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Bernie Sanders Wants to Alleviate Senior Loneliness
BY
MEAGAN DAY
Here’s another crazy socialist idea: seniors deserve to feel cared for and socially connected. Bernie Sanders has a plan for that.
Excerpt:
Senior loneliness is a public health issue, which means it’s a political problem. Bernie Sanders is treating it like one, and proposing a political solution: create a new office within the Administration for Community Living to address social isolation among seniors.
One thing the proposed office would be tasked with, according to the Sanders campaign’s website, is studying the extent of social isolation among American seniors and its impact on their health and wellbeing. But while studies are needed in the United States to match those that have been conducted in the UK, research alone won’t cut it. Sanders also proposes to address the problem by providing tax-funded grants to municipalities and organizations that want to experiment with new ways of addressing the issue.
Most promisingly, Sanders wants to “expand and modernize senior centers around the country to provide older adults with places to not only enjoy healthy meals together, but also provide space for exercise classes, book clubs, health screenings, routine health care services, and more.” Here, Sanders is likely looking to successful models such as Japan’s.
It appears from Sanders’s proposal that he has the creation of a network like Japan’s in mind. Putting public money toward a robust network of senior centers is a good way to connect seniors to each other, to activities that can improve their physical health and stimulate their curiosity and creativity, and to vital services that might otherwise be hard to come by.
Addressing social isolation directly is only one part of Sanders’s plan for seniors. In the United States, 6.9 million seniors live in poverty and nine million experience food insecurity. “Since 2001,” Sanders’s campaign says, “senior hunger has increased by 45 percent.” Therefore Sanders proposes to expand Social Security, protect pensions, and quadruple the funding for the Older Americans Act, which provides home meals and other critical services.
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/senior-loneliness-sanders-healthcare