Another year will pass without a COLA hike for senior citizens. Qualifying elderly didn’t get one for 2010, nor will they for 2011. And predictions are that next yr, 2012, will only see a minuscule raise for seniors; but don’t go splurging on that weekend cruise just yet. Medicare costs are also seen to escalate and most likely render any cost of living increase moot.

By government estimate, there are about 45 million people currently on Medicare or Social Security, which means almost 6 percent of citizens–mostly elderly–will be affected.

The only upside to not receiving a COLA increase from the Government is that Uncle Sam isn’t able to go further and give them pay cuts. You cant get less than what you’re owed, which is due to the legal concept of “hold harmless.”

Now, if Uncle Sam could shape up and ensure that those who have passed away are not still drawing checks in the afterlife, that would help a little; no scheme is fool-proof and there are a lot of crooks out there trying to swindle everyone, including Social Security and Medicare.

Times are tight. We all know that. But you can’t help but feel for those who just barely manage to make it through the first of the month on their minuscule Social Security benefit checks, and who now have to confront another year without a COLA step up. Its a bumpy road to travel, and it seems to get worse every day, especially for the elderly who are disproportionately affected.

Chiya Yamane shuffles down the hall of the evacuation center, an old lady seeking refuge in a children’s school.

She is wearing an oversized sweater, her shoulders hunched against the late winter chill that penetrates the Miyako Elementary School where she was brought after the March 11 tsunami tore through her home. She remembers hearing the tsunami warning; then the desperate attempt to get away.

“But I’m 84,” Yamane said. “And very slow.”

It was a rescue worker who appeared in time to carry her on his back, up the mountainside to higher ground and safety. “A great, great blessing,” she says, though she knows too that being saved meant her ordeal was just beginning.

Japan is an aging society, a country characterized by a low birthrate and long life spans. More than 1 in 5 Japanese is over 65 — roughly double U.S. levels — with the ratio closer to 1 in 3 in rural areas.

But if those statistics dictate that a high number of the dead from this tragedy must be elderly, so too must be the survivors, now struggling to get essential medicines, stay warm against the cold, find their pets and salvage waterlogged mementos.

Japanese soldiers found 128 elderly people abandoned by medical staff at a hospital six miles from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Most were comatose and 14 died shortly after.

Eleven more reportedly froze to death at a retirement home in Kesennuma six days after several dozen of their fellow residents were killed by the tsunami. Morimitsu Inawashida, the facility’s owner, characterized those who survived as “highly stressed.”

Nowhere is Japan aging more visibly than in the rural, northern prefectures struck by the quake. This part of the country is characterized by towns and villages now the preserve of the elderly, many of their children gone to live and work in Tokyo and other big cities, leaving them without the family support that was an anchor of traditional Japanese society.

“I’ve lived here 60 years and you’re seeing fewer families all living together,” said Yamane, whose son lives in Tokyo and married daughter works several miles away. “And without jobs, more young people are moving away.”

Even farming has become an elderly profession in many cases. Yaegashi Takashi, 74, said his house had survived the quake and its aftermath, but his tractor was lost, a huge blow. He only heard from his children, living in Tokyo, a week after the earthquake.

“They were worried about me,” he said. “Without my tractor, I can’t farm. There’s no insurance for it.”

In the absence of sons and daughters, much of the care has been meted out to caregivers outside the family who themselves are getting on in years, a phenomenon known as rorokaigo.

Evidence of this senior tragedy could be seen in those who had retreated to the Miyako school where Yamane sought shelter. More than half appeared to be in the 60s-to-80s range. This is a generation that grew up in the devastation of postwar Japan, saw the country modernize into a place synonymous with high-tech comfort and now see their lives bookended by disaster.

“I can’t really compare this to World War II,” said Kiyoshi Kikuchi, 80. “Both are hard times, but I never saw my house so damaged like this during the war.”

Until a few years ago, Kikuchi was a community safety official responsible for looking out for his elderly neighbors. Now he stood outside his family-run shoe store using a flat shovel to scrape mud off a glass door that had been pulled from its hinges.

“This work is very hard,” he said, wearing a white towel around his neck while shifting broken furniture. “My son moved away. Women can’t do it. So it’s up to me.”

