Congress, pass this dementia care bill for me, my wife and millions like us

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Pass this bill for me, my wife and millions like us

The writer is a retired Duke University School of Medicine professor.

My wife has frontotemporal dementia, is incontinent, does not speak, takes two hours to eat, and has difficulty walking. Previously, she was the vice president of a major pharmaceutical company. I know she will deteriorate further, and my heart is breaking.

I am pleading that N.C. senators and U.S. House members support passage of the Comprehensive Care for Alzheimer’s Act. This legislation funds a government study to analyze whether a coordinated dementia care model is effective, humane and saves money.

It would allow the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to test a dementia care management model that provides comprehensive care to Medicare beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s or related dementia. It would streamline today’s complicated healthcare maze for those living with dementia and for their caregivers.

As the former dean of the University of California-Davis School of Medicine and CEO of its health system, I had total access to healthcare but still I found the challenge of managing my wife’s illness devastating. Imagine a single, working mother caring for an aging parent, or single person living alone. Care in those situations is impossible because support services are not coordinated.

We need to help patients and caregivers survive their challenges — today — by developing and fully funding an infrastructure that helps them.

In 25 years, 15 million Americans will suffer with dementia, affecting another 30 million unpaid caregivers — at a cost of $1.1 trillion. One in every $5 of Medicare spending today is for dementia care. This tsunami of misery is here.

Ultimately the answer to dementia must come from fundamental and clinical research. We need to understand the biology of these terrible diseases that destroy our wisest individuals regardless of race and socioeconomic status and devastate their families and caregivers.

Congress must fund the additional request of $289 million for research. My ability to practice medicine, do research, and teach became impossible because of my wife’s illness. Let us combat the plague of dementia now.

Dr. Gerald Lazarus, Durham

On Confederate monuments, critical race theory

The writer is a Duke University Law School professor.

Confederate monuments are the physical embodiment of critical race theory from the perspective of a white supremacist.

In August 2021, the N.C. Senate passed House Bill 324 to ensure “dignity and nondiscrimination.” The bill went back to the N.C. House, where it was passed and was sent to the governor, who vetoed it. Among the things HB 324 would have banned from being discussed in public school are:

▪ That one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.

▪ An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of his or her race or sex.

▪ An individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex.

▪ The U.S. was created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex.

▪ The U.S. government should be violently overthrown.

▪ That particular character traits, values, privileges, or beliefs should be ascribed to a race or sex, or to an individual because of the person’s race or sex.

▪ All Americans are not created equal and are not endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

▪ Governments should deny to any person within the government’s jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.

Ironically, these are among the specific messages that Confederate monuments convey to and about Black people in North Carolina. Using Republican logic, for the dignity and equal protection of the people of the state, these monuments should be removed from the grounds of all public spaces, especially courthouse grounds, where they grew like weeds. In the future, let’s add Confederate monuments to our discussion of critical race theory.

James E. Coleman Jr., Durham