Jack Young attends White House Conference on Aging

On July 13, Jack Young of Rehoboth Beach attended, at the invitation of the President, the White House Conference on Aging. The White Conference is held every 10 years to address issues affecting seniors and retirement.

The first conference was held in 1961, and resulted in the passage of Medicare, Medicaid and the Older Americans Act in 1965.

This year’s conference examined five pressing problems for seniors: healthy aging policy, long term care services and support, elder justice, retirement security, and the use of technology.

The president, in his speech to the conference in the East Room, said “One of the best measures of a country is how it treats its older citizens.” While Medicare, Medicaid and the Other Americans Act have been tremendously important to seniors, work needs to continue to ensure that all American have adequate retirement security, that workplace flexibility exists for care givers and that there is an increased training of prosecutors in the areas of elder abuse.

Young said “The conference highlighted the need redefine the term ‘aging’ and the meaning of ‘care giving,’ particularly given that 10,000 citizen reach 65 every day.” Among the ideas presented at the conference, the most enlightened may have been the development of elder-centric technologies developed with seniors.