EPISODE 25- The Truth About Aging in America: What Every Family Should Know

🎙️ Episode 25 – Team Senior Podcast

“The Truth About Aging in America: What Every Family Should Know”

In this solo episode, Jamie Callahan shares eye-opening facts and trends shaping the future of aging in America. From the “Age Wave” to the realities of Social Security shortfalls, housing gaps, and caregiving costs, Jamie breaks down what families need to know to prepare for the years ahead.

You’ll learn:

• How Peak 65 is reshaping retirement and healthcare planning
• Why Southern Oregon has one of the highest senior populations in the country
• The hidden costs of caregiving and housing for seniors
• How loneliness affects health as much as smoking
• What families can do now to prepare—before a crisis hits

Whether you’re a senior, a caregiver, or a family member navigating this journey, this episode offers clarity, practical insight, and real-world advice for planning with confidence.

🎧 Listen now: https://teamsenior.buzzsprout.com

📞 For help or resources: 541-295-8230

At Team Senior™, our mission is to guide you and support you through the maze of Southern Oregon Long-Term Care.

📞 For Team Senior resources, call: 541-295-8230

Or visit our website for more information: https://www.teamsenior.org/

Transcript

Introduction

Hi, this is Jamie Callahan with the Team Senior Podcast. Our goal is to simplify aging. Society grooms us to plan for retirement, but what about life beyond retirement, where the rubber meets the road? Perhaps you've had a stroke, or you've been diagnosed with cancer, or maybe you're forgetting things and now you have dementia. That's our area of expertise, and we are here to share our insight.

And now, the Team Senior Podcast.

Episode: Important Facts About Aging in America

Hi, this is Jamie Callahan. Today is a little bit of an unofficial episode—just interesting facts that I want to share with you that I have discovered over the last few years. I've compiled them all in one document here where I'm just going to share with you some things that I think will be very fascinating.

The Age Wave

I want to start with this thing that we are referring to as the Age Wave. By 2030, many of you are probably aware of the fact that baby boomers—born between the years of 1946 and 1964—will all be 65 by 2040, which will mean that 22% of our population will be older adults over the age of 65. That is absolutely amazing.

Essentially right now, one in six Americans are already over the age of 65, which is up about 13% since 2010. It's a really big deal. I know that just a couple of years ago, I heard all of these things that were being released by our federal government talking about how a certain percentage of the population, beginning in the year 2022, would be over the age of 65.

If you live here in Southern Oregon, you know that in Josephine County and Jackson County, and quite possibly Douglas County as well, we've been well over 20% of folks that are over the age of 65. In fact, I would say probably 27% of people are over the age of 65 right here in Southern Oregon.

The Rate of Aging and Longevity

So let's talk a little bit about the rate of aging and longevity. There's something that is being tossed around—it's a new term that I had actually never heard until recently—called Peak 65. It's a record: 11,400 Americans are turning 65 each day. Again, that's called Peak 65.

The interesting thing that we all need to consider is that the new life expectancy is nearing about 80 years old, and the number of centenarians are rising also. So we're preparing for what's going to be a super-aging society. It's going to be like a quarter of the population will be over the age of 65, which is an enormous amount.

Social Security and Medicare

Something else that everybody needs to be aware of is Social Security and Medicare. They are both facing shortfalls by the years of 2033 to 2034. Not many people are aware of the fact that the rising healthcare costs are being directly impacted by the super-aging society that we're living in. So when we have 25% of the population that is over the age of 65 expecting to live 80 years or longer, the idea that our Social Security funds or Medicare will be available is definitely being questioned right now.

It's not to say that they're not going to be available, but I could definitely see that certain things are going to start to change. Some examples of that are we're already hearing that the feds may want to move when folks can start applying for Medicare or Social Security in terms of the first years that it can become accessible, thereby saving money on the back end for the folks that are living longer. Just, again, some things that you want to consider.

The Affordable Housing Crisis

When we look at affordable housing, this is a crisis that we live in right now. It's very difficult for people to access affordable housing, especially here in Southern Oregon, because of the number of folks that have moved here from out of the area, driving up the cost of housing. The average income can't typically support somebody buying their first home if you have always lived here. If you didn't move out of the area, develop some equity elsewhere, and then move back in with that substantial down payment, that is impacting our senior population a lot as well.

