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We have lost our way

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By JOHN REINIERS

More Than Words John Reiniers

Published: June 7, 2009

It started when my wife told me Sen. Edward Kennedy and a couple of Democrats in the House introduced The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act of 2009 (S. 697; H.R. 1721), which would create an insurance program for adults who become functionally disabled, in essence, long-term care disability insurance.

As we have known for decades, the Boomer generation is a public sector financial crisis waiting to happen for a number of reasons. The "It's all about me generation" has a median total household retirement savings of $35,000. One in five has less than $5,000.

Medicaid - along with Medicare, one of our two Democratic "Great Society" health coverage programs - gradually became overwhelmed by long-term care claims - an unintended consequence - but a logical outcome since Medicare and Medicare supplement insurance and most health insurance do not provide coverage for long-term care.

AARP notes that "Medicaid is the single largest public source of funding for long-term care ... Medicaid spending for LTC more than doubled from ... 1987 through ... 1997, rising from $21.1 billion ... to $56.1 billion," and then rising almost 600 percent to "$311 billion nationally" in 2007!

A few years ago I happened to watch a TV interview of two senators - one from each party - reminding America that with Medicare and Social Security heading for bankruptcy, the federal government could hardly afford to pick up the tab for long-term care. But that's exactly what the CLASS Act of 2009 proposes - and that was before Obama's universal health care plan, which is guesstimated to cost a breathtaking $2 trillion over 10 years - and that was before the record shattering $3.5 trillion budget for 2010 was announced!

Now, back to long-term care. (And a disclaimer: My wife is a long-term care specialist who conducts seminars, workshops and the like.) AARP also reports that "The economic value of family caregiving in the U.S. reached $375 billion in 2007." (So add $311 billion for Medicaid to that.)

Given our own family experience, and anecdotal evidence, I suspect that is conservative; and once the Democrats federal coverage kicks in, this program will breeze by $1 trillion also. Even Reuters reported "Medicaid long-term care costs to soar in U.S.," estimating that just the LTC piece of Medicaid "will total $3.7 trillion in the next two decades, according to the report by America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry group." Mind boggling. We no longer talk about billions as being real money.

Many of the proponents of a federal system of universal long-term care point to Germany as a model. It, like so many aging first-world democracies, recognizes aging as an important issue, since social networks are shrinking. This is very evident in Japan and South Korea also, which have introduced public LTC insurance. So there are examples elsewhere we should examine.

Most Germans receive health care coverage through their states. LTC insurance was introduced in 1995 as a part of the national health insurance system. For a short time after its introduction, the net result of insurance revenues and claims was positive, but its been in the red ever since 1999. So there is talk of a need for reform. Any discussion of Germany and other countries goes well beyond the scope of this column, but it deserves serious study. We have much to learn. Since Americans have made insurance fraud, abuse and over utilization an art form, just wait until the boomers, the providers and lawyers figure out how to "stroke" this system into bankruptcy. And on top of this, Democratic politicians will bend over backwards to vote for any spending their constituencies want, if that will keep them in office.

On May 16, The Economist lectured Republicans on "How to fix a party." It concludes, "The Republicans need to demonstrate that they understand the importance of self-restraint both at home and abroad ..." So Democrats are an exemplar of fiscal self-restraint? What a joke. (Republicans under George Bush were bad enough.)

PravdaRU, online since 1999, and staffed by former employees of Pravda, the leading newspaper of the now defunct Soviet Union, noted on June 2: "Like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed against the backdrop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me, dear reader, I meant people ... the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the last three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been record setting ... If it keeps up ... America will best resemble the Wiemar sic Republic and at worst Zimbabwe."

Obama's budget alone more than doubles the national debt, adding more to our debt than all previous presidents - from George Washington to George W. Bush - combined.

We have lost our way.

John Reiniers, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill.

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