Senior citizens no doubt find it interesting in a suspicious sort of way to notice an increasing amount of articles in newspapers and magazines on the subject of whether popular forms of medical treatment are really worth their costs.
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Heart bypasses? After countless numbers of such procedures, the medical establishment seems to finally be seriously questioning their cost-effectiveness and value for many patients.
Medicated artery stents? These are also coming into question because of potential stroke risks arising from the use of these as com- pared to much cheaper unmedicated stents.
Questions are being more frequently raised regarding the necessity of certain medical examinations, blood tests, prostate treatments, mam- mograms, various surgical procedures, and so forth—with increasing reference to the cost effectiveness of these medical procedures.
In other words, there seems to be an increasing trend to relate potentially life and death medical management decisions to cost and expense. This is not necessarily evil. There may well have been, and per- haps still are, excessive predispositions in both the medical and medical business establishments and among patients for the latest and most sophisticated, if not always necessarily the best and most required, diagnostic tools and treatments. Careful cost re-evaluations were and probably still are inevitable given the aging of the population, the stress of this older population on the medical delivery system, and possibly an inevitable need to ration medical care in one form or another sooner or later.
The social and philosophical implications of whatever form this rationing might take are complex, grave, and potentially unfair in many ways. It has seemed only a brief pause between the celebration of increasing life spans and concern that there may be too many people needing retirement benefits and health services for too long a time for the good of society.
It may be true that in some—perhaps many—cases, more expensive than required medical treatment is proposed to patients by the medical establishment. In other situations, this is definitely not the case. Patients are denied needed medical treatment because of limited finances.
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If you are moving into your senior years without ample resources to provide for your own living expenses and for your own medical expenses, you may find that in one way or another, the powers that be may be inclined, actively or by passive neglect, to blow you right off the planet.
Don’t let them do that to you.
Your best defense is to become as self-sufficient, economi- cally, as you can and as soon as you can.
According to Saul Friedman, retiring is likely to be boring, lonely, unhealthy, contrary to good sex, and likely to rob your life of meaning and caring except for caring about whether you have enough money
left to survive.9Mr. Friedman advises workers who are retiring from a
job to immediately seek out new employment.
A similar theme was echoed by Liza N. Burby, who expects prob- lems will be created for many retirees by the loss of job identity, the loss of the status created by earned income, and by loneliness resulting
from the separation from work companions and business associates.10
If the truth be told, post-retirement depressions and problems in adjusting to retirement might, indeed, be the norm—they certainly do occur frequently.
People who own and operate their own closely held businesses seem to be the most reluctant to close shop. They tend to identify with their businesses, to enjoy their work, to remain excited by its challenges, and often end their working lives late and with considerable reluctance. Still, after just a few months of acclimation, these independent opera- tors appear to generally transfer their energies to renewed education, travel, sports if they are still able, physical fitness, concerts—you name it. People with constructive energy during their working years tend to remain interested in life during retirement, only this time with the hours and days available to pursue a broader range of interests.
People who work for other people more often retire quite readily with a sense of relief and to very much enjoy the experience of being masters of their own fate on a daily basis rather than taking orders.
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Some professionals—psychoanalysts, for example, and certain other medical specialists—more frequently seem to retire with great reluc- tance, often quite late in life, with retirement delayed not out of necessity but because of their love of and involvement with their professions.
Back to the other side, for many senior couples, retirement pro- vides opportunities for travel for which there was rarely time prior to retirement, to be with adult children and grandchildren, to pursue new avenues of education, and to be with each other in a way that was not quite possible when life was busier and more externally scheduled. All of the preceding is simply to say that retirement may be to your liking. It may not. You may want to continue working for as long as you can. You may prefer to be free to do many of the things you have wished for so many years to do. Retirement may take you out of your business loop but it may also provide the time and opportunity to allow you to sample and become involved with many new areas of life.
Wouldn’t it really be best if the choice was yours?