Taylor Rosencrans
1946 began an era of new beginning after a long stretch of war followed by the Great Depression. After escaping these troubling times, America was ready to start a new era. Now that the country was in a more stable condition everyone was finally ready to start a family. With everyone having the same idea in mind there was a massive amount of babies born in a short period of time. Babies born in this time are known as the Baby Boomers and now as that generation is reaching retirement, there are many ways that are economy is going to be affected. One of the biggest is areas that will affect the economy is the health care that these Baby Boomers will need.
The biggest concern is the fact that the amount of money needed to provide for their health care will drive the national debt to a point of no return. By the year 2035, there will be an 8% increase on Medicare spending which is directly impacted by the Baby Boomers (Gigante). That is almost double from what it currently is. In order to ensure this doesn’t happen, there needs to be some planning now that will solve this before it even becomes an issue. 42% of the people who live until 70, will live in a long term care facility before they die (Knickman, James R, and Emily K Snell). The cost of being in a long term care facility is already expensive and won’t be getting any cheaper. Especially with all the technology advancements, it is allowing more people to make it to this age and will need help paying for long term care.
New technology allows for new research which allows for better medical care. But with the new technology, there is an increase in the price that it costs. Since getting sick normally isn’t something that’s planned, most people go into retirement expecting some but not typically all of their medical bills. This also includes that most don’t take into account for the inflation that there will be when saving for long term care. There are also many unexpected costs that many of us wouldn’t even think about but that come up when dealing with health. Especially as new treatments come out, the costs of affording them will continue to climb. This means there is going to be more that Medicare will need to cover for as the population of elders increase and the new medicine keeps coming out.
There will be a huge increase in demand for healthcare professionals in order to be able to account for the care needed. Over the next few years, the elderly population is predicted to go from 35 million in 2000 to more than 80 million in 2050. All healthcare professions are predicted to increase in job opportunities in the coming years because of the number of Baby Boomers that are coming. This will help the economy as there will be many job opportunities but on the other hand, getting people the education they need is a whole other challenge. But even the fact that there are so many job opportunities for people who are willing to put in the time for that education will help the economy and provide them with new opportunities. Although the amount of Baby Boomers needing health care seems like it’s going to hurt the economy, this is one way that the economy will benefit from the increase in job opportunities.
People that are classified as Baby Boomers range from 54-72 years old. They are already in the age of retirement and are beginning to need more help from the government to pay for medical care. Over the next few years, the government needs to formulate a plan in order to ensure that the impact of Baby Boomers needing help paying for healthcare doesn’t hurt the economy as much as it currently will. Without any sort of action, so much money will go into healthcare that the demand will hurt future generations with higher taxes, higher inflation or both (Gigante). But with proper government involvement, there is hope that there will be a solution that can benefit everyone.
Works Cited
Gigante, Shelly. “How Boomers Will Impact the Healthcare Industry.” CNBC, CNBC, 17 Mar. 2010, www.cnbc.com/id/35524106.
Knickman, James R, and Emily K Snell. “The 2030 Problem: Caring for Aging Baby Boomers.” Health Services Research, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1464018/.
Luke Lochner
ReplyDeleteThere has been a time in the history of the US where there was a large amount of the population at one point in life. The time there was the baby boom. More baby products were needed and more doctors would be needed to make sure that all those babies during that time period are delivered correctly and safely to have a higher rate of baby births. The babies need a lot of other products to help them grow and develop. All this comes at a cost, a money cost. This is a similar situation to this topic because of the large amount of people in a certain age group.
You briefly mentioned how there would be an increase in demand in health professions that require extensive and costly education. I personally want to go into the healthcare field as I have been aware of the high demand for health care careers, but I am turned off by the extreme prices for education. I feel as though, due to the high demand, the government should instill some incentive to prospective students by providing financial assistance. The government may have to increase Medicare funding for these baby boomers, but I think lack of healthcare professionals is a greater issue. With such a high price of education, the supply of these professions is going to be much less than the demand for doctors, nurses, etc. If education prices are not lowered and students are not incentivized to continue this expensive education track, there will likely be a shortage of health care professionals resulting in understaffed care facilities, ultimately causing decreased quality of care for these aging baby boomers.
