What LGBT Seniors Stand to Lose in ACA Repeal

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    This post originally appeared on the Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation website.

    Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) older adults face many of the same health and aging challenges other older adults face, but more pronounced. As a result, they are arguably more at risk if the incoming administration and Congress repeals the Affordable Care Act (ACA) without a replacement plan and/or makes significant and harmful changes to Medicaid and Medicare.

    LGBT older adults face unique risks within the health care system due to the standard issues facing an aging population combined with their sexual orientation or gender identity, such as:

    Aging Combined with Discrimination: Similar to the older population in general, LGBT older adults.... Read More
                 

    Rage Against the Dying of the Light: Aging from Diverse Perspectives

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    SAGE is proud to be presenting on a panel with our partners in the Diverse Elders Coalition at the upcoming LGBT Policy Conference, Creating Change, taking place this week in Chicago. The panel is entitled, “Rage Against the Dying of the Light: Aging from Diverse Perspectives.”

    The panel will discuss the specific needs that diverse elders have as they age and whether current programs, services, supports, and laws allow us to meet the needs of these growing and intersecting populations. It will delve into a variety of “isms” and phobias, from racism and ageism to transphobia and biphobia. And it will explore what we can do at the federal, state, and local levels to address the.... Read More

                 

    On National HIV/Aging Awareness Day: Alarming Statistics

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    Did you know that SAGE created the first HIV/AIDS support group for older adults? In honor of National Gay Men’s HIV Awareness Day, we’re reposting this blog from SAGE about the ways they’re working to improve the quality of life for our LGBT elders with HIV. More information is also available on the Diverse Elders Coalition’s HIV and Aging webpage.

    6a017c34619ea6970b01bb0873f5a9970d-320wiFrom establishing America’s first HIV/AIDS support group for older adults, to igniting changes in national policy, Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) leads the fight against this epidemic in the aging community.  On this National HIV/Aging Awareness Day, 50% of Americans living with HIV will.... Read More

                 

    Get Into the Act

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    This year’s theme for Older Americans Month is “Get into the Act.” Although unintended, the theme made me think of how often LGBT older adults have had to “act” throughout their lives – whether it was living in the closet growing-up in a time and place when it was not acceptable to be out – or the unfortunate number who feel compelled to go back into the closet as they get older and enter places where they feel more vulnerable and don’t feel safe or comfortable being out. The bottom line, of course, is that after spending a lifetime of trying to get out of the closet, LGBT older adults have earned the right to grow older in places where.... Read More

                 

    HIV and Aging at the 2015 ASA Conference

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    The Diverse Elders Coalition and its five coalition member organizations will all be represented at this year’s Aging in America Conference.  In the weeks leading up to the conference, we will be sharing blog posts from coalition members who are presenting or attending ASA, and what it means to them.  This week’s post comes from Aaron Tax, JD, Director of Federal Government Relations at SAGE.

     

    In approximately one week, I will be heading to the American Society on Aging convention in Chicago to present on, among other things, HIV/aging, along with HIV and aging experts Mark Brennan-Ing, Richard Gollance, Ron Swanda, and Ben de Guzman of the Diverse Elders Coalition. The.... Read More