One of the reasons New York spends more on Medicaid is because the health care industry uses its political power to charge more, the subject of my prior post. A second reason is it charges for services it does not actually deliver – Medicaid fraud. A third reason is that New York provides more Medicaid services for recipients than do other states. And as I wrote here, the beneficiaries of most of those additional services are the elderly.
Today’s American elderly are the best off people, with the easiest lives, in history – unless one counts slave-owners. Tomorrow’s elderly, those born after 1955 or so, will not be as fortunate. Entering the labor force after social security taxes were raised, on the wrong end of multi-tier labor contracts, without defined benefit pensions and perhaps, when they reach their 50s, losing health insurance as well, and with limited savings, today’s young and middle-aged will reach old age as social security funds begin to run dry and the debts run up by their predecessors must be paid. We will have to work until no longer able, and will then face poverty. The poverty rate of the elderly, much lower than that of children in recent decades, is likely to explode – unless the seniors use their political clout to tax their own children into poverty, or to wipe out public education, or otherwise do unto their offspring what was done to them.