ReplyDeleteHow do you think the economy would be impacted of all of a sudden the baby boomers just died? Jobs would be lost potentially, there would be little to no spending on this certain area, so the government could potentially have more money for something else. This would be a large impact in my opinion. Also, specifically what kind of solution should the government come up with? Like what mix of inflation rates and taxes do you think should work best?
ReplyDeleteAfter the baby boomer generation, the next generation will have less people who need this type of healthcare. The many new job opportunities mentioned won’t be needed anymore and the healthcare industry will shrink back down. There will be lots of people who won’t be able to get jobs in this industry. However this could lead to less of a strain on government and insurance agencies to be paying for the healthcare, so it won’t only be a bad thing. Also since there will be less patients there will be more opportunity to devote time to making medical advancements and discoveries.
ReplyDeleteThe medical costs are concerning. I think more concerning is the lack of retirement savings of the baby boomer generation. 54% of Americans over the age of 55 lack the sufficient retirement savings (under $50,000) according to Investopedia. If these people retire at 65 and live until 80, they have 15 years where they have to live under $50,000 at the very most. 30% of people over 55 have no retirement savings. Is the lack government benefits the problem or is the real problem the lack of savings? Social security won't be much help to these people because it pays out so little to retirees. Right now, the majority of people are getting less out of social security than they paid into it and that trend is anticipated to increase because of government debt. Why should we be forced to pay into such broken system that takes our money and doesn't guarantee us anything back when we need it. Privatizing social security could help reverse this by preventing the government from drawing money out of it to pay off its own wasteful spending. Privatizing doesn't mean anything other than having social security be held by an entity independent of the government. It doesn't mean selling out our benefits. In fact, the money could earn interest and be invested so that it grows and ensure more social security benefits for all. Privatization would allow the amount of money in social security to grow and ensure that people who need it get their long earned benefit.
ReplyDeleteWe should be prepared for a future where a smaller younger generation is required to financially support a much larger older generation. Start saving your money.
Great job, this is well written. I agree with you that there will be a significant increase in job-openings in the healthcare industry because of the increase in demand and price overall. For one, people who may be struggling to pay their cost of living may have a great opportunity to make more money by entering the healthcare industry and will be able to increase their surplus. However, there may be consequences of more government involvement. If the government subsidizes in order to provide medicare for more people, that will cost more money, and the government's money is entirely from tax-dollars. This would in turn cause a big increase in taxes and affect other people's ability to pay for their own healthcare.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that the baby boomer generation has a large amount of people and I agree that they will need a lot of healthcare professionals, which creates jobs. But, generations now are smaller and will not need as many healthcare professionals. Wouldn’t that take jobs away? Also, technology will only continue to become more advanced which will keep increasing prices that people may not be able to afford. I believe this situation with retirement funds will continue to hurt our economy more than it will help it.
ReplyDeleteI like how you expanded on a topic that is less familiar to our younger demographic but still managed to relate it back to us in a way that was relevant and looked towards the future and changes we can make. In terms of new technologies and medicine that keep coming out that drive the price of healthcare up, we can look at it in terms of a monopoly. Obviously it's not exactly a monopoly since that is illegal, but the opportunity that the few healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies have is the fact that there is not a lot of medicare available but an ever increasing demand for it. Therefore, the large price tag is not just due to expensive technology, but the ability to increase the price of a small amount of the service and still be able to sell it to the baby boomers. I like how mentioned inflation as it goes along with this as well since this can be compared to the epipen epidemic where that medicine was expensive but the prices were so inflated that while many people desperately needed it, no one could truly afford it.
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