Health Care and How We Treat Our Old

Here is an area that will truly convince you how broken our system is concerning healthcare. Know that for about a year I sold long term healthcare insurance and have in prior weeks post I have spoke about this.

Here are the facts from experience and Government sources:

· Medicare generally does not pay for long term health care.

· Your have 50% chances to have to receive long term care at the age of 85.

· Generally you cannot buy a long term healthcare policy at the age of 83

· Actuaries set rates by mortality not by morbidity, so if you survive a heart attach, you may not be able to get this insurance, if your diabetic forget it and if you have early signs of dementia your out of luck.

· You have to have assets of $40,000, not including house or your cars or you cannot afford these types of policies.

· It is the number one reason our seniors are becoming impoverished, in the end most lose there house, car, savings to the nursing home. Once at poverty level the good old USA kicks in and gives you Medicaid which equals to sub standard care.

At nursing homes when put on Medicaid you have one nurse to 10 patients, because the government pays a lot less then insurance policies, thus sub standard care. People who are ether paying their way or have insurance have a nurse that is assigned to only 4 patients at an average.

I think the government can do better for our old and it would be more beneficial to them to do so and here is my reasoning. If so many were not losing everything then this would be past down to their children and that money would be transferred back into our economy. It is said we live in a sandwich generation because of the cost of long term health care. Children taking care of there parents and their children as well, this causes a strain on the family and result in lose of work. This affects our productivity as a society as well as hurting our economy. Less work, less money! Less productivity, higher prices.

The Government needs to step up and start taking care of our old, for they are the one’s to date that have served most in our union. Freedom and choices taken away do to cost is a crime to me.