Posted on 01/09/2017 7:13:29 PM PST by SeekAndFind
As the new Congress convenes, budget cutters are eyeing Medicare, citing forecasts the program for seniors is running out of money. But federal bean counters have erroneously predicted Medicare’s bankruptcy for decades. One reason: They don’t consider medical breakthroughs.
Another problem is medical ethicists like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who insist the elderly are a burden and that resources would be better spent on the young.
The facts prove otherwise. New medical findings give plenty of reason for optimism about the cost of caring for the elderly. Medicare spending on end-of-life care is dropping rapidly, down from 19 percent to 13 percent of the Medicare budget since 2000. Living to a ripe old age shouldn’t be treated like it’s a problem. It’s a bargain. Someone who lives to 97 consumes only about half as much end-of-life care as someone who dies at 68.
Surprised? Myth has it that the older people get, the sicker they are and the more costly their care becomes. But in truth, disability and chronic illness are declining among the elderly.
Dementia, an especially costly condition for seniors, is down a staggering 24 percent over the last 12 years, according to data published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
Octogenarians, and even centenarians, are staying active instead of languishing crippled in wheelchairs. How?
Medical advances such as carotid artery stenting and thrombolysis prevent stroke damage, something many seniors fear worse than death.
Scientists call this overall improvement in aging “compression of morbidity.” The elderly live longer, stay healthier and have shorter illnesses at the end of life.
All the more reason for seniors to resist making politically correct end-of-life medical plans or advance directives that forgo medical interventions, long before they’re actually facing a terminal illness.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
BFL - my ‘Satellite Internet’ is SUCKING tonight, but I want to read this...
I’m not getting any YOUNGER, you know, LOL!
BFL - my ‘Satellite Internet’ is SUCKING tonight, but I want to read this...
I’m not getting any YOUNGER, you know, LOL!
save for later
Love Betsy. God bless her.
Bookmark.
Unless I missed it, I didn’t see any mention that robots will probably help the elderly in a number of ways in the not too distant future.
Cleaning the house, disposing garbage, securing the house, administering medication, taking and recording vital signs and sending them to appropriate medical staff are some that come to mind. That could eliminate or delay the need for more expensive assisted living homes.
Don't forget chasing kids off the lawn and fighting with the robot of the neighbor who won't control his dyspeptic schnauzer.
If the story is true then I am surprised. I had thought that things which kill you at 68 are pretty quick like a massive heart attack, while living to nearly 100 results in many of the more enduring, expensive medical care.
Centenarians are typically pretty healthy right up to the end. My late aunt who passed away last year hadn’t seen the inside of a hospital since she was a teen, until the last two weeks of her 100 year life. The stories she told, I miss her. Mind as clear as a bell. Eventually lost her vision to the point that she couldn’t read or watch baseball anymore, her two favorite pastimes once she gave up housekeeping. She was a big gardener, had her own lawn and garden tractor, used it to plow the garden and mow the lawn, until she was 95. I think that’s what eventually did her in honestly, she just got bored. She had no problems up to then.
Who cares what federal bean counters think or what medical ethicists have to say about the matter?
Why the heck don’t Constitutional ethics matter any more?
Neither Medicare nor Medicaid belong in the federal government.
Reduction in smoking and people staying more active longer through hip and knee replacements are big factors also.
[big factors also]
Seniors are rediscovering healthy food and are nixing sugar.
For those who don’t know... Ezekiel Emmanuel is the brother of Chicago Mayor ( and ex-Obama Chief of Staff ), Rahm.
“Reduction in smoking... nixing sugar... etc.”
These and the improvements/advances mentioned in the article are all good news, of course. And all have occurred DESPITE federal government involvement, not because of it.
Your health and its care should have absolutely nothing to do with federal law. There is zero reason to involve the least efficient and most corruptible (because farthest removed) level of government in these matters.
Most states now have many more people than the whole country had when founded. Plenty of people at the state level to achieve economies of scale, risk pooling, etc for the states which feel the need to meddle with individual citizens’ lives.
Get the feds out!
Although, I have little reason to think this will happen under Trump, it is the constitutionally and morally correct thing to do and also the perfect time to do it with one party in control of the central as well as most state governments:
Don’t compromise, DE-CENTRALIZE!
That Emmanual clan......they look at the elderly as a “burden” because they tend to vote conservative.....
I think most people “in the know”, are aware of who Ezekiel is, like most at FR. However, the low-information democrats would not.
They sure have saved a bundle on me .
It is already bankrupt. It generates no funds and without government support it doesn’t even exist.
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