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This is the second part of the article that appeared on the first page of the September 29 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

A decade ago, while Bayne was selling long-term care insurance, he bought a policy for himself. Because he was 40, the premium was just $1,000 a year. For a senior citizen, a policy could cost at least three times as much.

His policy covered long-term care up to $231 a day for life, whether he was at home or in an institution.

Two years ago, with Parkinson's beginning to ravage his body, he decided he needed help – not with bathing, eating and dressing (activities covered by the policy) but with transportation, cooking and shopping (not covered). As a result, he has been paying about $30,000 annually from his pocket for help.

This month, his condition steadily deteriorating, his insurer informed him that the policy would kick in. The aides who perform services that are covered also will be allowed to do the chores that are not.

"I haven't been out of bed for 15 weeks," Bayne said the other day. "I only get up for visitors."

Though he speaks of relentless pain, there are times when he can move about his apartment, slowly and with a cane, as well as type and pour coffee. But in an instant the palsy returns. The lines deepen in his face. His voice weakens.

He sees his glasses on a bookshelf behind his desk. Swollen by medication (he takes 20 pills a day), he turns his chair slowly and stares at those glasses. The hand moves toward them. The fingers shake. His mind is screaming – "Pick up the damn glasses!" – yet his body isn't listening.

He breathes deep. He meditates.

The fingers become still and he grabs the glasses.

Bayne craves company. Although he is the eldest of eight children, none of his siblings lives nearby. His mother, whom he calls every day, is a two-hour drive away. Long ago divorced, he has no children.

The person he sees most is his assistant, Bobbie Bowden, hired to help with his Web site, drive him to appointments, even dress him some days. "She basically runs my life," he said.

Raised Catholic, Bayne spent four years in his early 20s in a monastery on Mount Shasta in California and became a Buddhist priest. That period of soul-searching serves him well now, as silence and immobility overtake him.

Afterward, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a master's degree in interdisciplinary science.

One day, while out for a jog, he was hit by a car. He suffered severe head trauma - an injury that he now believes triggered the early onset of Parkinson's. During his convalescence, someone asked him whether he would like to sell insurance. It sounded like a good idea.

The more insurance he sold, and the more he saw of the travails of the elderly, the more he realized how many aspects of long-term care needed to be changed. Even as he peddled its products, he was ranting against the industry.

He called on insurers to hire a national spokesman - Clint Eastwood, maybe - and raise public awareness. He wanted them to create more flexible products, so people with cash value in their life insurance policies, for instance, could use that value to pay for home health aides or visiting nurses. And he wanted the industry to market more to baby boomers.

He pointed out the limitations of Medicare, which largely covers acute care - heart operations, for instance, and hospital stays. But for millions of Americans with chronic illnesses, there is no system to help pay staggering bills or provide care in an appropriate setting.

At the same time, he is quite certain that the "cradle-to-grave" care system he advocates will not soon materialize. No politician, he says, would risk proposing it, especially in the absence of public demand, not to mention the willingness to pay for it.

"We live in a country of takers," he complained, "not givers."

Every week, when Mr. Long-Term Care contemplates giving in to his body, or his frustration, he reads Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural speech. One line, in particular, inspires him:

"Your playing small doesn't serve the world."

With so many hours to think, Mr. Long-Term Care dreams of new things to do.

He wants to create an Institute for Mindful Aging, to tune baby boomers in to the issues of aging. He believes his generation will create new living situations for life's last stages, radically different from the nursing homes and assisted-living facilities on the landscape today. He and 13 friends want to build a communelike "lifetime transition community" in Saratoga County, N.Y., and care for one another.

But first things first: changing the nation's bad attitude.

Late last week, he submitted a formal request to the Senate Special Committee on Aging to urge all Americans to volunteer in nursing homes or elder-care centers one day in December. His letter reads:

"This will be a first opportunity for many Americans to see, without fear or reservation, beyond frailty, tremors and dementia, into the vital life force of nature in transition."

Mr. Long-Term Care promises to be there.