Retirement, Ahhh the land of fulfillment. Everyone is wondering why New York sent Corona virus patients back to rest homes.
Let’s figure it out. You retire and later on when you get really old you have a stroke or get Alzheimer’s; you have a problem. Nursing homes cost $50.000 to $140,000 a year for complete care. Now if you are married, the other spouse may be in good shape, not needing the services. Paying for the service could deplete you family’s retirement savings very fast. In most states you don’t have to sell the house to get Medicare benefits for your spouse.
Usually the first step is the rest home, and then it progresses to the nursing home. Most of these places have to make a profit. So, if you have run out of funds, they try to unload you onto a Medicare home. The wait times to get in are ridiculous. If at any time you come down with an emergency health issue; heart attack, stroke, influenza or Corona virus, the hospital will accept you for treatment.
Once their situation has been addressed by the hospital, they try to ship them back to the rest home they came from. If the person is indigent, the rest home doesn’t want them back. And in some states like New York, the governor made a point that the people had to go back to the rest home they came from, otherwise they became wards of the state. The real issue was who had to pay for the person’s expenses. Gov. Cuomo did not want to fund it. And by State government decree, he inadvertently killed about 4,000 rest home patients by returning recovering corona case patients back to their rest home.
The other problem here is one that escapes most people. 50 years ago, interest rates ranged between 6 to 13 percent. And most people who saved for retirement were getting about 8 percent on their savings and their nest egg doubled every 9 years. So, today, it isn’t surprising to see retired people with savings of one million dollars. The catch is, the money no longer returns 8% interest or 80K per year, maybe about 10K. This is where seniors are getting ripped off, very low artificial interest rates.
The real question that needs to be asked, did risk leave the market? Increased risk implies higher interest rates. 1 to 2 percent return on your savings has to be a joke. The market has no risk? Is this even possible?
If the government wanted to tax someone with money how can they do it? One, by taxing the total amount saved or by printing more dollars that makes the saved dollars’ worth less. By reducing the interest rates to 1% the government is taxing savers about 7% on their money in the bank. Notice how clean this is, you don’t have to ask anyone how much money they have in the bank, the saver just get less interest.
So, if you are a senior in retirement, you get hit twice, no real interest on your savings and inflation on your savings of about 8 to 12 percent a year. And of course, you’re too old to do anything about it. And if you did, your lawsuit would outlive you. You don’t buy green bananas when your 85.
We have a new group of people in the mix, the young adults. To them cigarettes have always been $8.00 a pack. They are not about to save any money; the miracle of compound interest is dead. They will go out and buy a home, and the government loves that, more taxes and the taxes increase with the homes “value.” The old people (like me) can warn them about cigarettes costing 25 cents a pack way back when-- and that has a name “inflation.” “But grandpa that was a long time ago, times have changed.”
So, we the seniors can see that there are no future incentives to save with these very low interest rates, and now we know why our plans for retirement no longer deliver the interest rates we anticipated 40 years ago. If we live to be 85, we have a very good chance to run out of our savings if we have to go into a rest home. The governments artificially set low interest rate is stealing from those who have saved money, the people who saved for retirement. Congress knows that they can’t tax people that are broke.
If all the banks want to pay is 1 percent, convert your holdings to gold silver and platinum. Nobody on the internet can steal your savings if it is in a deposit box. It is invisible nobody knows you have it. There is absolutely no reason to have a bank account for savings, the present inflation rate of 12 percent will eat you alive (mostly in the medical field). The Government is counting on everyone to contribute to an IRA or 401 K to save on income taxes. Forget that, cigarettes will be $140 a pack when the young retire. Congress cannot print gold and silver. People need to realize that there is no risk buying precious metals. There is a risk on holding on to savings long term, the return is not there.
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Friday, May 01, 2020
The Corona Virus, the Terror Fear Creates
This Corona-19 virus is killing people, but not at the rate implied by the statistics. This article in USA Today April 24th shows that:
If the deceased patient had no health insurance normally there would be no reimbursement to the hospital. But if they can attribute it to Corona virus, they get paid. Notice you get more for Corona than Influenza. As a hospital administrator you can increase your bottom line by selecting how the person died.
