Who Should Pay for Old Age

I agree, but the conventional wisdom these days is that there's nothing wrong with what that well-off woman was saying. If you follow the rules, in other words, no one is going to accuse anyone of fraud. Whether it's wholly ethical, of course, is the real question you're asking.

Am I right, Noddy?

D'artagnan--

You and I shall march arm and arm into the sunset waving our white plumes. Excelsior, forever!

Yeah, straight to the poor house, which is all we'll have to look forward to by the time the baby boomers start dropping off like flies...

D'artagnan--

Would that the Baby Boomers would drop like flies. Unfortunately, they are going to eat and drink and make merry. They will have referrals to the Very Best Specialists and Most Expensive Tests.

When they wind up in intensive care and the Very Best Specialists tell them "Nothing more can be done," the Baby Boomers' Babies will refuse to pull the plug.

Meanwhile, in the third world....

Noddy, I'm afraid you're right. I want a second opinion!

There are dreary statistics about the proportion of health-care costs in the average American lifetime that are accrued during the last few years...

If the cost of medical care were not artificially jacked up, it would not cost so much to care for us baby boomers. I for one do not intend to roll over and die just to save the nation money - As bad as the nation has screwed me I have that and more coming.

Here we have the tragedy of the commons. If there's a common pot, everyone wants a piece of it, even if they don't need it. I don't think it's fair, but it certainly seems to be human nature.

I know I am a starry eye boobiebird but I would wish that everybody had comfort and a good home or nest at the end of their lives. I expect not to have that myself.

And yet years ago, I sold my mother's house, my wouldbeinheritance, which it turned out I didn't have to since I was joint tenant and could have just moved in instead of fixing it....to pay for her care as a wandering woman with grave alzheimer's. I sold it to pay for her care, yes, I had an attorney, sigh, and the amount to me came to nothing and that house is now worth at least a million. Surely my parents wanted that house that they paid 26,500. for, for me.

Yes, they did, since I was made joint tenant, but the high falutin' lawyer and the university social worker couldn't tell me that a joint tenant only has to live there to not have to sell for Medicaid....

So on top of the facility I ended up having to have her be in, let me not describe both of our pain, the gigantic amount of money for borderline horrible care racked out whatever was left.

Sure people should take care of their parents. But it isn't always easy. In the mean time, we are funding all sorts of star wars things. I don't think funding care for the elderly is quite the horrible economic threat to the republic that it seems to be made out to be.

The bottom line, as ossobuco is saying, I think, is that self-paying for end-of-life care can be ruinous. For at least two generations. My father went out that way, and the home that cared for him was only too glad to keep him alive indefinitely. This was after his quality of life had become nil.

But in a nation that can't (or won't) get its act together in terms of providing universal health care, we may as well not hold our collective breath waiting for a better arrangement for the elderly and their families.

Re: Who Should Pay for Old Age


In Texas, and Florida, and some other states I'm sure, there is such a thing as a "Medicaid-compatible" fixed annuity.

Seniors with money invested in this instrument have shielded the entire value from the spend-down of assets connected with Medicaid eligibility.

Even if they have $500,000 in one, they can qualify for Medicaid.

And no, I don't think that's wrong, although the day of reckoning relative to the states and their red-ink budgets (much of it the result of exploding Medicaid expenditures) is upon us.

Hard choices are going to have to be made very soon, and I frankly don't think that we have any elected officials that are up to the task.

Hear, hear, PDiddie. This may be a little off-topic, but can anyone recall a time when our elected officials were less interested in the common good and more interested in their own re-election hopes? I can't, and I've been following politics for more than 40 years.

Whou should pay for Old Age?
Then, I guess, you should return your Social Security checks - you paid for your parent's Social Security, and your children are paying for yours.