We are slightly more than two weeks ‘til the midterms. Will the Democrats gain the House (and Senate), or will the Kavanaugh nomination drive Republicans to the polls in higher than usual numbers? Then, there are the myriad of issues sliding past the lips of candidates. One of them I’ve heard and care about is the term “Medicare for all.”
Despite continued opposition from almost every candidate on the right, Democrats recognize that voters do favor something more radical than President Obama’s plan for health insurance. While “Obamacare” is far from the ideal, all “the party of no” can come up with is continued cuts to Medicaid and even the specter that they’ll at some point gut Medicare.
If you look at polling, the landscape clearly shows that more than half of the country (and 70 percent of those polled who vote Democrat) want some form of single-payer healthcare, which is what Medicare is. More than half of America’s doctors also favor it. So why won’t our elected leaders do something about it?
I’ve written about passing my insurance exam and being licensed as a life/health agent in Maine. Last fall, I passed my CMS certification to sell Medicare. My first year representing Medicare Advantage plans found my sales to be minimal. But I was happy that I got to make this step forward as an agent. What I learned is that most people age 65 (or heading there fast) know little or nothing about Medicare. Worse, they don’t know how to maximize their healthcare benefit options.
This year, I passed my certification exam with flying colors and added two additional carriers. I now am contracted with Aetna (like last year), as well as United Healthcare, and Humana. My goal heading into my second Medicare season was to double my options. I now have three different carriers and their various HMO and PPO advantage plans. All of this took about a month to complete. I didn’t receive a dime of compensation, either.
Selling Medicare isn’t easy. Certification is difficult and time-consuming. Then, during Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period (AEP), there is a small window for beneficiaries to sign-up, or make changes to their current plans. This window runs from October 15 through December 7. I will be doing several “Welcome to Medicare” seminars in October and November, and hopefully, meeting with a host of potential beneficiaries.
While there are people who think insurance salesmen are shysters, when it comes to Medicare, I can’t imagine someone crooked (ala Donald Trump) ever going through the rigmarole required to pass certification with CMS and then, each individual carrier. If there are disreputable insurance agents, I don’t think they’re selling Medicare—it’s much too tightly regulated and the bar for entry is set quite high. Plus the commissions for other products are more lucrative.
Medicare for everyone?
As I consider the idea that all Americans could have access to the same kind of health coverage that seniors can access when they turn 65, I am in favor of it. I see the kind of plans that I have available to offer to the people I meet with: why shouldn’t all Americans have something similar?
Of course, this gets back to some fundamental aversion that people like Donald Trump, someone who is a sociopath, has about others having a fraction of the perks he’s had in his gilded lifetime. His Republican colleagues in Congress, a cruel and heartless group akin to Dr. Seuss’s Grinch character, are equally stingy about their constituents having health plans that actually provide benefits, without bankrupting the farm: sort of like the health insurance that they have.
Interestingly, while Republicans are called “the party of the rich,” data and facts (those pesky things) reveal the opposite. At least at the state level, 18 of the 19 poorest states have legislatures where both chambers are Republican-controlled.
I recently began reading a book by Bruce Cannon Gibney, A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. I’d read a piece about a few months back in The Baffler and made a note to order it from my local library. Then I forgot about it until last week.
Boomers as sociopaths.
The book indicts the demographic group that I’m on the outer fringes of. He defines Boomers as those born between 1946 and 1964. Boomers are in the White House (and have been for awhile), Congress, and make up the Supreme Court. They run companies, hedge funds, and they are the ones making sure they get what they think is owed them, while bankrupting the future for anyone younger than 54.
I’ve listened to my fellow Boomers malign and complain about Millennials for a long time. I remember hearing employer-after-employer during my LWIB days bemoan how “younger workers” were worthless.
I didn’t see it that way then, and I certainly saw something much different in Mark. After he was killed, meeting many of his former classmates at Brown gave me encouragement, as they were an amazing cohort of younger Americans.
Since last fall, I’ve been spending five nights a week tutoring youth aged 14 to 18 (and 19) at a private boarding. I am now subbing in the public schools two or three days a week, too. I think the world that Boomers are doing their damned-well-best to destroy would be better in their hands. Remember the Parkland students, post-shooting?
Gibney does an amazing job in his book of looking at history, things like Vietnam, discussing it as a “defining experience,” and illustrating the sociopathic nature of Boomers. Of course, since I’m guessing that 99 out of 100 of those stumbling across the JBE were surfing the web looking for pictures of smartphones, so you are not interested in me and any nuance when it comes to healthcare. Most prefer to rage against “the government takeover of healthcare,” or positing that healthcare is a “fundamental right.” As today’s First Words column in The New York Times Magazine spoke to, nuance is now seen as weakness in this time framed by Twitter.
Thanks to Maximillian Alvarez, here is Gibney’s Boomer indictment in a mere 115 words. Why bother to read a 400-page book?
How can we explain this calamitous, pathological selfishness at the root of the sustained crisis of Boomer mismanagement? Leaning heavily on the fifth edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), Gibney insists that Boomers, as a whole, are self-evident sociopaths “characterized by self-interested actions unburdened by conscience and unresponsive to consequence, mostly arising from non-genetic, contextual causes.” Boomers have repeatedly put the gratification of their own immediate, generationally specific desires above consideration for the long-term consequences doing so would have for them, the country, and their children. Their manifest sociopathy distinguishes them as a singularly antisocial group, devoid of the lowest-common-denominator feelings of collective responsibility for maintaining a livable society for all.
Gibney’s clearly onto something, though: America’s rot is pervasive. We may have reached the zenith in terms of sociopathic governance, too.
The era we are in the midst of is one characterized by diminishment. I’ve detailed our national circling of the drain before, preferring George Packer’s descriptor, “The Great Unwinding.” Boomers have presided over our country’s race to the bottom. Yet pointing the finger of blame likely won’t do anything to change things.
Perhaps it’s simply history running its course. I think Chris Hedges “end of empire” narrative is fitting in that regard.
Of course, it’s easier to yell across at Republicans (if you’re a Democrat), and if you are an angry white male whose had the best of life in America, it’s getting as much as you can before you die, ala Gibney. That’s truly sociopathic.