RAGE rhymes easy with age.

But it’s the young who wear it like a ring in the nose as they snort against the idiocy that reeks of seniority. Look and listen who are sneezing sulfur as the debate over health care whips up ashes in America’s air.

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“It's about the millions of uninsured, recently graduated young people saddled with loans we can't imagine paying off, who are sick and tired of living in an abyss created by our elders' stupidity,” grumbled a letter-writer to the editor of Time Magazine recently. “Step aside, grandma. We want health care and we want it now."

Ah, the breathtaking tantrums of brats! Scoffing at what he calls the "me generation," the controversial talk show host Glenn Beck is convinced: “We are raising a generation of would-be killers.” According to him, “Radicals will seize this opportunity. They always go for the young crowd and the blame the problems of the world on those old people."

Does that explain the ease with which many Americans would rather keep their pet dogs than their doddering folks, why they’re better off in homes for the aged? Small wonder, there’s no short-changing the business of geriatric care.

“The Senior Boom Is Coming,” heralds the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), noting the increase of the average lifespan. No blaring of trumpets, however, as a crisis looms over the remains of the Baby Boom generation.

“Medical students continue to receive inadequate training in geriatric medicine,” frets AMSA, citing the aging population vis-à-vis the shortage of resources as the greatest challenge to US health care in the 21st century.

If the world’s most powerful nation is grim about the future, what are we to expect in our neck of the woods in the Third World where survival is nothing short of a miracle?

“Considering the frail nature yet extraordinary blessing of life these aged citizens have, there beckons a need, as a fealty to those whose courage have enriched our very history, to distinguish this special group,” explains Councilor Edgardo Labella. In his proposal to City Hall, he wishes for City Hall “to set aside funds to award residents who live to be 100 years old.”

For the oldies, that’s some goodies of consolation where essential services are better left to the wild imaginings of the young. Who, by the way, are prone to premature wrinkles the more they deal with living with criminality in the streets and the less assured they are about ripening into their own fruitful season as long as opportunities loom like Cebu’s denuded mountains.

Once the ordinance sees the light of day, centenarians in the city would have no more need to wait for election time so they could avail themselves of a candidate’s free medicines or coffin.

If they’re not excited about that prospect, they’d do well to remember Thoreau’s ho-hum ode: “None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” This shiny thing, after all, is fast becoming extinct.

Especially in a lot of places where growing up, more than growing old, is getting optional. Where, all too often, an ironic mixture of immaturity and senility often brews public policies best flushed down the toilet. Where Picasso’s regret is best etched, if it can only draw lessons for us too late, on our common epitaph: “It takes a long time to become young.”

(geemyko@gmail.com)