Yikes! "old people" R Us!

I used to joke about "old people" who sit around and talk about their ailments, doctors and medications. Now I live in the Land of Halt and Lame (aka South Florida), and it seems that my contemporaries are now the new "old people" way before I would have considered myself (and them) as "old". I am participating in an event tomorrow where one of the three issues senior citizens in my town is most concerned about is health care.
In the past few years, I have lost four friends to breast cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a heart attack and the last of unknown causes, but she had been in and out of hospitals just before her death.
Of the four, I think only one had good health insurance, and I am convinced the three of them would still be alive today if they had been insured.
Today, I have a friend who is a breast cancer survivor, another is currently battling cancer, one has just been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in addition to thyroid and bladder problems, one has very bad knees and carpal tunnel in both wrists, another has fibromyalgia and serious back problems, and I was just informed by my doctor that my bone density test came back and showed advanced osteoporosis and arthritis, so now I, too, must add another doctor, a rheumatologist, to my long list of doctors and probably more medications to another long list.
Is it just that the new "old" is getting younger and younger, or is it something else? I don't remember people my age when I was younger having so many medical problems. Yes, we are a very unhealthy generation with lots of us battling obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure due to bad eating habits, lack of exercise and stress, but there has to be something else contributing to what I am seeing other than better diagnostic tools to identify disease.
I joked with one of my friends today that between the two of us, we didn't have one good working part other than our brains, if I could just remember where I put mine, but even that is no joke. The percentage of seniors who are diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer's is growing exponentially. Even tiny Switzerland has more than 100,000 people who have been identified as having dementia. That number is expected to double in the next 20 years. Their solution? They are spending millions of dollars to create a 1950’s style village (Dementiaville), which will house 150 people. Staff will be disguised as gardeners, shopkeepers and hairdressers and the village will contain all the amenities as if it were real.  What do you think? Click and see for yourself!
Dementiaville