The other day I read the “Medicare and You” brochure in preparation for my own “graduation” to Medicare this coming summer.  It has been hard since then to shake a sense of foreboding.  My first reaction to all of it is how can our society treat our elders with such lack of care?  I don’t mean that it is bad that we have Medicare–I wish we had something like Medicare for all–single-payer health care–in our country.  But what we have now seems so bereft of full medical care, that participants are encouraged to buy extra care to cover all the gaps in care.

But it is not merely that you can choose to spend a certain amount per month to cover the gaps–a kind of gambling in itself about whether you will save more than you will spend.  It is that you have to decide between a dozen or more types of options, which kind of product to buy–all seemingly based on making a guess about your own unknown future health needs and prescription needs.  The supposed explanations for the different types of plans amount to gobble-di-gook, if you ask me….

Does anyone besides me see this as a particularly insidious way to torture people?  “You can choose!  Read all this information!  Oh, whatever you choose today will affect your future!”  A gambling game based on what?  (Is it anything besides a way to bring further profit to insurance companies?)  Then in today’s paper I read Michelle Singletary’s column The Color of Money, “Medicare trend causes palpitations,” and felt even worse.  She writes:

New analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that out-of-pocket health care costs for Medicare beneficiaries are likely to take up half of their average Social Security income by 2030.

I hesitate to blog about this issue because by doing so I have to reveal elements of my own financial situation–and money is one of the last taboos.  But I am feeling bold today. I will admit that despite the many blessings in my life, when I stop working, I will be one of those senior citizens living on a fixed low income.  We have been very lucky–we have a home, with solar panels (lower electricity costs) and a yard for gardens.  But homes also cost money for upkeep.  I worry that eventually I will be one of those who has to decide between medical care and eating.  And I am so angry that elders are put into that position today!

In the world I dream of, “health insurance” would be something paid for by the healthy, to take care of anyone who becomes sick–which eventually will be most of us, as we age. In that world, no one would risk losing their home because they become ill, no one would have to gamble based on unknown future events, no one would be left to die because of a lack of money.  There is a lot more to say about all this, but I have to stop now and go to the ocean… get some perspective.