Press Release

To Tax or To Ration:
Medicare, Medicaid, and Our Long-Term Healthcare Crisis
Ken Doyle, PhD, and Larry Houk, JD

Out of today’s white-hot healthcare debate comes this calm, cool, and collected call for all Americans to join a national conversation about how we’ll take care of our aging parents and grandparents, our older sisters and brothers, and our frail, elderly relatives and friends.

“Reformers have totally neglected long-term healthcare for seniors,” says Dr. Ken Doyle, a professor at the University of Minnesota and the book’s lead author.

“All anybody’s been saying about seniors is that we should cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid,” adds Larry Houk, Roseville elderlaw attorney and co-author.

“When Medicare and Medicaid collapse, who will take care of Grandma?”

The two authors raise all the questions that senior citizens and their adult children, advisors, clergy, and caregivers need to think about regarding long-term healthcare for seniors, including such hot-button topics as paying for nursing-home care, rationing, end-of-life planning, voluntary and involuntary euthanasia, and the tension between what’s good for the young versus what’s good for the old.

They argue that maintaining the status quo is impossible but the government can’t raise taxes high enough to pay for the proposed new healthcare programs, to say nothing of other recent government spending. The inevitable outcome will be some form of healthcare rationing. All indications are that the burden is likely to fall most heavily on senior citizens.

“Rather than fight the inevitable, we should spend our time and energy designing and lobbying for a rationing program that matches American values,” insists Doyle. “a program we can all live with.”