LTCI Watch: Transparency

See also: Public LTC costs may threaten states’ credit ratings

If we haven’t defeated ageism by then, we’re also going to have to find a way to jam older workers into the workforce, meet private and public retirement income obligations, and persuade older people (and their children, and grandchildren) to grin and bear it when retirement benefits resources fall short of expectations.

However nice short-term government budget deficits may be for our current unemployment rate, our ability to pay for restaurant meals, our skin, our hair and our bad breath, it looks as if, over the long-term, we’ve probably promised to give the same jobs, the same LTC beds, the same LTC services worker (or robot) time, and the same capacity to pay for food and other essentials to two or three different people.

Whether we’re Republicans or Democrats, capitalists or socialists, we’re going to have to have enough goodwill not to get into physical fights when we find out that, no, all that money we saved so carefully away, at the expense of our ability to enjoy ourselves, will not actually guarantee us the ability to tell “The Man” to take that job and shove it when we’re 62.

Our society will probably still be rich, all things considered. We’ll find a way to keep frail and disabled older people in reasonably suitable accommodations. But, chances are that nothing will turn out to be quite the way we expected it.

Even if we do eliminate dementia and do eliminate ageism, we’ll probably maintain a high standard of living by having people work longer, not because Social Security, Medicare or private pension plans make good on promises uttered at a time when safe government bonds were paying an interest rate 4 percentage points higher than the inflation rate.

The only way I can imagine we’ll be able to maintain social order after dealing with all of the promises that will break is if we have a reasonably high level of trust in one another, and we understand that the promises are breaking because the people who made the promises had unrealistic expectations, not, in most cases, because they were greedy, evil crooks.

We’ll have to have a basic level of trust in the Medicare program managers when they explain why they have to make drastic changes in how Medicare works.

Meanwhile, today, we can’t even trust HHS to give us a straight answer about how many employers have PPACA exchange Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) plans, or to tell Nevada what’s going on with open enrollment this week.

This is not good.

See also:

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