There is much talk here of the toughness of the older generation. Having spent a childhood amid postwar deprivation, they see themselves as resilient, self-sufficient, not soft like today’s youth with their electronic gadgets.

But Japan’s elderly are catered to as well. Electronics companies are developing robots that talk to and do chores for them, including Riba, an electronic nurse that lifts people out of bed. Car companies have crafted large-print dashboards and easy-exit swivel seats, while toilet-maker Toto is working on medical commodes that transmit daily urine and stool analysis data from isolated communities to distant medical centers. A tea kettle with wireless technology can warn distant offspring if a parent doesn’t use it every morning, a warning to call in.

And yet there are signs of strength. Many of the elderly leave shelters during the day to clean and search for precious items, returning to the evacuation centers at night. Most houses that are still standing have a pile of possessions out front, seen in Japan not as an invitation to steal but a pragmatic way to start digging out. Bulldozers have pushed debris into the side streets to clear the main avenues, leaving piles up to 10 feet high. Between them, in the ruins, elderly women can be seen pushing shopping carts with a few possessions.

The loss of personal treasures is keenly felt. Miura Masao, 75, a painter and owner of the Art Space M gallery in Miyako, stood in a mess of ruined paintings of landscape scenes, though some hung just above the 5-foot-high water mark, high enough to survive unscathed.

“Everyone in the family is fine, but perhaps most difficult for me is the loss of all the photos, mementos, memories,” he said. “Everything’s ruined. And when I saw my studio, I was panicked. I still don’t know how many paintings have been lost.”

Chieko Yamanaka, 74, said she missed the comfort of a bath.

But the closer to the radiation-spewing Fukushima nuclear reactors, the worse the troubles got.

The nation got a glimpse of the severity when Yoshimitsu Inomata, head of Aozorakai Omachi Hospital 16 miles from the nuclear complex, told the national TV network that most of the staff had fled, there was no medicine or IV drips left, and little food remained. Many of the elderly patients are unable to digest emergency rations of canned bread, he said. And no one wanted to enter the radiation-affected zone to help.

“It’s a nightmare,” Inomata said. “We don’t even need people with special skills. Anyone who can get here and serve food or change a diaper would be great.”

The patients were later evacuated.

Now the elderly contemplate their future. Painter Masao says he will rebuild his studio, perhaps “even start the painting school I’ve always wanted to.”

Yamane worried about her 86-year-old husband, who is in a wheelchair and staying at a nearby care home. There was joy this day that someone had been able to replace his medicine that had been swept away by the water.

But there was melancholy too, as Yamane fingered a pair of mud-caked glasses in a plastic bag that her daughter had retrieved from the debris of their home. Yamane has returned to see the house as well.

“I’m so shocked and stressed to see the house,” she said. “Everything becomes more difficult when you get old.

“On the other hand, if you look around at all the suffering, you’ll find there’s always someone worse off.”

So when recent tests showed she needed a heart valve replacement, she didn’t hesitate to sign up for surgery.

“I didn’t know if I’d come out of it because of my age, but somehow there is a strength lurking in me to keep on going,” she said at her apartment in Manhattan’s Peter Cooper Village.

Calvert is among a growing number of New Yorkers over 90 having surgery – a trend doctors say has forced them to make changes in how they operate.

Two decades ago, almost no one in their 90s had surgery in New York, local surgeons say. Now, about 5% of their surgical patients are over 90.

“In the past, people didn’t get old enough that they needed surgery in their 90s because they died of other diseases,” said Aubrey Galloway, chairman of cardiothoracic surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center.

For Morris Greenberg, 91, of Glendale, Queens, delaying a hernia operation meant living in pain.

“It was bothering me, and I didn’t want to be extra-careful about everything I did,” he said.

He decided to go under the knife in September at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, where Dr. Martin Karpeh used local anesthesia to avoid a higher risk of infection.

“If they’ve lived to 90, they are in fairly decent health, so the probability of living another 10 years is reasonable,” Karpeh said.

At New York Presbyterian, instead of opening the chest of their oldest patients for heart surgery, doctors often rely on a less invasive procedure that involves inserting a catheter through a small incision to replace valves.

