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I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how m

by leoqa 1y ago

I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how my mother spent her adulthood partying instead of providing and now it’s become a critical issue for our family to provide for her. Ultimately I don’t expect my children (or staff-journalist) to project pity on me for my circumstances. I run a weekly route with MealsOnWheels and deliver food/perform wellness checks to many people whom are homebound. There are much worse fates for seniors than a community home with social programs and meal service. I think it is everyone’s duty to buy long-term care insurance (perhaps the government should provide this, as we will all need it). I also believe you must provide for the retirement you expect.

notmyjob 1y ago
The problem with LTC insurance is it’s likely to go belly up and you are at the end of the day dealing with an insurer whose business model involves denying valid claims. All of that is assuming you can actually get LTC insurance. Good luck if you are over 50. It’s like the private form of social security, a Ponzi that’s approaching its moment of truth.
- leoqa 1y ago
  You’re probably correct (I’m 30 and don’t have a policy) but I can’t think of any financial instrument that would guarantee skilled nursing ($4-8k/month in MCoL) for 10-20 years. No one in the bottom 90% of American earners can afford that drawdown even if they saved considerably.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Most people won't need it for long and so the risks average out to a more reasonable cost. However it is still thousands and people buy cheap not best coverage when they need it so that is what the market provides.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    That’s sorta the point, and the problem. There’s a dependency ratio problem brewing: there are simply not enough working-age people to care for the old people who will need care. No amount of financial instruments can paper over this reality - they will just go bankrupt (eg insurance policies, social security) or steadily drop in value relative to the cost of care (401ks and other financial instruments) until the price of LTC equilibrates to actual capacity. Anyone not in the percentile that actually has eldercare capacity will simply have to go without, much like the price of housing has risen to shut out Millennials that are not in the income percentile needed to get one of the few scarce houses for sale.
    - spwa4 1y ago
      No worries, the EU (and UK) governments have gone ahead and taken the only real way out of this conundrum: researching robotic labor to take over for this ... and defunded it.
      - Retric 1y ago
        That’s not the only solution, curing dementia would largely solve the manpower issues here. Rapid population decline is a separate issue that makes this problem seem much worse. In other words, if elderly care works in a steady state population then it’s a symptom here not a cause.
        spwa4 1y ago
        You have seen the protests in France? Raising the retirement age will not go over well, to put it mildly. Bloquons tout!
        Retric 1y ago
        Increasing the retirement age isn’t necessary. It increases overall prosperity in exactly the same way all those things that increase productivity do by allowing you to use extra labor on other problems. Instead changing demographics means retirement benefits may need to alter their payout formulas, but more prosperity means more money for retirees in absolute terms even if they keep receiving the same percentage of GDP. IE X% of per capita GDP in 2025 is way higher than X% of per capita GDP in 1975 adjusted for inflation easily offsetting increased lifespan. The same is nearly guaranteed in another 50 years.
- supportengineer 1y ago
  Every insurer's business model involved denying valid claims. By maximizing the float you can maximize risk-free returns
joules77 1y ago
Retirement is a stupid concept. One of my Grandfathers just stopped taking medication and going to the docs. And died quite peacefully within a couple years of retiring. Death and decay is just natural and quick. While my other grandfather has been kept alive 30-35 years post retirement popping a tray full of pills everyday, having gone through dozens of surgeries and has had hopeless quality of life post retirement. The med-industrial complex is a run-away train that is detached for any moral system. It can't even produce any morality anymore. Because its not efficient or rational to do so :)
- josefritzishere 1y ago
  Some of us get old and tired. Retirement is a necessity. Your opinion will change with age on this one I expect. retirement has existed really since humans lived past their 40s. (1700s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement
  - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    Humans have always lived past their 40s. You've misunderstand life expectancy statistics, because human age-at-death forms a bimodal distribution: A lot of kids and infants die (especially historically), and then your body starts falling apart in your 50s. So while the average life expectancy at birth for a lot of history might have been in the 30-40 year span, it has never been common for people to die in their 30s. Because once you make it to ~15, your life expectancy is another 30-40 years. And if you make it to 30, your life expectancy was still another 25-30 years.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    > retirement has existed really since humans lived past their 40s We've always lived past our 40s. We just stopped having a bunch of people die in childhood (or birthing children). https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc... "If one’s thirties were a decrepit old age, ancient writers and politicians don’t seem to have got the message. In the early 7th Century BC, the Greek poet Hesiod wrote that a man should marry “when you are not much less than 30, and not much more”. Meanwhile, ancient Rome’s ‘cursus honorum’ – the sequence of political offices that an ambitious young man would undertake – didn’t even allow a young man to stand for his first office, that of quaestor, until the age of 30 (under Emperor Augustus, this was later lowered to 25; Augustus himself died at 75). To be consul, you had to be 43 – eight years older than the US’s minimum age limit of 35 to hold a presidency." "As a result, much of what we think we know about ancient Rome’s statistical life expectancy comes from life expectancies in comparable societies. Those tell us that as many as one-third of infants died before the age of one, and half of children before age 10. After that age your chances got significantly better. If you made it to 60, you’d probably live to be 70." Neanderthal elders probably took on lighter-duty tasks as they aged just like today's elders do.
BeetleB 1y ago
LTC is risky, as others have pointed out. My company offers one that claims to be reliable (owned by an insurance company that's been around for over 100 years, albeit not in the LTC space). The one thing I didn't like about them: They don't adjust for inflation. So if you sign up for a $100K plan, you'll get $100K - which will worth a lot less by the time I need it.
- justmedep 1y ago
  Isn’t that adjusting for inflation and not for cost of living?
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    Fixed - thanks.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
red-iron-pine 1y ago
> I think it is everyone’s duty to buy long-term care insurance (perhaps the government should provide this, as we will all need it) this is called Social Security
- ethbr1 1y ago
  Demographics and decreased immigration would like a word...

