Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Fifty Is Not So Nifty In Unequal America

People within a decade of retirement are at increased risk of not living their "golden years" in the same state of good health that their own parents enjoyed and in many cases continue to enjoy.

Sixty might be the new 40 for the rich and famous. But for too many people, it's become the new 80. The Great Recession has not only wiped out savings and jobs, it's been a main cause of premature aging and the development of chronic diseases which only get worse the longer that they go untreated. 


Depression-Era Photo Courtesy of the Social Security Administration


A study by University of Michigan researchers reveals that American workers in late middle age are at a higher risk of developing disease than the previous generation. People are forced to retire later, and they have fewer resources to pay for medical treatment and the high insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles of the Affordable Care Act. Those who are within 10 years of qualifying for Social Security and Medicare are at especially high risk.

From UM's Health Care Institute for Policy and Innovation:
  • Those born after 1967, who have to wait longer to receive their full Social Security benefits, tended to have higher rates of poor cognition, such as memory and thinking ability, in their 50s than the earlier cohort groups had at a similar age.
  • When people in the latest-born birth cohort was asked at around age 50 to rate their own health, more of them said it was fair or poor—compared with lower percentages in the middle three birth cohorts when they were around 50.
  • The later-born groups had higher percentages of people who had at least one limitation on their ability to perform a basic daily living task by themselves, such as shopping for groceries, taking medications or getting out of bed.
  • There weren’t strong differences between the groups in physical function, such as being able to climb a flight of stairs without resting, lifting 10 pounds or walking several blocks.
  • Stark differences in health between people with different levels of education were seen—echoing what other studies have shown. For instance, about 25 percent of people who had to wait until age 66 to claim full benefits and had less than 12 years of education reported at least one health-related life limitation when they were in their mid-50s. But among those who had more than 12 years of education and were in the same claiming group (age 66), only about 7 percent had at least one such limitation. Those whose education had stopped at high school graduation were in the middle.
Economic inequality has been growing steadily worse since the Reagan years. According to another survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the wealth gap among American senior citizens is the widest of any other developed country, with only Mexico and Chile doing worse.



 And if Donald Trump's regressive tax plan goes through, the divide will become even more extreme. Wealthy, healthy retirees will get to keep more of what their investments earn, and they'll be able to pass most of their money down to succeeding generations with the planned repeal of the estate tax.

No wonder that the predatory casino known as the Stock Market (heads they win, tails you lose) is posting record gains. These are gains for the rich at the expense of the rest of us. Meanwhile, Trump has even axed the Obama administration's milquetoast and rather cynical MyRa private retirement plan - for the quite logical reason that not enough workers have had the spare change to put into it.

Yet, the richest of the rich are still not satisfied with having it all. They want to extract every last penny from the poor, the old, and the sick.

"Centrist" Obama administration advisor and financier Steve Rattner, who had no qualms orchestrating the bailout of the auto industry after the 2008 crash, has now penned a New York Times op-ed warning of the dangers of Medicare for All. His elite class cringes at the very thought of hordes of vulnerable people escaping from poverty and illness. This unprecedented glut of healthy people threatens to suck the life right out of the billionaires - or at least prevent them from using their hoarded money to buy a larger mega-yacht or a fifth vacation home.

Of course, Rattner didn't put it quite like that. Rather, too much health care for too many people would have the awful affect of sinking the whole Democratic Party! What is more important than life itself, if not an exclusive political party?

Rattner begins with the stale argument that since Medicare for All proponent Bernie Sanders isn't even a Democrat, his proposals are absolute heresy, if not inherently un-American. This is definitely a question of Party Over People, especially when the partiers are billionaires and CEOs. And not only that - Sanders also viscerally offends the Upper Crust by dint of being a "crusty Vermont independent."

"A freight train is coming at us from the Left!" the Wall Street multimillionaire shrills in the proper spirit of Halloween and Krusty the Clown. 




That ghost train would run right over and crush the lucky few who now enjoy gold-plated health care. They would be inconvenienced if they were automatically enrolled in a Medicare-type health plan with little to no effort on their own parts. Single Payer insurance would take away all the pleasure of shopping and choosing among gold, silver, bronze, copper, plug nickel and paper plans. It wouldn't even require Internet access.

Even worse, public insurance would knock the joy right out of the booming stock market. Therefore, Rattner clownishly concludes, if Democrats would only get out their knives and join in the ghoulish fun and heartlessly deny single payer health care to the poor, the old and sick, they are bound to beat Trump in 2020!

Needless to say, the Times did not open Rattner's unhinged horror story to reader comments.

On a related note, though,  the Times is urging what it calls "consumers" (who apparently are human beings only secondarily) in that high-risk 50+ age bracket to blithely fork over $280 for a brand-new Shingles vaccine:
According to the C.D.C., almost 1 of every 3 people in the United States will contract shingles, a viral infection that can result in a painful rash and lasting nerve damage.
The disease, also known as herpes zoster, can range in severity from barely noticeable to debilitating. It is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which also triggers chickenpox.
The newspaper made no mention of the cruel policies which have triggered the shameful morbidity and mortality rates in the richest country on the face of the earth.

2 comments:

  1. Elizabeth -- MarysvilleOctober 25, 2017 at 10:31 PM

    So true. Poorer health in a retirement that takes longer to achieve.

    Big Pharma and health insurance companies take a huge chunk out of a retired person's income, especially when it is limited to social security. I have witnessed people foregoing important medication because $400/month for just one of their many medications is just impossible.

    I have seen people have success on a medication for many years, and then their insurance company says it's not covered anymore, starting the long, irritating process of "prior authorization" paperwork. It's all about maximizing profits for shareholders.

    I have seen people who are knowledgeable about good nutrition but can't achieve it because real food is so expensive. Their lab results show low protein, which is needed to build and repair the body as well as fight infection.

    How many people in our country realize that our "representatives" in government have supreme health insurance? How many believe that these people are more deserving than the rest of us? Why aren't more of these representatives calling out this huge discrepancy?

    Colorado has seen a reduction in overdose deaths since legalizing recreational cannabis. California will have legal dispensaries Jan.1, but counties can rule not to allow them. I am wondering why my county supervisors voted against allowing dispensaries. Given all the marijuana related arrests (such as having 7 mature plants instead of 6), perhaps the loss of prisoner labor would amount to more than the potential revenue from marijuana sale tax.

    For real, there is a vacant building downtown with the street number "420". A perfect location, it would bring in lots of business and help the city fund much needed infrastructure maintenance, homeless help, and so much more.

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  2. If marijuana was legal and readily available, more people could take it for pain instead of opioids so far fewer people would die from overdoses and there'd be fewer thefts and drug related crimes.

    But oh, oh. There would also be less profit for corporate criminals like Oxycontin manufacturer Perdue Pharma, for opioid drug distributor McKesson, for AstraZenaca, maker of Movantik, the new drug for opioid-induced chronic constipation, and for the tv networks who make a fortune on advertising.

    I'm probably forgetting a few other racketeers in the opioid drug cartel.

    ReplyDelete