“It’s a whole new arena of therapy for this group of patients,” said Karl Krieger, vice chairman of the department of cardiothoracic surgery, who recently operated on a 98-year-old.

“We know 100-year-olds that will require surgery in the next year or two. This might be an option for them,” he said.

The over-85 set is the fastest-growing segment of the city’s population, so the spike in surgery isn’t likely to fade away soon, according to Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy at the Council of Senior Centers and Services.

“We are watching such a longevity boom, so we are going to see even more people coming into the medical system in their 90s looking for surgery,” she predicts.

Japan’s top telecom company is developing a simple wristwatch-like device to monitor the well-being of the elderly, part of a growing effort to improve care of the old in a nation whose population is aging faster than anywhere else.

The device, worn like a watch, has a built-in camera, microphone and accelerometer, which measure the pace and direction of hand movements to discern what wearers are doing — from brushing their teeth to vacuuming or making coffee.

In a demonstration at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.’s research facility, the test subject’s movements were collected as data that popped up as lines on a graph — with each kind of activity showing up as different patterns of lines. Using this technology, what an elderly person is doing during each hour of the day can be shown on a chart.

The prototype was connected to a personal computer for the demonstration, but researchers said such data could also be relayed by wireless or stored in a memory card to be looked at later.

Plans for commercial use are still undecided. But similar sensors are being tested around the world as tools for elderly care.

In the U.S., the Institute on Aging at the University of Virginia has been carrying out studies in practical applications of what it calls “body area sensor networks” to promote senior independent living.

What’s important is that wearable sensors be easy to use, unobtrusive, ergonomic and even stylish, according to the institute, based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Costs, safety and privacy issues are also key.

Despite the potential for such technology in Japan, a nation filled with electronics and technology companies, NTT President Satoshi Miura said Japan is likely falling behind global rivals in promoting practical uses.

Worries are growing the Japanese government has not been as generous with funding and other support to allow the technology to grow into a real business, despite the fact that Japan is among the world’s most advanced in the proliferation of broadband.

More than 90 percent of Japan’s households are equipped with either optic fibers or fast-speed mobile connections.

“But how to use the technology is the other side of the story,” Miura said in a presentation. “We will do our best in the private sector, but I hope the government will help.”

Nintendo Co.’s Wii game-console remote-controller is one exception of such sensors becoming a huge business success. But that’s video-game entertainment, not social welfare.

George Demiris, associate professor at the , in Seattle, says technology for the elderly is complex, requiring more than just coming up with sophisticated technology.

Getting too much data, for instance, could simply burden already overworked health care professionals, and overly relying on technology could even make the elderly miserable, reducing opportunities for them to interact with real people, he said.

“Having more data alone does not mean we will have better care for older adults,” Demiris said in an e-mail.

“We can have the most sophisticated technology in place, but if the response at the other end is not designed to address what the data show in a timely and efficient way, the technology itself is not useful,” he said.

Medication errors in homes for the elderly are much less likely to occur if residents are given pills or capsules dispensed from a monitored dosage system, finds a new British study.

A monitored dosage system is a tray or cassette with compartments for one or more doses for a particular day or a given time. They’re designed to simplify drug rounds for care-home staff and reduce the risk of medication errors.

The study included 233 residents in 55 homes for the elderly in the United Kingdom. Pills and capsules in dispensers accounted for 53 percent of medicines given to the residents, followed by pills not in dispensers (29 percent), medicines in liquid form (9 percent) and medicines in inhalers (4 percent). The remainder were injectables, creams and eye drops.

Compared with a pill/capsule from a dispenser, mistakes were two times more likely to occur with a pill/capsule not in a dispenser; four times more likely with a liquid medicine; 19 times more likely with a cream, injection or eye drop; and more than 33 times more likely with an inhaler, according to the report.

David Phillip Alldred, of the Academic Unit of Medicines Management, School of Healthcare at the University of Leeds, and colleagues published their findings online Feb. 8 in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety.

The researchers noted in a journal news release that seniors are already at increased risk for drug errors and subsequent consequences because they often take several types of medicines and metabolize drugs differently than younger people.

“In-home support services” is a state program that pays caretakers or relatives to tend to sick, disabled or elderly Californians who live at home. The thinking is that’s better and cheaper than nursing home care. There’s also a strong feeling in Sacramento that some people in that program waste or scam money.

