Here’s an Op-Ed polemic trying to rally thinking folks to the idea that the social safety net for the elderly is the problem.
I tend to agree. People on the social dime will simply have to deal with getting a lesser standard of care than they do today. Does that mean that, in the interests of fairness, EVERYONE gets a lesser standard of care? It might. That’s how it works in most other countries.
I’ll be clear about two things from my experience of moving here from Canada:
- The US health system is hands down a billion times better…
- if you have decent access.
Pick two. Or none. No other solution is affordable.
The flip side of THIS is that it’s amazing that people are taking so much of their compensation in the form of astronomically expensive health insurance (by global standards).
But what’s the end game? What precedent is there in history for democratically disenfranchising a fifth of the population, not to mention the fact that everyone plans on becoming elderly eventually. Ask everyone that had their pensions in Enron stock what they think of the idea of a gigantic negative savings shock later in life.
Not Unreasonable 