If you read this blog, you know that I think that single-payer health care systems are fine and dandy. So when I say that Medicare has issues, it’s not because Medicare is such a system, but because we set it up poorly here. It’s a bad risk pool, it’s underfunded, and we don’t really raise the rates when we need to.
That said, this is another reason things are not going to get better anytime soon:
Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now…
Homo sapiens is ageing fast, and the implications of this may overwhelm all other factors shaping the species over the coming decades – with more wrinklies than pimplies, more walking frames than bike stabilisers, more slippers and pipes than bootees and buggies, and more grey power than student power. The longevity revolution affects every country, every community and almost every household. It promises to restructure the economy, reshape the family, redefine politics and even rearrange the geopolitical order over the coming century.
If that fact doesn’t blow your mind, I hope it at least makes you pause. The Medicare population is only going to get larger.
(h/t Will)