Governor Brown is proposing to cut in-home support services by 8 percent. But the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research says in a new report that the people who need in-home care will cut back on medicine or food – anything so they can keep the care and live at home.

The Center also predicts that as the sick, disabled and elderly people in California cut back, they’ll end up in emergency rooms or in hospitals – and taxpayers will end up paying for their care anyway. That idea could catch on. A number of state lawmakers from both parties now say a big cut in in-home support services is a bad idea.

A study of antibodies from people infected with H1N1 swine flu adds proof that scientists are closing in on a “universal” flu shot that could neutralize many types of flu strains, including H1N1 swine flu and H5N1 bird flu, U.S. researchers said Monday.

They said people who were infected in the H1N1 pandemic developed an unusual immune response, making antibodies that could protect them from all the seasonal H1N1 flu strains from the last decade, the deadly “Spanish flu” strain from 1918 and even a strain of the H5N1 avian flu.

“It says that a universal influenza vaccine is really possible,” said Patrick Wilson of the University of Chicago, who worked on the paper which was published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Many teams are working on a “universal” flu shot that could protect people from all flu strains for decades or even life.

It’s been a long, strange trip from Woodstock to the nursing home, but baby boomers are getting there — and soon.

The first boomers turn 65 this year and can start enrolling in Medicare this month, setting a ball in motion that will probably put further strain on an already overburdened system.

For starters, these seniors are arriving at Medicare’s door with more health problems and more expectations than their parents and other generations before them.

A century ago, people died mostly from infectious diseases. Today, they’re dying of chronic, lingering conditions such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease, diabetes and cancer, said Dr. Stephen G. Jones, director of the Center for Healthy Aging at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Conn.

Today’s elders are also used to demanding and getting attention. The aging golfer with a trick knee today goes looking for a knee replacement rather than suffering in silence off the links.

“We’re talking 75 million people classified as baby boomers [who will] consume health-care services much more than their parents,” said Dr. Bruce Koeppen, founding dean of Quinnipiac University School of Medicine in Hamden, Conn. “It’s the ‘Me Generation.’ By their very nature, they will consume more health services.”

“This will potentially put a huge strain on the system across the board — economically, socially, politically, almost every sphere you can imagine,” Jones added.

And who is going to take care of this momentous generation? Hard to say, given a shrinking pool of qualified geriatricians and primary care physicians.

“There are not enough people trained to take care of an entire aging population,” said Alan B. Stevens, chairman of gerontology at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Temple.

According to Koeppen, 40 percent of physicians are themselves approaching retirement and Medicare-eligible status.

“The real crisis is [whether we are] going to have adequate health-care services,” he said. Quinnipiac is one of a legion of new medical schools cropping up to try to stem the impending crisis.

Add to this the fact that the Affordable Care Act, the health-care reform legislation enacted in 2010, will allow previously uninsured people who were not receiving primary care to start using primary care services, Stevens said.

Part of the problem, observers say, stems from low payment rates for geriatricians and primary care physicians.

“In terms of reimbursement, geriatrics is one of the lowest-paying fields,” Jones said. “Think about the amount of time a doctor spends with an 88-year-old patient. You have 88 years of history to go through, 16 medications to refill. It takes a long time to see a geriatric patient so the burden on the doctors is pretty severe, and reimbursement is nil, so virtually no one is going into geriatrics these days.”

According to the American Geriatrics Society, there are now 7,029 board-certified geriatricians in the United States — or one for every 2,699 Americans aged 75 and older. But with the swelling in the elderly population, the ratio is expected to drop to one geriatrician per 5,549 seniors by 2030.

The same holds true for primary care physicians, another field experiencing a shortage, Stevens said.

“Many providers, especially those in small private practices, don’t take Medicare patients because it’s not in their financial best interest to do that,” he said.

But baby boomers as a whole have shown they think it’s in their best interest to beef up the medical system, especially as it relates to older adults.

“The baby boomers have tremendous political clout, social clout and want things addressed as they move into this group,” Jones said.

