Senior Voice -

I am talking about the traditional pension, the kind of pension that allows you to retire with dignity. The kind of pension that pays a retirement income based on your salary and the number of years you’ve worked for the employer. This is known as a...

What are the chances that you will need services like these at some point in your life? - nursing home - assisted living - home health care - homemaker and chore services It turns out that the chances are quite good. The WA Cares Fund – a new p...

Breakthrough. As in falling through thin ice? No, this one is different, and it may be more important to seniors than any other age group. Here’s how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put it: “COVID-19 vaccines are effective. How...

Are you a senior chafing under the debt burden of a student loan? It may be perversely comforting to know that you are not alone. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), in 2015, nearly 870,000 borrowers age 65 and older were bu...

No point being a member of the “Nice Club.” We seniors are important, and there are a lot of us. There are 139,000 seniors (age 60+) in the state. We represent 19% of the total Alaska population. According to the June 2019 issue of Alaska Eco...

The other day I had a most interesting interview via Zoom with several sterling denizens of Alaska civil service, discussing several employment programs that have tons of money, no waiting lists and just might make a huge difference in your life. In...

I got vaccinated at the Alaska Airlines Center, a large sports stadium on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus. I said to Christy, my wife, “Now I know what salmon on a cannery conveyer belt feel like.” OK, not a perfect analogy because the sal...

By LAWRENCE D. WEISS For Senior Voice “Help is on the way!” -- Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I’ll amend that – not only is help on the way, but it is here now. Alaska’s initial allocatio...

The first fully approved COVID-19 vaccine will be shipped to Alaska for distribution perhaps as soon as the end of this year or early next year. Since it will be new, there won’t be much of it, so you will be assigned a priority. You will be v...

Every day I take a 45-minute walk around my neighborhood, and the last few months I have noticed something rather curious. Every week or two I walk past a car parked in the street with someone just sitting in it, often reading a book. I don’t s...

What a relief! An article about health that isn’t about the pandemic and COVID-19. That’s the good news. On the other hand, this is about seasonal influenza, “the flu.” The flu season is fall and winter, right now. Flu shots help prevent people from...

Every day Christy and I take a walk around our quiet Anchorage neighborhood. We regularly bump into other older folks out for a stroll, gardening, maybe playing with pets or grandkids on the front lawn. A sense of wellbeing infuses the air. It’s n...

The Post Office has been a fundamental United States institution since 1775. In my opinion it is vastly underappreciated. Most people do not know the scope of what it does for us – especially while we are hunkered down at home seeking safety from t...

The right to vote is preserved in Alaska for all eligible voters, even during these times of coronavirus pandemic. In other words, in order to vote, you do not have to go in person anywhere and potentially expose yourself to the coronavirus, to long...

First, some good news. Do you feel the power, senior power? Well, OK, maybe we are a bit worn down at the moment from the stress of months of lockdown and fear of COVID-19, or maybe (speaking from personal experience) it’s nap time, but this might p...

Here’s a thought experiment: What would happen if Social Security were suddenly entirely eliminated? The most immediate consequence would be that six million households across the United States would be plunged into poverty or near-poverty, i.e. b...