Times They Are A-Changin’: Baby boomers, part three of three

The only thing more important to Serge Goma than having a reliable health care plan is finding a job, but even that priority is related to his need for a health insurance plan for him and his family.

‘Health is important because without health, you can’t work,’ said Goma, who is one of an estimated 78 million baby boomers who will turn 65 years old within the next 19 years.

Goma, a graduate student at Syracuse University who was born in 1962, is looking to begin his own business to support his family’s needs, including health care, after he graduates.

With more than 10,000 people a day reaching retirement age, baby boomers are putting pressure on the health care industry to provide people with more accessible and affordable plans.

‘The boomers are a large bubble in the population that is growing older,’ said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at SU who specializes in health care policy. ‘People at the later stages of life spend more money on health care than younger people.’

But in 2009, there were 8.6 million baby boomers who were uninsured, a 15 percent increase from 2008, according to The Commonwealth Fund website.

‘Something had to be done, not only on the access side but also on the cost side,’ Reeher said.

Providing the sort of health care that accommodates the needs of the baby boomer generation is not easy. The health struggles baby boomers deal with are different from those of previous generations.

Over the course of a century, life spans have grown longer and chronic illnesses have become more common, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation website. Whereas people used to die from untreatable infections, baby boomers are struggling with chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

‘To put it crudely, in the past, people died earlier and faster,’ Reeher said.

People are living longer because of the advances that have been made in medical treatments, Reeher said. But as people grow older, they become more susceptible to ongoing diseases that require long-term care services and are more costly to treat, he said.

Health care costs for chronic illnesses account for at least 75 percent of national health expenditures, according to the Kaiser website. As a result, a person’s need for health care increases as he or she grows older, Reeher said.

But the same cannot be said for young adults. Often called the ‘young immortals,’ people between the ages of 19 and 29 overlook the benefits of being insured and are not covered by a plan.

‘Sometimes students underestimate the benefits of insurance, so a lot of them don’t have insurance,’ said Michael Wasylenko, an interim dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. ‘They underestimate the probability that something catastrophic might happen to them.’

‘Catastrophic’ incidents do not refer only to life-threatening diseases but include potential risks. Though young adults tend to be healthy and robust, they are prone to accidents, such as falling on a ski slope and breaking a leg, that will require expensive medical costs, Wasylenko said.

Lisa DiGiovanni, a senior biochemistry major, said she is not familiar with the details of the health care reform, but she acknowledges the importance of having a health care plan.

There was a brief period of time during which her mom went without health care, DiGiovanni said. When she had an abscessed tooth, her mom did not want to see a doctor because she knew it would be too expensive without insurance, she said.

‘If something random happens and you don’t have health insurance, it’s going to cost you a lot,’ DiGiovanni said. ‘I personally would like to see everyone have health insurance.’

The health care reform will try to cater to this concern by reducing the number of uninsured people. There were 59 million uninsured Americans in 2010, according to the Commonwealth website. The goal is to reduce the number of uninsured individuals by 32 million by 2019, according to the website.

Some health care reform provisions will directly relate to young adults to encourage them to be covered by a health insurance plan.

‘You get moments when either there is a sense of probably not enough people getting access to reliable health care, which has been an issue in this country for a long time,’ Reeher said.

Parents will be able to carry their children on their health care plan until their children turn 26 years old, Reeher said. In addition, everyone will be obligated to get health insurance to avoid paying a fee, he said. The fee will be 2.5 percent of the individual’s household income, according to the Kaiser website.

But demographics do not play as important a role as the rising cost of health care, Wasylenko said. Health care costs surpassed $2.3 trillion in 2008, according to the Kaiser website. Increased costs are caused by technology and prescription drugs, chronic disease, the aging population and administrative costs, according to the website.

The actual cost of delivering health care keeps rising, Wasylenko said. But people rarely know what they are paying for, and they also do not understand the health care system, he said. For instance, people with health insurance who go in for treatments do not know what the treatment aims to do or how much it costs without insurance, he said.

‘You just go from appointment to appointment,’ Wasylenko said. ‘So it’s an area we badly need education on.’

Over the course of 10 years, $938 billion will be spent on the health care reform, according to the Kaiser website.

It is a lot of money to be spending, Wasylenko said, but it will be worth it in the long run.

‘There is a long-term future issue,’ he said. ‘What we need to do in the health care business is kind of rationalize the cost structure and reduce what experts call bending the cost curve.’ Bending the cost refers to questioning whether or not costs will be lowered over time.

As for Goma, for his two priorities to become a reality, all he can do is trust the people and the government that will be handling the reform, he said.

‘It is an issue here,’ Goma said. ‘People need to be supported. You can’t have a good life without this standard.’

shkim11@syr.edu

Published on January 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm