Healthcare reform bribery against our generation

It came to me while watching the last Indiana Jones movie. We are the victims of the baby boomer generation. Their youthful preoccupations (greasers, motorcycle gangs, old rock) their moral struggles( holocaust, civil rights, nuclear weapons) their attempts at over arching depth ( aliens) were perfectly encapsulated in that movie...which is why it sucked so hard. Our politics are a product of the over bearing weight of baby boomer demographics and we live in the after glow of their decisions. If you want to know why bush didn't get impeached look no further than why no one was punished personally for testing atom bombs on soldiers. Because of the rolling political compromises made in the last generation to this spike in population we have a somehow found ourselves with two American citizens. Those old enough to get access to cost controlled healthcare and those unfortunate enough to not be in that particular demographic. Of course it is not just healthcare, tax benefits are a whole other ball game but I think in the end if you want a reason why we don't have universal healthcare look to medicare. In the end the idea of this kind of preferential treatment begs so many questions. Why is it based on age that you get access? Is it because you earned it by getting old? Why am I fair game before I have even had a chance to build up any wealth?
It is easy to see how this is wrong.. what about access to heathcare.


According to recent analysis of the polls the drop in support of health care reform is from the left. I think everyone should realize that something is going to be passed and now is the time scream and shout or we should just wait on it. The problem is going to be after the midterms with , I can't believe I'm saying this, republican gains. I say this because other polls show large portions of the coalition that voted for Obama not hanging together. I think this is partly from the anti-war portion that didn't listen to Obama about Afghanistan during the election and then the center right who have been hammered on the media that they consume about the evils of Obama. This combination of disengagement and ideological retrenching will not help passing better legislation.

I think that something needs to be said about the political use of access to public programs. Thoughout our lives we have lived in the cultural jetwash of the boomer generation. The bands, movies, and books that we have been drenched in were mostly the products of the mythologizing of the boomer generation from WW2, the 60s to the present.This is because for the whole of our lives the boomers have been the largest single demographic both in votes and buying power.

The selective access to publicly paid for programs like Medicare allowed by politicians should be seen as a bribe to this powerful demographic. It is a pandering to the self interest of what is still the largest group of voters out there- the baby boomers. Now they want to allow an earlier buy in which seems to me to be an attempt to get more voters into a cost controlled system at my generations expense. How about if you are willing to pay , then you can buy in. It seems cynical that health problems should only happen if you are over some arbitrary age. It is even more preposterous to think that only old people need cost controls over thier healthcare.

I don't have a problem with paying taxes. I don't have a problem with healthcare reform. I do have a problem with dividing the electorate along demographic lines to form public policy. The youth in this country is consistently getting the shaft in this economy. There are less jobs starting, with higher qualifications demanded, necessitating larger student loans, which keep us from buying homes. For the most part we are becoming the caretakers of the last generation ( who hang onto their well paying jobs for longer and longer) and they apparently have cost controlled healthcare while they can invest their retirement into stock in the insurance companies the rest of us have to use unless we can prove we are so disabled or impoverished that we cannot work. Now they want to pass legislation mandating purchasing this healthcare and in the process win over the support of 55 to 65 yr olds by allowing them to buy into medicare. Even Medicaid could be understood in this prism if you remember that it would have covered the children of the baby boomers.


I often can't help thinking what a clever idea it was to divide the electorate in the first place with medicare. Imagine the support healthcare reform would have if the largest part of the American population wasn't being , in effect , bribed with preferential treatment. Universal healthcare , in my opinion, would be a fact. I think that the baby boomer dynamic and the cynical use of access to public programs is the reason why we don't have universal healthcare while other industrialized countries do.

There is ageism in this country and it is against us.