Its the health care crisis!

Good Luck With That 401(k)!

Medicare and Social Security are in terrible shape. Unfortunately, private-sector health and pension plans are doing even worse.

I'm not too worried about the impending bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security, the government-run programs designed to provide health care and pensions to Americans. The two programs, he notes, will start to run low on cash in 2017 and 2037, respectively.

 But funding these programs adequately is more a matter of will than financial ability. We can choose to fund health care and a guaranteed retirement income for our older citizens, or we can choose not to. (Those answering "not to" should provide an acceptable poverty rate for the elderly. Thirty percent? Fifty percent?) More importantly, before we freak out about potential public-sector failures in the future, we should be seriously freaking out about the current failure of the private-sector systems designed to provide health care and retirement benefits to Americans.

People in the business community often argue against expanding public health care and pension benefits, arguing that this would raise taxes and that the private sector can do a better job providing those benefits than the government. But the evidence is mounting that the private sector can't.

Lets join the rest of the industrialized world.  Lets fix it...

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous