How Dumb Can it Get?

I don't pretend to genius, but it doesn't take one to see that this Administration, in its zeal to wrap us all in the sheltering cloak of government health care, has bitten the poisoned apple of stupidity and will croak on it.

Two years ago, when I started this blog, I wrote that one of our major problems would be the huge, unplanned for, cost of the surge in longevity. Look at all the healthy, active centagenarians today! Scientists tell us we will be able to live, in good health, until we are one hundred twenty years of age in the near future. This is in large part due to the innovation and effort of the research community: stem cells. et al. So what does the government do? You guessed it!

They want to completely uproot the fairly loose private health system we have in place which might be able to handle the growing longevity, and put in its place a rigid governmental system that wouldn't have a clue.

I ask: Why are we having this discussion at all?

First we need to get a handle on the longevity forecast. Then we have to rewrite the actuarial tables to reflect those findings. After that we must look at how employers will deal with healthy agers. Will retirement age go up? Will people routinely work until eighty, and if so, what about the younger people coming up the ladder behind them?

First and foremost, how will we pay for those extra years of life ? Let's figure that out before we monkey the health system we have into one we'll be sure to regret.