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| Published 29 May 2022. |
I have been reading widely about aging since 2010.
A few books take a comprehensive view of the aging process, titles that I often recommend to people who are not gerontologists so that they can get The Big Picture.
I have found another title to add to my list of must reads about aging.
Mario D. Garrett, PhD has written a jeremiad of sorts about the many institutions that prey on older adults, capitalizing on the vulnerability many face in late life.
To create a context, I suggest readers first watch the 2020 film, I Care A Lot, directed by J. Blakeson and starring Rosamund Pike. I watched the film the year it was released and found it interesting as an exaggeration, a dramatization of the state of eldercare in the 21st Century.
Two years after viewing that film, Garrett's book has me rethinking I Care a Lot as being less a niche genre black satirical comedy thriller and more from the genre "based on true events." I had already planned on mentioning this film in my review before I saw that Garrett references I Care A Lot (2020) himself.
Watch the film, but if you going to choose one, read Garrett's book.
Critical Age Theory: Profiteering From the Final Stages of Life (2022) describes the ways for-profit companies and even the government and non-profits fail older adults when they are the most frail of mind, body, and finances.
I teach college courses on aging (gerontology), and this book would work well to alert my students to the unethical practices that are inherent in the system and challenging for individuals to change at their level.
The chapters are as follows (with a staccato summary/response for each chapter).
(Here is my Goodreads review, which I wrote chapter-by-chapter as I read. It's grittier than my blog review.)
Introduction: This sets the tone with Garrett as the lone voice in the wilderness, asking people to look at the larger systems controlling aging and to spend less time blaming elders and their family caregivers and less time wagging fingers at those paid to offer support directly to older adults. The problem goes higher up, and it goes deep into the structures of 21st century power structures. Here is one example that gestures to system rather than the individual as the root problem:
"We make it easy for . . . commercial practices to continue as we tend to see only individuals that commit fraud or harm. As with elder abuse, we personalize the interaction. however, in most cases, the institutional make up--what we euphemistically refer to as their business model, or business culture--determines how individual workers behave within an agency. Since the business model dictates workers' hours, duties, and responsibilities, it is logical to examine the business model being used" (9).
(I do not remember Garrett using the word "hegemony," but academics use this--and other words--to study the network of power that is pervasive and difficult to combat.)
1. Drugs: Drugs are often improperly prescribed and almost always overpriced.
*Each chapter ends with a "Playbook" that unearths the game plan that seems to drive decisions based on profitability over patient-centered / customer-centered / client-centered service. One of the items from the "Playbook" on the chapter "Drugs" is this: "Price medications on the basis of what people can afford rather than what they cost to develop and manufacture" (37).