Possibly the most famous fictional senior citizen in the world, Santa Claus, also known as St. Nick, Kris Kringle and Father Christmas, is known across the globe as a jolly fat bearded man sporting a red suit trimmed with white fur. On Christmas Eve Santa Claus enters the home of good children, usually via the chimney, bearing gifts of toys that his elves have been busy making all year long. Parents know Santa Claus as a symbol of the magic and joy of childhood, if not as a strain on their pocketbooks!

Despite the well-known attributes of the man named Santa Claus, he actually has a long, rich history. The western idea of Santa Claus is a combination of the European traditions of Kris Kringle, Father Christmas and the Christian Saint Nicholas.

Kris Kringle derived from the German “Christkindl”. Although Kris Kringle is used interchangeably with Santa Claus in the U.S., the traditional Kris Kringle is very different from the modern idea of Santa Claus.

Like Chris Kringle, Father Christmas shares some attributes with Santa Claus. Father Christmas was a traditional figure during the Pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice. Instead of bringing gifts to homes, Father Christmas also known as Old Man Winter, would travel from home to home where the people would offer him food and drink. In return he would grant them the blessings of a kind winter.

During the 1800s, the American version of Santa Claus spread to Britain where Father Christmas assimilated Santa’s attributes. To this day, Father Christmas serves as Britain’s version of Santa Claus. Like Chris Kringle, Father Christmas is used interchangeably with Santa Claus in the United States.

St. Nicholas was the biggest influence on the Santa Claus we know today. St. Nicholas , who lost his family during a plague, rid himself of all his material possessions and set out to help the poor, the infirm, or anyone else who was suffering. Word of his generosity and kindness spread and he quickly earned the reputation of a gift giver and saint. The historical St. Nicholas died in December of 335 C.E. As often happens, stories of his good deeds became grander and grander and it is difficult to determine fact from fiction.

One popular story of St. Nicholas describes how he secretly left bags of gold to three poor women who had no dowries. In St. Nick’s time, a father could only secure the marriage of his daughters by providing a dowry to her would-be husband. If a father could not afford a dowry, his daughters would likely be sold into slavery. In order to prevent this, St. Nicholas threw the bags of gold through a window which landed in stockings left by the fire to dry. News of this deed resulted in children leaving their stockings out for St. Nicholas to fill with goodies.

In Europe the legend of Santa Claus has been celebrated for centuries with each country having their own traditions surrounding him. Santa Claus was very popular in the middle ages and had many churches built out of devotion for him. Santa Claus was also highly esteemed by the Vikings and was considered the patron saint of ships. In the 8th century C.E., the Vikings helped to spread the good name of Santa Claus in their travels. Santa Claus was introduced to North America by Dutch settlers who new St. Nicholas as Sint Klaas.

The three elderly men braving the bitter cold to mark the 69th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack on Tuesday clearly illustrated how time has ravaged the ranks of the survivors.

“It’s a very sad thing,” said Clark Simmons, 89, of Brooklyn, as he stood shivering on the deck of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum with two other New Yorkers who lived through the attack. “I remember when we used to have 40 to 50 survivors.”

Simmons was 20 when the Japanese launched the surprise attack that plunged the U.S. into World War II. He said his memories of Dec. 7, 1941, have not faded.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Simmons, who was aboard the USS Utah when his ship was sunk. “All I knew is we were under attack. I was swimming for my life.”

Simmons, who was wounded in the head and leg by bullets and shrapnel, said “it’s something we weren’t prepared for.”

“People compare it to 9/11,” he said. “I saw both. There’s really no comparison. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

Aaron Chabin, 87, of Bayside, Queens, said he was reading a newspaper in his Army barracks when the Japanese struck.

“I ran down to get my weapon,” he said. “We just did what we were supposed to do. We didn’t know what it was.”

Daniel Fruchter, who is 92, said he was eating breakfast when bombs began hitting the ground just 50 feet from him – and he survived only because they were duds.

“Otherwise I would not be here,” said Fruchter, of Eastchester.

While he was unscathed, the Army vet said everything else around him was “one large massive flame and fire.”

“We were not prepared for an attack,” he said.

Fruchter said Pearl Harbor should remain a reminder that America needs to be vigilant about threats from abroad.

“Remember Pearl Harbor,” he said. “Keep America alert.”