Examines ways in which the United States is dealing with the cost of caring for an increasingly aging population.
Developing an adequate system for long-term care in the United States poses a serious problem. Chronic disability in the elderly comes from many sources: Alzheimer’s disease, osteoporosis, heart disease, and stroke, to name but a few. The paper shows that concerns about anticipated demographic changes escalate the financing problem. Today?s Medicare and Medicaid solutions are not adequately equipped to face the future challenges of America’s long-term care system. The paper shows that, as the Baby-boomer generation comes of age, the social and financial impacts on the United States’ struggling economy could be devastating. The paper includes tables.
We as a nation should step back and see the big picture regarding the current and future long-term care needs of our nation. At approximately eighteen percent of our Gross Domestic Product, the amount of capital that is delegated to health care is enormous. A very legitimate solution or way to go to resolve the escalating problem is to go to a single payer national health insurance program. It would basically resolve virtually all of the major problems facing our health care system today. The single payer insurance is commonly defined as ?a single government fund within each state, which pays hospitals, physicians and other health care providers.? This system would completely replace the current multi-payer system of private insurance companies and health plans and would provide full insurance coverage for the other millions of uninsured Americans.