There is no “fix” to this. We have to rebuild from the ground up and millions are going to lose everything and suffer for a long time.

We will go from the current number of retirees of about 37 million to about 71 million in 20 years, alone. That statistic alone is going to cause medical budget items in the government to soar.

Congress had a solution to paying for this. They proposed adding 60 to 100 million immigrants to the work force to keep workers to retirees at over 3 to 1. However, as was pointed out to Congress in 2007 when this idea was first gaining popularity, that comes with its own problems when they retire.

Only a wealthy nation can afford to pay for its citizens health care in any meaningful way and we are bankrupt and losing ground every month we run a deficit. Wealthy are moving their investments out of the U.S. and ten million citizens, according to the Census Bureau have moved to other nations. Investment dollars, R&D and other businesses that would fund health care are still leaving and will leave even faster as the current trends show no signs of changing.

We are using all the policies that got us in this crisis over the last 7 decades and some the worst are being used even more. Why? Because if we stop kicking the can down the road, like these policies do, we get the depression now, instead of later.

There is no fix to healthcare or social security or unemployment or deficits or debt or interest on debt until the policies that caused these problems are changed and that isn’t going to happen. Voters would throw out the politicians that did the reforms we need because they would first cause a depression.

We need massive reform in health care, that is not deniable. What is deniable is that we can reform it with current policies that keep driving jobs and money and business out of the U.S. You have to, as pointed out, pay enough in taxes to fund the program and we can’t and still fund unemployment, social security, interest on debt, homeland defense, food stamps, education, and national defense that both parties keep raising the budget on.

We have $120 trillion in debt and obligations. The ex-comptroller general this week, in a CNBC interview put it very well. You could have double digit growth in GDP for decades and not get out of this. You can’t tax out of it or grow out of it and with one in four jobs tied to government spending, you cause a major, and I do mean major, depression if you cut spending. However, then we could rebuild the nation from the ground up.

The problem is that probably 75% of our citizens aren’t prepared for that depression and don’t want any politician calling for cuts in spending that would cut their benefits or their job or their income or their services. Look at the public outcry already in the cities and states in budget trouble calling for cuts in services and spending. NOT ME! Cut some place else. Let somebody else suffer. I can’t afford to take a hit.

That is why this type of recession (the others were inventory recessions) like the last one in the 30’s is so devastating. It hits almost every working man and woman, every child in school, every person getting health care or social security and over 25% of the workers in the nation. It is why it takes at least 5-10 years to work out of this and that is if you aren’t making things worse as we are.

While this won’t play out like the 30’s due to “safety nets,” and the “reserve currency,” it could be much worse because of the dependence we have on those things. We no longer have the family and community structure to survive without government support like we did before we had safety nets and we know how bad it was then.

All this talk about health care is keeping us from focusing on the fact we can’t pay for what we want whether it is health care or welfare. We have to rebuild the nation first so that we can fund those things. The more we try to pay for those things the more we are going to drive jobs and business out of the U.S. as well as investment money.

It isn’t just us. Almost all developed nations are losing ground to the emerging markets that don’t have the safety nets and expenses developed nations have. The exporting of jobs and manufacturing and now research and green technology to emerging markets has reached a tipping point where they will grow now, no matter what we do and developed nations will continue their decline if they continue to delay the reforms they need.

This is a thousands of years old cycle in the world and it is why nations rise, peak and fall. Those on the rise today will someday peak and they will fall and be replaced. You as the individual, must be prepared for those cycles when they happen in your lifetime and be willing to move to where you can care for your family whether it is to another state or nation if you can’t get the reforms you need. You must save and be ready to pay for your health care and other needs. If you have to save and fly to India and pay $10,000 for a $150,000 heart operation then do it.

Griping because we have a ridiculous cost and not being prepared to do something to save your life doesn’t help keep you alive. India’s health care tourism is booming. State of the art hospitals that operate for a profit and include visits to tourist sites, airfare, and rehab are finding people from all over the developed world flying there to use their lower mortality rate facilities.

Does that help point out how bad things are here? Of course it does but, that doesn’t change the fact we can’t afford what we want if we expect to keep all the other things we want while tax revenues fall and business and jobs leave.

Our huge health care problem isn’t the problem. It is a symptom of a nation in decline. It is a symptom of decades of bad policy that has corrupted business, government, our political parties and our standard of living. We have been in decline for decades and yet, because the decline was slow and subtle, we only noticed it when it really hits us in something like health care costs.

If you think it is bad now, just wait. We import even some of our most popular medications. As the dollar falls, every medical product we import will go up in price proportionally. The overhead in our medical facilities will go up. The cost of moving the things we need to our medical facilities will go up.

Eventually, government will no longer be able to pay the interest on debt and the other items in the budget. The CBO projects interest on debt going to over $800 billion as interest rates return to normal and deficits continue. When we only take in about 60% of our budget now, with tax revenues, you can see how impossible it will be to fund health care in the future and still maintain a high standard of living in other ways.

There is no “fix” to this. We have to rebuild from the ground up and millions are going to lose everything and suffer for a long time.

- JanPaul

Related Posts:

• While we are in a depression, don’t confuse that with what the market will do.
• Medicare is even more a problem than social security
• More than half of the people with a job today depend on Government for their paycheck.
• The solutions have been provided but, nobody likes them because they cause a depression.
• The FED has said, “no net new jobs for five years.” What does that mean?

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