How Will Baby Boomers Affect Healthcare?
One of the issues affecting the US Health Care crisis is the aging of the baby boomers, with the baby boomers being the generation of children born out in the 40s and 50s (from The Greatest Generation, World War II GIs and ilk). The baby boomers were the largest and most financially successful generation that the world has ever known. Their existence plays a huge role in health care demand and availability going forward and must be taken into account for any viable mass solutions to be found.
Perhaps the greatest issue feeding our current health care problems is the demand for it. You can come up with fifty other problems revolving around the current system, but I would argue that - at some level - they all derive from over-demand. We simply do not have the resources to meet the overall current need for health services.
Anybody who has ever taken an economics course knows that the most basic tenant of capitalism is that price is determined by where supply meets demand. When you have a limited and static supply level and an ever-increasing demand, prices will increase - it is a fundamental fact. In our current system, this leads to health care being available to those who can afford it, while others either relying on government-based payments (which still fall back on consumer base via tax dollars) or going without altogether. Another undeniable fact is that people tend to need health care more as they get older.
Obviously, over time, the body begins to break down; people become more susceptible to get diseases such as diabetes or cancers. With the baby boomers ranging anywhere from age 50 to 70 right now, they are hitting the age (if not already there) where health care is moving from a luxury or pure maintenance item towards an absolute need for continued survival.
The volume of the generation along with the fact that (almost) everybody will have some need for health services creates a perfect storm where, more than ever before, the largest volume of people in the world's history is in need of the products and services from a single industry.
None of this is to say that our health care issues are insurmountable. But we need to recognize the issue at hand. If pure capitalism is allowed to play out, the logical conclusion is that health care will continue to eat up a larger and larger portion of nation's gross domestic product (more than any single industry has before) as demand continues to increase without some miracle of supply.
This will lead to a situation where only the wealthy can afford health care and others will be forced to make do with leftovers, poor quality goods and services, or go without completely. Not to pass judgment on that opinion - America was certainly founded on free market principles. Nonetheless, it seems that in the wealthiest nation in the world, there has to be a better way. And that the children of the Greatest Generation deserve the same care and commitment that their parents received.
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