For younger adults, health care reform has all the makings of a horrible disease, but as is typical of most national debates, the effect on them has been glaringly absent in the chatter. Although the nation's interests are not served by pitting class, racial, cultural and social values against each other, I would like to spark a legitimate debate regarding an overlooked split — the generational chasm that is pitting Young against Old.
For those of us following the Baby Boomer generation, especially those under 35, we have no one but ourselves to blame for not being a significant concern in the major issues of today, especially health care. As a group, we don't vote enough to matter, and we don't take an issue like health care seriously or passionately. After all, we aren't sick often, right?
Furthermore, we don't control power, wealth, fortunes, companies or political offices — the Baby Boomers still do.
We are on the lowest rung of a system designed to prop up that generation. Of course, this intentionally hyperbolic statement is a broad categorization of many individuals. Nevertheless, consider what Gov. Mitch Daniels controversially stated at this year's Butler University commencement.
“All our [the Baby Boomers] lives, it's been about us. We were the ‘Me Generation.' As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish. …We have spent more and saved less than any previous Americans. Year after year, regardless which party we picked to lead the country, we ran up deficits that have multiplied the debt you [the graduates' generation] and your children will be paying off your entire working lives. …We voted ourselves increasing levels of Social Security pensions and Medicare health benefits, but never summoned the political maturity to put those programs on anything resembling a sound actuarial footing. … In sum, our parents scrimped and saved to provide us a better living standard than theirs; we borrowed, splurged and will leave you a staggering pile of bills to pay. It's been a blast; good luck cleaning up after us.”
Yes, those comments are broad strokes of millions of individuals and a shocking indictment of the Baby Boomers. But consider the underlying premise. The younger generation already pays 15 percent of its income to a government retirement fund, Social Security. The fund will be bankrupt in 2037 and is set up as a ponzi structure. As far as we know, we'll not see much of our Social Security money. We already pay Medicare taxes, again, which only benefit our elder citizens. This program is also going bankrupt, the most recent Medicare Trustee report hints maybe as early as 2017. Those benefits are being cut regularly, making our generation rightly cynical about those benefits being there for us when we become the older generation.
Meanwhile, for one of the first times in American history, it appears the younger generation will experience a lower quality of life than its preceding one. According to the USA Today, for the last decade the real income of younger professionals has decreased, while those working in their 60s and 70s have increased. “The incomes of the young … have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s. … While the young have lost ground, older people have grown more prosperous over the years and decades.” This younger generation has to spend more for college educations, has fewer opportunities for career advancement and requires more hours spent at work to match the Baby Boomer's quality of life.
Now the Baby Boomer politicians want to reform health care insurance. Like the other well-intentioned programs listed above sapping our paychecks, it has its merits. Of course, it also has its costs, and one of the primary ways to pay for the health care reform is to shift them from the older generation to the younger one. Health insurance isn't very affordable for some. Therefore, the politicians will spread the costs to those who are currently paying less, and the younger generation obviously pays less because of its lower actuarial risks. The numbers are changing daily, but I've seen increased annual projections for an individual in their late 20s of $900 from liberal USA Today to $2,400 from conservative Fox News. I am also pessimistic that this program, like the other government programs noted, is not funded in a sustainable fashion and will require those behind us younger citizens, our children, to figure out how to pay for our future health care deficits.
What the younger generation does not yet realize is that when it supports health care reform in its current proposed state, it is supporting to unfairly bail out the Baby Boomers at the peril of its own future. USA Today advocates, “The young have already been handed crippling government debts and obligations driven largely by retiree benefit programs such as Medicare and Social Security. They pay hefty payroll taxes to support those programs. It would be unfair to order them to shoulder the burden of supporting near-retirees as well.”
I recently outlined my generational perspective on health care reform to a pastor in the Baby Boomer generation. He astutely noted that he and most others of his generation have paid Social Security their whole lives and sacrificed for their children. He is correct and evokes rightful empathy, but adding another set of burdens for my generation to carry doesn't fix the problem. All it does is further diminish the younger generation's future prospects, along with the prospects of this younger generation's own children.
As proposed, health care reform is bad medicine for those of us under 35 and will either set up an unjust situation where we will mortgage more of our future to pay for it or create another injustice by passing the inequity onto our children.
Ironically, that's why we as the younger generation vote for a progressive agenda — we want to see an end to inequalities. However, I don't see the even playing field in this debate. All I see is government taking from one group to give to another and exasperating injustice. As we consider health care reform and its role in our political philosophies, do we really want to pursue agendas that pit our generation against our parents and their generation? Surely, the matter requires further thought.
