On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 5:41 AM, dsummersmi...@comcast.net<dsummersmi...@comcast.net> wrote:
> 3) The majority of the elderly, who are on government health care, oppose > government interference in health care. Nicely stated. > 5) Folks don't want government interfering with their private employer > health care. Right, including government "interfering" by removing the government interfering tax subsidy for employer plans. Ironically, I think there would be less resistance to adding an equivalent tax subsidy for all non-employer plans, which of course is financially equivalent to removing the employer-plan subsidy. > Therefore, I conclude that folks want health care costs contained without > doing anything that might possibly affect them in order to contain costs. I agree, and I think the main cause of this attitude is that most people are spending other people's money. > I am now leaning towards the opinion that we will face this problem only > after Medicare requires a 500 billion/year payment from the government > after its funds are exhausted. At some point, the younger generations are going to balk at sending over half their income to the older generations. Demographics for the next 40 years can be easily and accurately predicted (assuming no large immigration changes). See for example: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/08/us-population-distribution-by-age-1950.html Clearly the ratio of under-65 to over-65 is undergoing a drastic change. The uncertainty comes in at what point the younger generations will balk at paying most of their income for the older generations. I agree that a political solution is unlikely. Already, ObamaCare is looking like less than 50% to pass, and if it does pass, it will probably not have any meaningful changes. I wonder if more consumer-driven health care might slip in without an explicit government reform, similarly to how many pension plans changed from defined benefit to defined contribution over the past several decades. Perhaps more employers will switch to plans like Whole Foods, with HSAs and higher deductibles. That is still some way from true consumer-driven health care, but the Whole Foods employees do vote on their benefits, so there is some small amount of consumer choice. And most surveys of highly-rated places to work that I have seen put Whole Foods high on the list. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
