February 1, 2006
Gray issues
Georgia Durga served as state delegate at DC aging conference
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Starting this year, the first of 78 million Baby Boomers will be turning 60 - a wave of humanity that has already started retiring.
How will they retire, afford health care, keep up with rising living costs, meet their medical needs? What public services will this population bulge need?
Delegates to the 2005 White House Conference on aging grappled with these issues and more - with some terming it a crisis that needs advance preparation and planning. Georgia Durga, director of the Grand Traverse County Commission on Aging, did not agree that these events constituted a crisis, but the population shifts require attention.
Part of the Michigan delegation, Representative Dave Camp appointed Durga to the post, which took her to Washington, D.C., for the conference in mid-December. Delegates attended the conference from around the nation,
Reporting on her experiences there, Durga spoke to approximately 100 attendees Thursday during a luncheon meeting at the Park Place Dome. Her talk was sponsored jointly by the Grand Traverse County Commission on Aging with the Grand Traverse Pavilions and the Aging Institute of Michigan.
"I felt lucky and very fortunate to be able to go," she said. "The experience was the experience of a lifetime."
Every ten years or so since 1961, the White House Conference on Aging convenes to grapple with a host of issues related to seniors. The goal of the gathering is to guide politicians as they develop and set aging policies for the federal, state and local governments. A final conference report will be issued in June.
At the 2005 conference, subtitled The Booming Dynamics of Aging, attendees voted on 73 resolutions that had been prepared in advance. Durga said the resolutions were mailed to them about three weeks before the event and delegates were expected to read them ahead of time. These resolutions were compiled after two years of public hearings around the country, which reached more than 130,000 people.
At the conference, delegates chose the top 50, ranked their importance and then discussed policy options and implications of those deemed most crucial.
"We had to be fiscally responsible and consider technology," said Durga, who noted that the conference stressed looming cash flow problems of Medicare and Social Security. "We all need to look at how we do business or we are all going to be in trouble."
"We couldn't modify what was up there, we were not allowed to add or delete from the resolutions," she added.
The aging of the Baby Boomers was the conference's main focus with issues revolving around health and long-term living, planning along the life span of retirement, elder friendly communities, civic and social programs, volunteers, technology and innovations that may help seniors.
Another topic was the workplace of the future, an important consideration given that there are not enough younger workers to replace retiring Baby Boomers.
"They talked about a workforce talent drain," Durga said. "They talked about how to look at retirement differently, like a sabbatical or different job."
"In this culture we do not respect wisdom and aging," she added. "We need to think about aging as a resource instead of a drain on the economy."
Durga fielded questions at her talk Thursday in Traverse City about robots, Medicare Part D, health problems of younger people and elders with disabilities.
"Not much talk about rural-urban issues at all, just bringing people together again," answered Durga to an audience question relating to the region's rural character.