New York and New Jersey are way out of specs on confirmed cases. Most states have a death rate of about 42 per million of population. New York claims 1,200 deaths per million and New Jersey claims 744 per million people at this time due to Corona Virus. 89 percent of all Corona-19 deaths are over the age of 65. We knew in December of last year that New York City had a storage problem at the morgues, they had run out of space. So, the additional refrigeration units needed for bodies was no surprise. Notice any exaggeration of the number of deaths due to the virus, tends to add to the panic and the need for public officials to do more now. And this is an election year, God help us! Here is a link to the mischief being done: NYC Funeral Homes
We have contained the virus outbreak to where it did not overwhelm the health care system. The people dying were the elderly especially in rest homes. These people were the prime consumers of health care. But now we have inadvertently shut down the regular health care system for heart attacks, strokes, cancer surgery, chemo therapy, and blood testing. People are scared to death to see a doctor especially if retired. Now we have people dying from causes other than corona virus. And the funny thing, the doctors and nurses that support these operations are being laid off.
We have a problem for the world. No work, no food. Translated: no money and you starve to death. This could kill billions. And the bad thing about starving people is, they are the Petri dish for new diseases.
Where to from here? Let’s assume that the virus has done its damage and has moved on. We need to get back to work. We could lose more elderly people to the virus, but they are the ones that we need to be more protective with. Otherwise the cure is worse than the disease. BTW I’m 73.
As a post script.
My grandmother was put in a rest home when she was 90. At the age of 96 the rest home called me and said she was dying. I went to her bedside and called emergency and they informed me that if it wasn’t a heart attack, stroke or something that they could treat, they would not be able to help her and she would not be admitted to the hospital for care. I took her off all 30 of her medications. She recovered and lived another 3 years. At that rest home, there were many people in very bad shape that had no idea of who they were or why they were there.
People do not realize that rest homes charge from $50,000 to $90,000 a year for taking care of a loved one. Usually the person makes it to the home when they can no longer take care of themselves because of dementia, lack of mobility from physical problems, or whatever. They need around the clock care. Just tripping on a rug and falling to the ground can break a hip or an arm.
On my grandmother’s 99th birthday I went to visit her at the rest home and commented with a smile, that in one more year, she would be 100. This woman, had all of her wits about her, she looked straight at me and said tersely “How would you like to be a 19 year old woman trapped in a 100 year old body.” I didn’t have an answer.
"Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it's a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they're Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000."
If the deceased patient had no health insurance normally there would be no reimbursement to the hospital. But if they can attribute it to Corona virus, they get paid. Notice you get more for Corona than Influenza. As a hospital administrator you can increase your bottom line by selecting how the person died.
New York and New Jersey are way out of specs on confirmed cases. Most states have a death rate of about 42 per million of population. New York claims 1,200 deaths per million and New Jersey claims 744 per million people at this time due to Corona Virus. 89 percent of all Corona-19 deaths are over the age of 65. We knew in December of last year that New York City had a storage problem at the morgues, they had run out of space. So, the additional refrigeration units needed for bodies was no surprise. Notice any exaggeration of the number of deaths due to the virus, tends to add to the panic and the need for public officials to do more now. And this is an election year, God help us! Here is a link to the mischief being done: NYC Funeral Homes
We have contained the virus outbreak to where it did not overwhelm the health care system. The people dying were the elderly especially in rest homes. These people were the prime consumers of health care. But now we have inadvertently shut down the regular health care system for heart attacks, strokes, cancer surgery, chemo therapy, and blood testing. People are scared to death to see a doctor especially if retired. Now we have people dying from causes other than corona virus. And the funny thing, the doctors and nurses that support these operations are being laid off.
We have a problem for the world. No work, no food. Translated: no money and you starve to death. This could kill billions. And the bad thing about starving people is, they are the Petri dish for new diseases.
Where to from here? Let’s assume that the virus has done its damage and has moved on. We need to get back to work. We could lose more elderly people to the virus, but they are the ones that we need to be more protective with. Otherwise the cure is worse than the disease. BTW I’m 73.
As a post script.
My grandmother was put in a rest home when she was 90. At the age of 96 the rest home called me and said she was dying. I went to her bedside and called emergency and they informed me that if it wasn’t a heart attack, stroke or something that they could treat, they would not be able to help her and she would not be admitted to the hospital for care. I took her off all 30 of her medications. She recovered and lived another 3 years. At that rest home, there were many people in very bad shape that had no idea of who they were or why they were there.
People do not realize that rest homes charge from $50,000 to $90,000 a year for taking care of a loved one. Usually the person makes it to the home when they can no longer take care of themselves because of dementia, lack of mobility from physical problems, or whatever. They need around the clock care. Just tripping on a rug and falling to the ground can break a hip or an arm.
On my grandmother’s 99th birthday I went to visit her at the rest home and commented with a smile, that in one more year, she would be 100. This woman, had all of her wits about her, she looked straight at me and said tersely “How would you like to be a 19 year old woman trapped in a 100 year old body.” I didn’t have an answer.
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