by leoqa 1y ago

notmyjob 1y ago

The problem with LTC insurance is it’s likely to go belly up and you are at the end of the day dealing with an insurer whose business model involves denying valid claims. All of that is assuming you can actually get LTC insurance. Good luck if you are over 50. It’s like the private form of social security, a Ponzi that’s approaching its moment of truth.

leoqa 1y ago
You’re probably correct (I’m 30 and don’t have a policy) but I can’t think of any financial instrument that would guarantee skilled nursing ($4-8k/month in MCoL) for 10-20 years. No one in the bottom 90% of American earners can afford that drawdown even if they saved considerably.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Most people won't need it for long and so the risks average out to a more reasonable cost. However it is still thousands and people buy cheap not best coverage when they need it so that is what the market provides.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nostrademons 1y ago
  That’s sorta the point, and the problem. There’s a dependency ratio problem brewing: there are simply not enough working-age people to care for the old people who will need care. No amount of financial instruments can paper over this reality - they will just go bankrupt (eg insurance policies, social security) or steadily drop in value relative to the cost of care (401ks and other financial instruments) until the price of LTC equilibrates to actual capacity. Anyone not in the percentile that actually has eldercare capacity will simply have to go without, much like the price of housing has risen to shut out Millennials that are not in the income percentile needed to get one of the few scarce houses for sale.
  - spwa4 1y ago
    No worries, the EU (and UK) governments have gone ahead and taken the only real way out of this conundrum: researching robotic labor to take over for this ... and defunded it.
    - Retric 1y ago
      That’s not the only solution, curing dementia would largely solve the manpower issues here. Rapid population decline is a separate issue that makes this problem seem much worse. In other words, if elderly care works in a steady state population then it’s a symptom here not a cause.
      - spwa4 1y ago
        You have seen the protests in France? Raising the retirement age will not go over well, to put it mildly. Bloquons tout!
        Retric 1y ago
        Increasing the retirement age isn’t necessary. It increases overall prosperity in exactly the same way all those things that increase productivity do by allowing you to use extra labor on other problems. Instead changing demographics means retirement benefits may need to alter their payout formulas, but more prosperity means more money for retirees in absolute terms even if they keep receiving the same percentage of GDP. IE X% of per capita GDP in 2025 is way higher than X% of per capita GDP in 1975 adjusted for inflation easily offsetting increased lifespan. The same is nearly guaranteed in another 50 years.
supportengineer 1y ago
Every insurer's business model involved denying valid claims. By maximizing the float you can maximize risk-free returns

joules77 1y ago

Retirement is a stupid concept. One of my Grandfathers just stopped taking medication and going to the docs. And died quite peacefully within a couple years of retiring. Death and decay is just natural and quick. While my other grandfather has been kept alive 30-35 years post retirement popping a tray full of pills everyday, having gone through dozens of surgeries and has had hopeless quality of life post retirement. The med-industrial complex is a run-away train that is detached for any moral system. It can't even produce any morality anymore. Because its not efficient or rational to do so :)

josefritzishere 1y ago
Some of us get old and tired. Retirement is a necessity. Your opinion will change with age on this one I expect. retirement has existed really since humans lived past their 40s. (1700s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement
- OkayPhysicist 1y ago
  Humans have always lived past their 40s. You've misunderstand life expectancy statistics, because human age-at-death forms a bimodal distribution: A lot of kids and infants die (especially historically), and then your body starts falling apart in your 50s. So while the average life expectancy at birth for a lot of history might have been in the 30-40 year span, it has never been common for people to die in their 30s. Because once you make it to ~15, your life expectancy is another 30-40 years. And if you make it to 30, your life expectancy was still another 25-30 years.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > retirement has existed really since humans lived past their 40s We've always lived past our 40s. We just stopped having a bunch of people die in childhood (or birthing children). https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc... "If one’s thirties were a decrepit old age, ancient writers and politicians don’t seem to have got the message. In the early 7th Century BC, the Greek poet Hesiod wrote that a man should marry “when you are not much less than 30, and not much more”. Meanwhile, ancient Rome’s ‘cursus honorum’ – the sequence of political offices that an ambitious young man would undertake – didn’t even allow a young man to stand for his first office, that of quaestor, until the age of 30 (under Emperor Augustus, this was later lowered to 25; Augustus himself died at 75). To be consul, you had to be 43 – eight years older than the US’s minimum age limit of 35 to hold a presidency." "As a result, much of what we think we know about ancient Rome’s statistical life expectancy comes from life expectancies in comparable societies. Those tell us that as many as one-third of infants died before the age of one, and half of children before age 10. After that age your chances got significantly better. If you made it to 60, you’d probably live to be 70." Neanderthal elders probably took on lighter-duty tasks as they aged just like today's elders do.

BeetleB 1y ago

LTC is risky, as others have pointed out. My company offers one that claims to be reliable (owned by an insurance company that's been around for over 100 years, albeit not in the LTC space). The one thing I didn't like about them: They don't adjust for inflation. So if you sign up for a $100K plan, you'll get $100K - which will worth a lot less by the time I need it.

justmedep 1y ago
Isn’t that adjusting for inflation and not for cost of living?
- BeetleB 1y ago
  Fixed - thanks.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

red-iron-pine 1y ago

> I think it is everyone’s duty to buy long-term care insurance (perhaps the government should provide this, as we will all need it) this is called Social Security

ethbr1 1y ago
Demographics and decreased immigration would like a word...