A perfect example of that would be in a spousal situation where a couple is dependent on the husband and wife's income, and one of them passes away. And now one spouse is left with a Social Security income of, say, $2,000 a month. If you have a mortgage to pay and you need to pay all of the recurring monthly bills—whether that's electricity, sewage, garbage, or it's your recurring car payment, insurance, or just getting groceries—that's going to be very difficult to meet.

So in that scenario, sometimes folks consider selling their home and then using the equity to pay for what's going to look like their last place of residence. Perhaps that's independent living. Independent living starts probably around $2,500 to $3,000 a month right here in Southern Oregon. So depending on how much equity you have, you can see how that money could disappear very quickly. And when you run out of money, unless your care needs warrant needing Medicaid—I can't say this enough times—and you only have $2,000 a month, or many people who have less than $1,000 a month in Social Security, housing is scarce, almost impossible to find here in Josephine County and Jackson County.

You can get low-income housing like through Section 8, HUD, and HACSO. But the wait list in virtually every single apartment that is available for low-income housing for seniors has a two-year wait list. So that leaves you in what we call "the gap." I get calls every day from people that live in the gap, and there are a lot of different things that we help them explore in terms of ways that they can find housing for the income that they're living off of. But it isn't easy, and it's something that I don't think enough people are talking about or even aware of. The struggle with the rising living costs alongside caregiving costs is crippling people every single day.

Aging in Place

So aging in place becomes this preferred topic where 77% of older adults could stay at home, assuming they had the income to pay for their mortgage and recurring monthly expenses and all of those things. But many times that requires some kind of adaptation for the home or smart home technology so that they have grab bars in the shower, grab bars in the hallway, a lift chair to get out of their chair in the living room—all the ways that we need to support someone living at home.

That also causes us to look again at those caregiving needs and the expense that revolves around caregiving needs. Caregiving is an exceptional option for folks that have the money to pay for it. Caregiving is very expensive. With a registry, it starts $25 to $30 an hour. With an agency, it starts $40 to sometimes $75 an hour, depending on what your care needs look like. You can quickly see how, if you needed caregiving around the clock, you're looking at $25,000 to $50,000 a month. Probably in an assisted living setting, it would cost you significantly less—maybe $5,500 to $8,500, depending on what your care needs look like. But it's something that people need to start really talking about and planning for.

Social Isolation and Loneliness

The other thing that comes into consideration here is when we have folks that were in a spousal situation and a spouse passes away—and this is especially true if you don't have any adult children present—the loneliness effect. It's said that 24% of older adults are linked to what's referred to as social isolation. This is a really big deal. Social isolation, according to some recent statistics, implies that being alone or lonely too long has the same impact or detriment on your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes every single day.

It's something that families definitely need to take into consideration when we have, again, that spousal situation and someone passes away and now someone's going to be left alone. How is that person not just going to take care of themselves physically, but also mentally? How do we support that person through that transition?

Dementia Diagnosis Timelines

Something that not a lot of people know is that when we need to look at dementia, probably 40 to 55% of the time these days, the diagnosis is not being given by the primary care. Primary cares are referring very frequently to neuropsychologists. The wait time for a neuropsychologist is probably eight to 10 weeks in Southern Oregon.

What that means to you is that if you need, or if your loved ones need memory care and we could move them into a memory care community, we're going to be in a holding pattern until that diagnosis comes into play. A memory care or a dementia or Alzheimer's diagnosis is required by law, per the legalities that exist inside those memory care communities. They must have a dementia or Alzheimer's diagnosis in order to move in.

Again, when you consider that primary care physicians are very often not giving the diagnosis anymore, and you're going to need a referral to a neuropsychologist, which is going to take another eight to 10 weeks, you want to make sure that you're asking for those things ahead of time. So if I'm talking to the adult daughter right now, or I'm talking to the wife, and you guys suspect that the husband or the dad has dementia, you need to start making these appointments because Dad could end up in the hospital and it's deemed that he's not safe to go back home for whatever reason. He's going to be in the hospital until we can get that dementia diagnosis in play. So please put these balls in motion. Don't wait.

Support Services

Regarding support services, we have Medicaid in Southern Oregon that will pay for long-term care. We're lucky. Oregon is one of the few states—there are three states in the entire country—that allows for Medicaid to pay for assisted living. Most states, it only pays for skilled nursing facilities. And in those skilled nursing facilities, oftentimes there is a memory care wing. That's not necessary in Oregon, Washington, or Florida, where you can have Medicaid and it will pay for assisted living, or it will pay for an adult foster home. We're really lucky.

