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Sanity -> RE: Health Care Bill passes the House! (11/8/2009 5:38:29 PM)
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This is not a good time to be promising deep cuts to the Medicare program or creating new entitlement programs at all.
In fact its insane.
(Bold emphasis mine):
quote:
Elderly facing tough future
A UM conference offered a grim view of aging: soaring demographics, rising costs -- and less money to pay for them.
With a flood of Baby Boomers approaching retirement, 401(k) savings in the toilet, housing values sinking and Medicare going broke, ``we are looking at a serious crisis.'' That's the assessment of Larry Polivka, an expert on aging at the Claude Pepper Foundation. He and other experts speaking at a University of Miami conference last week offered a grim picture of the next 30 years, not only with American Boomers but with the elderly worldwide.
``We are approaching a distinctive point'' in history, said Richard Suzman, a director with the National Institute of Aging. Sometime in the next several years, the world will have more persons over 65 than than under 5 -- a trend that will accelerate over time, meaning there will be comparatively fewer people in the workforce taking care of an ever-growing elderly population.
The problem will be universal. Developing countries, with few resources, will be experiencing it. So will the United States.
At a conference Saturday on Aging in the 21st Century for the Association of Health Care Journalists, speaker after speaker laid out a grim scenario.
The bad news is all based on good news: People keep living longer. One survey shows that every decade, female life expectancy has been steadily increasing by three years.
But how to pay for longer life?
Polivka said the present generation -- people who often have guaranteed pensions from employers and houses that are worth far more than they paid for them -- are in fairly good shape.
But not the Boomer generation, those born between 1946 and 1964. Polivka cited a Boston College study that used the assumption that people need 70 or 80 percent of their last wages to have an adequate retirement. Among the older Boomers, 43 percent are expected not to meet that standard. Among the younger ones, almost two-thirds are expected not to have a comfortable retirement.
One reason: Faced with funding voluntary retirement accounts through 401(k)s, people have often not contributed enough or made poor investment decisions. And even sensible-seeming decisions have caused drastic drops in retirement accounts during this recession.
What's more, many Boomers don't have much savings built into their houses since the real estate crash, and Medicare's gloomy finances mean that by 2030, a retiree will be facing total out-of-pocket healthcare costs of more than $200,000 over the course of a retirement, Polivka said.
(Full article here).
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