Recently, in the last year, the affairs of seniors have come to the forefront of the public consciousness. Their situation, in many instances, is cause for serious concern by this community. Here are some aspects of that concern.

Most of us during our adult years have been to see our family doctor and have received medication as part of our treatment. We have paid for that medication mostly with the assistance of medical insurance.

We usually do this without a single thought as to the actual cost of this medication because of the efficient manner in which our insurance companies have paid for it on our behalf.

Then comes the day when you reach 65 years of age and your health insurance ceases because insurance companies know that the bulk of your health care costs are now going to become more the norm as you grow older.

Your healthcare costs may become excessively expensive as high blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks and all the other related ?older age? diseases come to the forefront of your existence.

This, after all, is where the insurance companies spend the majority of their monies, about 80 percent, for those seniors who are still insured.

So what happens now? You have no medical insurance to assist with your healthcare costs. As an older citizen you still need your medication ? probably even more now than ever before.

Government has provided $1,000 per year for those older citizens who could not otherwise afford their medication.

This is a step in the right direction but not nearly enough for some people. I have a friend who has now run out of her $1,000 because of the expense of the medications she is taking. However, this medication is vital for her if she is to still lead a reasonable life without pain and disability.

Her last prescription cost $288 and she had to leave it at the pharmacy. She simply did not have the money to cover it and will not have it for the rest of this year! This condemns her to a future miserable existence as her disease progresses!

The pharmacists will often look medication up and find a possible alternative generic medication. If one is available the cost can be considerably reduced and the drug usually performs as well as the regular medication.

Hopefully, the pharmacist will take the age of their customer into account when dispensing the prescription and perhaps contact the doctor with a generic suggestion in order to lower the costs for the customer.

The ?senior customer? should also become proactive and ask the Pharmacist to look up the possibility of a generic drug. I have heard on good authority, that the pharmacies would rather do business with cheaper drugs and sell more of them and dispense less of the expensive drugs.

Then there?s another problem. Bermuda has only one practising geriatrician. This doctor works full time only for the hospital. Our senior population is growing in leaps and bounds.

I wonder if all of our family practitioners have had training in geriatric medicine? This would be the ideal situation in the light of the statistics. Until then, it may well be time for Bermuda to have another practising geriatrician working out in the community.

This is a special training for the healthcare and welfare of older citizens. It is a science of its own. There are 2,832 Senior Citizens who have disabling health conditions living in Bermuda, according to the 2000 Census ? that?s more than one third of our total Seniors.

Whilst many doctors will see and examine these older patients promptly, they are often not given top priority. An elderly gentleman was recently admitted to the hospital, having fallen. His relatives waited for two days before he was seen by the family doctor.

Seniors frequently report that they are dealt with in a different manner than when they were younger. So what is going on here? Is it a time factor ? having to spend more time with these elderly patients against juggling the time with their younger clientele?

Does the ability to pay make the difference? Or is it perhaps combined with a lack of eldercare training?

Plans for eldercare by the government authorities and what the Seniors will actually accept for themselves can be diametrically opposed, so what this country urgently needs is a proper revision of the healthcare for seniors on every level with a national plan being implemented.

I understand that Dr. John Cann, Chief Medical Officer, has a committee working on this problem ? so let?s hope that their words may be translated into action within the foreseeable future and not just gather dust on the shelves, once the exercise is over.

Hopefully when the ?Seniors? data is examined by the Fordham University Group, and is reported to become public by September, we can move forward with a real and workable 21st Century plan, that may be followed through by all of our integrated healthcare services in this island, for the benefit of our very valuable but vulnerable Seniors.

There is no point in spending any money on this problem yet until the collected data is assessed and a plan put in hand. Let us not throw money at the situation until we have all of the true facts.

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