My wife and I aren’t super old. We’re just old. Of course, our age limit for “super old” keeps increasing as our birthdays add up. I’ve had 77 so far. Laurel is a bit younger.
What hasn’t changed over the years is our reluctance to move from the non-easy-care house on ten rural acres that we’ve lived in since 1990. I’ve tried to explain the reasons for this in various blog posts. Here’s a sampling:
I’m 65. Where’s my “Aging Hippie” retirement community?
Musings on the problem of where to live after retiring
Why it makes sense for seniors to postpone living in a retirement community
Why we’re still postponing living in a retirement community
Us seniors are getting screwed by the lack of Medicare long-term care
In that last post, which I wrote in December 2024, I bemoaned the fact that currently continuing care facilities, a special type of retirement community, necessarily restrict membership to seniors who don’t need the services offered there. This encourages people to move to those facilities before they really want to, because by the time they want to, a facility won’t take them.
I wrote this, referring to a continuing care community where we’ve put down a deposit, just in case:
As the Capital Manor staff person reminds us every time we hear from her, “The premise of our community, is much like a long term care plan. The only way to get here is to have the ability to live independently and once a resident, you will have the guarantees of assisted living, nursing and memory care. This contractual guarantee is made to our residents only and the window of opportunity to make a move here can close quickly.”
So in order to receive the services of Capital Manor, you have to be able to live independently. The Capital Manor web site makes this clear, saying on the pages that I linked to above, “Capital Manor does not accept direct admissions into residential care, memory care, or home care.”
This indeed is very much like a long-term care insurance plan. Or other health insurance plans before the Affordable Care Act did away with pre-existing conditions not being covered. To be approved to get long-term care through Capital Manor, you can’t need long-term care at the moment.
This is exactly like the bad old days of health insurance where, if you needed insurance because you have cancer, the insurance company would exclude coverage of cancer treatment because it was a pre-existing condition.
The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was able to eliminate this policy by expanding the insurance coverage pool markedly — which enabled insurance companies to spread the risk of pre-existing conditions over a large base, the basic point of insurance.
Like most old people, we don’t want to sell our house and move to a continuum of care community like Capital Manor. We want to keep on living where we are until circumstances demand a move. But as the email from Capital Manor said, if we wait too long and either my wife or I are no longer able to live independently, then just when we need the services of Capital Manor, we won’t qualify to join Capital Manor.
So it’s a tough choice: do something we don’t want to do — sell our house and move to a less desirable residence at Capital Manor while we’re still able to pass the Capital Manor health assessment — or wait and see how long we can get by with cobbling together our own ways of “assisted living.”
This isn’t fair to us seniors.
I’m not blaming Capital Manor for their policy regarding the ability to live independently. If Capital Manor didn’t do this, then it would be similar to people not buying health insurance until they had an expensive medical problem. Insurance companies had to exclude pre-existing conditions until the Affordable Care Act required everyone to have health insurance.
I’m blaming our nation’s legislators in Washington D.C. who haven’t made long-term care an integral part of Medicare. Every person on Medicare should be able to get the same services offered by Capital Manor as part of their basic benefit package. This would allow old people to live in their homes for as long as possible, getting assistance as needed from caregivers just as Capital Manor offers for its residents.
Again, it’s crazy that in order to qualify for what amounts to private long-term care insurance, you can’t currently need the services that would be provided by that insurance. I understand that you couldn’t get fire insurance for your house if it was in the process of burning down. However, health care isn’t fire insurance; it is a necessity that should be guaranteed by the federal government, as it is in most wealthy countries, but not the United States.
It’s clear that the next four years of the Trump administration won’t bring genuine long-term care benefits to Medicare. We’ll be lucky if massive cuts aren’t made to Medicare and other entitlement programs. I just hope that when Democrats get back in power, they make this a priority.
An article in the January 26, 2026 issue of TIME magazine, “The New Old Age,” contained a passage that shows how much better it would be if our country made a serious commitment to making it possible for seniors to live in their community for as long as possible, instead of forcing them to live in some sort of institution if they have significant health problems or can’t take care of themselves in their own home.
Figuring out where everybody will live is a critical issue, and not just a logistical one. Prioritizing what seniors need—from accessible public transportation to housing options beyond senior-living facilities, for example—can keep older people healthier and involved in their communities for longer. Research has found that seniors who live in institutional settings, removed from the community, feel isolated and tend to become more lonely and depressed from their loss of independence and self-esteem, which in turn leads to poor health and higher medical costs.
Multigenerational housing arrangements are one model for building a society that is more welcoming, rather than dismissive, of older people. They have become popular in Germany, a so-called super-aged society where older populations are quickly outnumbering younger ones; the government and local communities have invested in several such facilities across the country.
In New York, an affordable housing high-rise in Queens represents a similar approach. Built in 2019 on what was once a parking lot, One Flushing includes more than 200 apartments earmarked for residents of various ages, plus perks like a rooftop garden where they can tend and harvest tomatoes, lettuce, habanero peppers, and fresh herbs. On a blistering July afternoon, Mariah Veras, 56, donned a hat and watered the dozens of rectangular growing beds with fellow members of the Garden Club. Veras had never gardened before living there; now, she shows off strings of drying garlic hanging under the building’s solar panels.
“I personally think they should make more places like One Flushing all over New York City to help the elderly,” she says. “When I get older, I don’t want to feel older. I want to still feel vibrant like I am now, and living here is helping my purpose.” At One Flushing, younger residents teach older ones how to use computers and practice conversing in English. And useful businesses have opened up on the block, including an urgent-care center and a tearoom that gets packed on weekdays with older residents catching up over hot drinks. “I like to stay here instead of a senior assisted-living place,” says Irene Ng, a 75-year-old resident who spoke through an interpreter; she is learning English from younger people in the building. “With different generations in the building, it gives me more energy.”
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