This isn't really opinion, rather an information article. It's something that is unfortunately on my mind a lot recently. I thought this could be a good start of a discussion of how tenuous the health care landscape can be for older adults in the US. The article outlines the options for health care insurance in the US for older adults who lose their jobs but are not quite old enough for Medicare.
The sub rags a lot on older adults–sometimes fairly! But it's worth remembering that older adults face some scary challenges when their life is disrupted. People concerned about losing their job to immigration or AI or a new trade deal or whatever aren't going to be swayed by an argument "well overall this is good for the economy and good for more people". They are concerned that they could get very sick and be unable to get proper care because they have no health insurance. They like unions because unions help provide these assurances. If we want people to choose rational policies, we need to protect them from scary but all-too-real existential harm. Maybe losing a health insurance policy at the wrong time doesn't impact enough people in your opinion to change (I would disagree)… but the thing is the fear and the uncertainly impacts almost everyone.
I am a proponent of government guaranteed health care. I'm not anywhere close to an expert on the different policies, but I firmly believe that some sort of socialized health care–guaranteed coverage (e.g., Medicare-like), or at least a public option (which I suspect would be come most people's option) with protections for low-income people–would be significantly better than the employer-based system we have now. .
Posted by hypsignathus
1 Comment
>People concerned about losing their job to immigration or AI or a new trade deal or whatever aren’t going to be swayed by an argument “well overall this is good for the economy and good for more people”.
Not to mention, “sorry, too old and too expensive” even when they would take less.