America is wonderful – a mixture of Disney World and Lake Woebegone. You remember Garrison Keilor’s home where all the men are good looking and all the children are above average. In a recent poll review in Provider (Sep. 2004) – a majority of baby boomers believe they are not going to need ongoing health care during their retirement years . Fact: Only 1/3 will drop dead during their first heart attack. Even Bill Clinton got caught needing health care.
Only 14 % of adults between the ages of 50 and 65 believe they will ever need day to day assistance or long term care (nursing home). Fact: Forty three percent will wind up in a nursing home – even when you go to assisted living there is probably a 50 % chance you will graduate to a nursing home – often correlated with when you run out of funds.
Sixty two percent plan to use medicare to pay for long term care services. Fact: – medicare does not pay for nursing home care other than brief rehabilitation programs. Forty per cent expect to use health insurance for their extended care – described as a total misconception of those resources – even if you were lucky enough to have insurance.
Not convinced about Lake Woebegone yet, try this! Twenty percent of the U.S. population believes they are in the top 1 % of income tax brackets. No wonder it does not bother many people when it is mentioned that nearly 50 % of the tax cut went to the upper 1%.
The poll described at the beginning of this note was done by computer on line – suggesting that the group might be above average in education and resources and are much less likely to be in the 45 million who have no health care and the 83 million who have inadequate health care or were without insurance for considerable time during the last two years.
The nation watched survival and reality shows during the conventions, just as big media predicted. This decade will decide how your children and grand children will live – even if they will live. Isn’t 18,000 deaths from lack of health care enough reality? Enough survival? These dramas are playing out every day in our non affluent homes, on the streets and in the emergency rooms. If physicians do not help the public to understand this and even remain uninformed themselves, who will help? Please remember that we pay for universal health care and do not get it! Get it?? Jerry Earll M.D.
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