A couple of days ago one of our members, Kathy Bakkenist, was making her tireless rounds on Capitol Hill for bipartisan bills entitled, "Consortium on the Impact of Technology and Aging Health Services." The bills, S. 3739 and H.R. 5906, would establish a Congressionally-sanctioned, broad-based group of experts to tackle the barriers to bringing technology to aging services and to present solutions to those barriers.

During one meeting, a young staffer asked her, "Why should we care about this bill?" I don't know about you, but that response made me mad. Either this staffer was arrogant or ignorant, I don't know. His boss represents a district with a growing aging population and a number of AAHSA members in it. After some gentle explanation of how important this bill is to the Congressman's older voters and some reminders about his boss' previous support of AAHSA initiatives, the young staffer's attitude mellowed.

But the question is important: why should we care about this?

Here's why: we have the technology in this country to make my cell phone ringer sound like my dog's bark but we don't have technologies to help people stay in their own homes, improve their quality of life and save money on their health care. Technology can help us keep track of our kids through their cell phones, but we can't produce an electronic medical record that helps Alzheimer's patients navigate our convoluted health care system. To me, that borders on insanity.

Because of red tape, fear of lawsuits and lack of incentives, technologies that have transformed how people work in offices and stay connected with their families have not been translated to meet the needs of our fast-growing aging population.

Those of you who have seen our vision video, "Imagine – the Future of Aging" know that the technology-supported world in which Ernesto lives is absolutely captivating. He sets his terms, get the services he needs and uses technology to do what's most important to him: being connected to family and friends.

CAST, your Center for Aging Services Technologies, has developed an advocacy agenda focused on making Ernesto's vision a reality. These bills are the first step toward achieving this important goal. The consortium that will be created will bring the right people to the table to make sure we harness technology's potential to transform the aging experience.

AAHSA is not in the technology business, we will not profit from these bills' passage. We will, however, help to create a future of aging services with technology as an accelerator of major longstanding quality care, quality of life and cost issues. And that's priceless.

We all need to care about this bill. It is urgent that you contact Congress today. Tell the young, perhaps naïve, staffers in your Congressman and Senators' offices why they should care about this bill. We have a responsibility to make sure policy makers understand how technology can benefit everyone's family. Our country is aging, our policy makers are aging and even that young Congressional staffer is aging. We can't wait for Congress to come around to supporting the things we value. I'm mad about this and you should be too. We can't afford not to care.

William L. Minnix, Jr., D.Min.
President and CEO

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