We’ll be the last wealthy country to provide at least basic health care to its citizens, but the day will come. My guess is 2011 when the next president (if a Democrat) is looking to be re-elected in 2012. What form it will take is unclear, but the push for single payer gets stronger with articles like this much emailed one from the New York Times, “Aged, Frail and Denied Care by Their Insurers.” The “money quote”:
“The bottom line is that insurance companies make money when they don’t pay claims,” said Mary Beth Senkewicz, who resigned last year as a senior executive at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. “They’ll do anything to avoid paying, because if they wait long enough, they know the policyholders will die.”
This isn’t what The Who were singing about with “Hope I die before I get old.” But the line may come to mean this for a lot of boomers if the health care system doesn’t become more effective, i.e., efficient and humane.
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