Retirement

Although chapters 14 and 15 covered a great deal of biological and cognitive functions related to the aging process, which always catch my attention, the article “As Good as it Gets” was my main focus of this week. This article attracted my curiosity due to the sharp tone of the writer. The way I read the article could be summarized in the words of Professor Gerard F. Anderson of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: “'The European attitude is, we're all in this together and sooner or later we're all going to become older and need some help. The U.S. attitude is, we're all rugged individualists and we're going to take care of ourselves, not others”

It’s more compelling to see retirement and quality of life for the elderly as the focus of this article. But, I’m not sure about that. Mostly, because AARP is a main advertiser of health insurance for seniors, and though it is a non-profit group, their $458 million in health insurance revenue in 2011 might claim differently.

Anyways, the article goes through the success of Netherlands’ healthcare and retirement system, and how the elderly are living so well over there in comparison to Americans.  It’s true that the Dutch system of converting workers’ pension’s reserves into an annuity upon retirement seems to work better than the defined contribution plan (such as 401K plans) practiced by most Americans. The duality that I see here is government retirement safety versus employee’s participation and contribution decisions. In my opinion, retirement boils down to one point: saving for later; whether this is ‘saving’ through taxes and federal mandatory contributions under heavy government management, or saving in private bank accounts and investing the money as each person believes is the best way.

Furthermore, I agree that the healthcare system needs health competition, so leaving it solely to business or to government will not end up well. A balance sounds like a better deal for everybody. Nevertheless, this is not a political post, so I’m not going to spend much time talking about healthcare reform. Instead, my main point about this article is that for a fast aging population that is living longer, and will have less active workers to support the retirement system costs, there is no easy and comfortable solution. As exemplified  in the article, “In Sweden, with its low birth rate and increasing number of pensioners, experts estimate that by 2035 the system will be seriously out of balance, with only about two workers supporting each older person.” Then, it’s just pure math to figure it out that system will fail as much as the American system might too.  Truth is that the elderly are facing and will face an even greater stress when it comes to retirement, which will contribute negatively for their mental and physical health. I think portraying one's country retirement success momentum is deceptive for a long term solution, and that's why I don't agree much with this article.