In the near future....
Congress failed to act to avert the 27% across the board provider pay cut that was scheduled to take effect January 1, 2012. As a result, half the nation's health care providers opted out of Medicare. They had to. With overhead as high as 70%, the Medicare fee cut came straight out of physician salaries. Seniors were forced to scramble for care. The only doctors still taking new Medicare patients worked in the nation's public clinics and hospitals, and they had waiting lists three and four months long due to the rising number of uninsured who were beating down their doors for care.
Congress, which could not be bothered to fix the law that all but killed Medicare was more than happy to accept ungodly amounts of private insurance money. In exchange, they passed a law which replaced Medicare with vouchers. The nation's elderly and disabled were told to go buy private policies. Since the vouchers were not enough to pay private insurance premiums, the rich added a little something extra in order to buy policies almost as good as Medicare. The poor elderly did not have that option. They were stuck with high deductibles, high co-payments, inadequate provider directories and a million hoops through which they had to jump if they wanted to get even bare bones necessary care. Since chronic illness and disability are the main causes of poverty in this country, those who needed health care most received the least. The mainstream media, which lead the attack on Medicare, suddenly began to report the horror stories. Elderly woman who had to drive 100 miles for her dialysis who died when her car broke down. Man who needed a cardiac bypass surgery told to come up with $20 thousand in cash before the hospital would put him on the OR schedule. Another needless death.
Oh my! said the corporate media. Something must be done.
And so all the sick, poor, needy elderly were placed on Medicaid, making them a state problem. This was possible, because the government had changed the Medicaid criteria to exempt retirement and SSI. Seniors who would have had too much money to qualify for Medicaid under the old formula now found themselves competing for the same funds that provided care for children and pregnant women. Only their needs were much,much greater than those of children and pregnant women. A child could get by,more or less, without its shots. A woman could have a baby without prenatal care. Most of the kids born that way would be healthy---more or less. But the poor, sick, needy seniors absolutely had to have their health care or they would die on the streets. States like Arizona and Florida, which already faced budget shortfalls, found themselves saddled with huge medical debt, beyond anything their tax base could ever support. Some states opted to ration services for seniors.However, these "death panels" were massively unpopular. And so, cash strapped states did what they did in the wake of the so called welfare reform movement of the 1990s for children----they began going after "deadbeat" young and middle aged adults,
forcing them to pay their parents' medical bills, housing bills, food bills----
What's that you say? It could never happen in the United States? It's in the Constitution----no person shall be saddled with the debts of their mom and dad?
At one time, filial responsibility laws were far more common. As recently as the 1950s, 45 states and the federal government had them on the books. They began to erode during the New Deal, when the Social Security Act passed and the concept of government rather than familial responsibility started to take hold.
But 28 states still have filial responsibility laws: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.
Sixteen of these impose civil penalties — they can come after your assets or income if you fail to support your parents. In the eight states where filial responsibility entails criminal penalties, a prosecutor could actually put you in jail. Four states take both approaches.
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/ask-the-expert-parental-support-and-the-law/#h[]
These parental support laws became unnecessary after Social Security and Medicare. If these two programs are gutted, the states will go after the next of kin. That means a generation of working Americans will find themselves bankrupt paying for services for their parents. Medical poverty will become a multi-generational problem. If granddad is sick, the grandchildren will be in debt for the rest of their lives paying it off.
So, the next time a 20 something or 30 something or 40 something says "That's not my problem" when talking about Social Security and Medicare, remind them that it soon will be. If they say "the voters won't stand for it" remind them that the majority of (voting) Americans will be over 50
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