Support for elderly can hurt young workers

I

 would like to respond to Bob Bartholomew’s Jan. 10 letter, “Leveraging Medicaid dollars could boost state economy,” where he encourages Montanans to support legislation that will entrench our children even deeper in debt.

Bartholomew is the Montana state director of AARP, a political lobbying organization whose purpose is to convince elected officials to take from the productivity of young Americans in order to benefit AARP’s members. Like most lobbyists, he operates in a zero-sum game, where there must be losers in order for somebody to win. In Bartholomew’s case, young people must lose so that AARP members can win.

Bartholomew states that Montana is aging faster than most states. What he fails to tell us is that this is because our state’s economic policy is unfriendly to young people. As a result, they leave Montana and move to states more economically friendly to them. Because the working young are our economic lifeblood, we can’t afford to scare them away, but Bartholomew and the lobbying efforts of his organization have successfully encouraged young people to take their productivity out of state.

Bartholomew quotes from a recent AARP survey that most Montana AARP members want to stay in their homes in retirement. I don’t disagree with this finding. Where we part company is he believes it is the role of government to make sure that it happens, and I believe financial security in retirement is a personal responsibility.

Bartholomew laments that there aren’t enough bed spaces in community-based retirement facilities to meet the demand. What he failed to mention is the reason for the lack of spaces. Due to successful AARP lobbying efforts, community retirement facilities have been forced to offer services for prices less than market cost.

Years ago, North Valley Hospital stopped offering custodial care to the elderly because of the government’s requirement for them to offer services for less than the market cost. Our community now has 75 less spaces available for our elderly citizens, thanks to government intrusion in the free market.

Bartholomew misleads us in his letter when he says home care is less expensive than a nursing home. Per hour, home care is much more expensive on a 24-hour basis than a nursing home.

Bartholomew is grossly mistaken if he believes that Medicaid is a powerful economic force. He figures that an 8 percent increase in Medicaid funding means $87.8 million for Montana. He either doesn’t understand economic theory, or he is using rhetorical skill to convince us to hurt young people to help his constituents.

Medicaid expenses do not boost local economies because the money must first be extracted from local economies. Substantially more than $87.8 million must first be taken away from young people through increased taxes before it can be funneled back to us through Medicaid spending. Unless he is suggesting we steal from North Dakota citizens to take care of Montana’s elderly, there is nothing Congress can give us without extracting from us first. Therefore, any economic stimulus created by Medicaid spending must first squelch other spending alternatives working young people have for their own families.

It is a tragedy that some parents didn’t raise their children to honor them in their retirement; however, most Montana parents did. Spending money this government doesn’t have, and expecting young workers to assume the obligation to pay it back, might help AARP and its members, but it definitely won’t help our economy. In fact, I will argue that it will add to the length and severity of our current recession.

Unlike Bartholomew, I am not urging Montanans to make life more difficult for working young people in order to expand our welfare system for the elderly. Instead, I urge all Montanans to take responsibility for their parents’ financial well-being. I also encourage Montanans to ask our elected officials to stop spending money on unconstitutional entitlement programs like Medicaid and instead create incentives for young workers to produce more so they can ensure their parents age with dignity.

The less the government steals from young people, the stronger our entire economy will be for future generations.

Joseph Coco is a resident of Whitefish.