Category Archives: Aging and the Elderly

Veepies Resurrexit a Mortuis

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It’s been a loooong time since I last awarded the Veepies — @thevpo’s honors for exceptional stupidity in our politics. But the end of the year seems to have brought out the stupid in folks, so here we go!

First off, the Any Old Excuse In a Storm Award goes to the fearless folk who wear the uniform of the Vermont State Police. This has to do with their continuing failure to bring Daniel Banyai into custody. They allowed the original arrest warrant to expire. Now, they seem to be in no hurry to act, in spite of the fact that Banyai is defying a court order to turn himself in.

That’s bad enough, but there’s one singular item in VTDigger’s account that spurred the Veepies Board of Trustees to action. VSP spokesperson Adam Silverman helpfully told Digger that Banyai is one of roughly 5,200 people in Vermont with some kind of active warrant. I guess that’s supposed to impress me? But c’mon now, most of those warrants are not at all time-sensitive. Banyai has been defying justice and terrorizing the town of West Pawlet for years, as chronicled in a recent New Yorker piece. He ought to be on top of the VSP’s priority list, and they shouldn’t have the temerity to even suggest that he’s merely one among thousands.

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Pivoting As Fast As He Can

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This week’s Covid briefing was devoted to moving the conversation toward that long-sought-after pivot from pandemic to endemic. There were the usual rote reports of vaccination, school policy, forecasting, mask and test distribution &c., but the administration’s heart wasn’t in it.

The big tell came right at the beginning, when Gov. Phil Scott announced he had nothing to say about Covid-19. Instead, he pivoted to a brief repetition of his favorite policy points — workforce, technical training, how to spend federal Covid relief money and the surplus in the Education Fund (TL;DR: “not on public schools”).

I realize the numbers are coming down, as they inevitably had to. But isn’t it just a little bit early to start the George Aiken process of declaring victory and going home? After all, ICU admissions have yet to decline and deaths are still on the increase. Perhaps the briefest of pauses would be wise.

Of course, it’s almost certain that hospitalizations and deaths will decline within a few weeks. But let’s not get carried away. We’re returning to a decidedly unhealthy baseline. The positive view of our numbers is that we are getting back to, ahem, the bad old days of the Delta variant. That’s no cause for celebration.

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Point of Personal Privilege, Insurance Scams Edition

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There’s one thing they’re not telling you…

Seventeen years ago, my spouse and I bought long-term care insurance. We were just about AARP-qualified at the time, and we were trying to get ahead of the age-related increases outlined above. The earlier you buy a plan, the cheaper it is. (Spouse is five years younger than I, so his rate was substantially lower than mine.)

The premiums have remained constant ever since. Until now.

Sticker shock!

My carrier is seeking to raise my rate by 338.6%. Three hundred and thirty-eight point six percent! Kind of defeats the purpose of buying early, doesn’t it? If our carrier can jack rates through the roof when we get older, the only thing we accomplished by buying early is donating tens of thousands of dollars to the company’s shareholders.

The proposed increase is awaiting approval by the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation. I spoke to a very nice lady in the insurance division of DFR, who told me it’s one of the biggest rate hikes she has ever seen — on any kind of insurance.

Last week, my spouse got a rate hike notice.

Of a non-whopping 20%.

The only difference between us, as far as I can see, is that I’m 67 and my spouse is 62.

Looks a lot like age discrimination to me. Or like a carrier winnowing out its high-risk clients through targeted rate hikes.

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