After watching my father’s struggle in a system that values profit over compassion, I wonder: how much longer will we accept a future where most of us lose our sense of human worth in old age?

The last time I visited my father, I walked into his $11,000-a-month room in a posh assisted living residence and found him curled up on the floor. My sister Amy and I knelt down, touched him, and asked if he was okay.

“I don’t know,” mumbled Dad, 96, a retired physician and lifelong outdoorsman. “I fell about 20 minutes ago and no one has come.”