| Boomers to bring new demands |
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| The federal government made it official Thursday: Baby boomers will begin retiring at a rate of 8,000 a day within the next five years, literally changing the face of America. The information is part of a report titled "65+ in the United States: 2005." "The face of America is changing. We are getting older," said Louis Kincannon, director of the U.S. Census. "The baby boomers promise to further redefine what it means to get older." The study confirmed that boomers will be healthier, wealthier and wiser. They will live longer and remain more active. "Our older population of tomorrow is going to look very different than our older population of today," said Victoria Velkoff, chief of aging studies for the Census Bureau. "Our older population is just going to continue to get larger and larger as the baby boomers age." And they will demand better roads, better health care and more entertainment from the Sunshine State than their predecessors. MAKING A BEELINE TO FLORIDA Florida is the retirement capital of the nation with 17.6 percent of the population older than 65. Charlotte County, in fact, has the highest percentage of that population of any county in the country. Lee County is 10th. Florida has the top 10 counties in the nation in percentage of older citizens and three of the top 10 counties with the most people older than 65. "Traditionally, it has been Florida, and Florida is still at the top of the list," said Wan He, a demographer with the U.S. Census Bureau. The influx is expected to put enormous demand on the health-care system, challenge employers to attract and retain an older work force and add thousands of motorists to already-congested roadways in Southwest Florida. By 2030 one in five people in the United States will be of retirement age, doubling the current number to 72 million. BRACING FOR THE BOOM Locally, health-care professionals are facing three strikes: a massive influx of older adults with health care needs; inadequate Medicare reimbursement; and a medical staff dominated by boomers whose pending retirement will only exacerbate the critical shortage of medical professionals. "Seniors use health care two times as frequently as non-seniors," said Jim Nathan, president and CEO of Lee Memorial Health System. "Services are two times as intense. They stay twice as long. "It creates a massive need for capital to build more facilities and technology to keep up with aging growth and creates a massive need for staff and physicians," he said. "Today, we rely on the baby boomer generation to be providers of health care and there is not a work force sufficiently large enough to meet the needs of the aging population." There already is a shortage of gerontologists, those specializing in caring for older people, said Dr. H. Lee Adkins, who added 27,000 of the specialists are needed across the country. "I think things are going to be worse than people expect," Adkins said. Hospitals are keeping an eye on aging staff and looking at where the demand and shortages likely are to occur, said Marti Van Veen, spokeswoman for Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center and Gulf Coast Hospital.
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"We currently have many recruitment searches in place to ensure there will be enough physicians to care for our community," she said. "Our hospitals are taking steps today to prepare us for future demand." ECONOMICS Kitty Reydell, 60, moved to Fort Myers from Indiana five years ago. She loves her job in data entry and accounting for a local law firm. That's good because she is going to have to rely on it for the foreseeable future. "I am very concerned," Reydell said of retirement. "I'm going to have to work until they absolutely, literally, throw me out of there." Reydell is not alone. The study found women, particularly single women, are more likely to live in poverty during retirement than older men, 13 percent compared to 7 percent. While boomer women are more likely than their predecessors to have worked full-time, men are more prepared for retirement, in part because they more often have held jobs with better benefits. Some boomers will work for fun; others out of necessity as the buying power of Social Security continues to dwindle. "You know Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program," Kincannon said. "As the number of people not working increases ... that makes it more problematic." He said companies wishing to attract older, experienced workers will need to enhance accessibility and ergonomics as well as increased lighting and print size. "(Anything) that makes it easier for the older generation to work, because we need the expertise," Kincannon said. Reydell said some closest to retirement did not have access to 401K savings plans and other retirement accounts in time to make a big difference in retirement. "It basically kind of came around too late for me," she said. "I'm not going to rely on the money I'm making now. Since I live on all of it and then some, I've come to the realization I'm really going to have to make some drastic changes in the way I live now." CONGESTION Reydell's coworker, Joan Adams, 68, just retired, though she might have continued to work part-time without her husband's income. The influx of retirees is going to make bad traffic worse. Her Cape Coral house is for sale, and she has thought about retiring to a less congested part of the state. "It's so bad now — the traffic and all the road work. It's horrendous," Adams said. They should have six lanes of Interstate 75 to use to get there, said Debbie Tower, spokeswoman for Florida Department of Transportation . Widening could begin in about a year. With motorists already grumbling about the traffic, roadwork planned in the next 20 years might not be enough to relieve congestion. "Southwest Florida, in particular, is routinely identified as one of the fastest-growing areas in the country," Tower said. "We're trying to plan ahead and stay ahead. It is a challenge to provide transportation improvements to keep up with the growth." |