side of the picture, as Firman explained it, has to do with assuring care for people who are nearing Medicare eligibility age, say age 55 or older, who have either lost their job-related health insurance or who had no health care coverage to begin with. These people enter the system with chronic diseases that have not been addressed because of lack of coverage. These individuals’ costs to Medicare are significantly higher compared to costs for those who have been receiving adequate health care all along.

As a health care provider in geriatrics, this just makes so much sense to me. Diabetes or congestive heart failure or any other chronic disease, if left untreated, results in all sorts of other problems. If we can prevent even a small percentage of the complications from such diseases, we can save untold dollars, to say nothing of the misery.

I have heard so much negativity lately and listened to so many hateful lies about health care reform and the dearth of resources to get the job done that I have gotten a bit cranky.

How refreshing to walk away from a program with a sense of hope.

Barbara Quirk is a Madison geriatric nurse practitioner. Tandbquirk@aol.com

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