So the other things that should be considered are Meals on Wheels. That is another service where meals can be brought to your home. There are several meal services here in Southern Oregon. We're not going to talk about all of them, but should you need information about that, please don't hesitate to give us a call. We can probably get you connected.

A Reminder to Call Us

I always like to remind people throughout podcasts where it's just me talking that you can call us anytime. We are the company that on Christmas morning is going to answer the phone. We are so happy to help you, and typically it's not going to be a long conversation. We're not going to make you jump through 10 minutes of answering questions for us to be able to give you some kind of insight. We want to get to the root of what the issue is, and we want to solve it for you as quickly as possible.

We also like to remind people that our funding comes through our ability to assist you. So if you don't call us, then our funding will eventually dry out. Again, it's really important that you give us the opportunity to help you. My own friends and family will sometimes say to me, "We didn't call you because we didn't want to bother you," even though they know that I probably could have helped them in five minutes instead of the hour of phone calls that they just made. They just wanted to save me the time of not having to be one more person that's calling. But the reality of it is that our funding is based on your calling us for that information. So please do not hesitate to call us.

Insurance Coverage Details

One more thing I want to talk about is insurance and some things that can be provided and some things that cannot be provided. I'm just going to touch on a couple of examples, but you'll get the idea that there's probably a hundred examples.

So I had a gentleman call me the other day, and he needed transportation. He lives in Grants Pass. He needed transportation to a specialist that lives in Medford. And I said, "Okay, great. Let me give you the telephone number for the transportation companies that we most often refer to." And he took down the phone numbers, and then he ended the conversation with me saying, "I have zero confidence that this is going to work. The year prior, my wife passed away, but before that, we tried to utilize our health insurance for rides to specialists for her, and our insurance didn't cover anything. We're on a restricted budget. We don't really know what we're going to do here."

So I took it upon myself to call our insurance experts and take a deep dive into his insurance, which was WellCare. And WellCare, in fact, does not provide any transportation rides to doctor's appointments, which I was horrified by. I had no idea. I will tell you that Ario provides rides, and I don't remember how many it is, but it's 20 rides a year or something, and it doesn't even have to be to a doctor's appointment. You can use it for a ride to the grocery store or a ride to see your sister.

So these are important questions to ask when you're exploring insurance, when you're a senior, or when you are looking at caring for yourself beyond the age of 65. Make sure you're asking specific questions about your insurance provider. It's not always just about "Is it going to shave $2 off of my copay?" or "Do I get to have a free gym membership?" When you're really weighing what is the most valuable in this scenario, probably for them, it may not have been WellCare. It may have been another agency.

Another example would be that there are certain insurance companies that will not allow you to use certain providers. If you have certain types of insurance, you cannot go to Providence Hospital. If you have certain types of insurance—and we'll just take United Health, for example—Riverside Home Health and Hospice does not take United Health, so we would have to refer you to a different home health company. And not all of the companies have all of the services. So if you need home health and we know that you're eventually going to migrate into hospice, we would want to refer you to a company that has home health and hospice. We wouldn't necessarily want to refer you to a company that only has home health or only has hospice.

So again, asking those correct questions and working through an expert around different types of health insurance is really important, and making sure that the person that you're talking to is going to take a deep dive into your specific needs and not just try to sell you what's going to get them a commission.

We do work with an expert. Her name is Debbie Hodgson. She represents, I don't know, 10, 12, 13 different companies—I'm not really sure. But when you meet with her, she's going to tell you which of those companies best suit your needs, not what suits her needs based on what she's going to get paid. And we love her for that. Again, if you have any questions about how to contact Debbie, just always get in touch with us.

Closing

I'm going to close this here. I could go on and on. There is a lot of information to share just around little bits of information that you should have here and there. But again, I would just encourage you to give us a call.

Again, this is Jamie Callahan, and I will chat with you next week.

Outro

Thank you for listening to the Team Senior Podcast. We're here every week sharing new and relevant information. Remember that we're just a phone call away. Team Senior can be reached at 541-295-8230. Again, 541-295-8230. Until next time, this is Jamie Callahan.