Reverse Mortgage Guide

A friend of ours, about age 60, just had a terrible accident. He apparently tripped in his own house, broke his leg and hip and the result was five hours of surgery.

Our friend was lucky, at least in a financial sense. He has insurance. Without insurance the cost of his treatment would bankrupt most households.

We need a better system. We need to assure that no one is bankrupted or foreclosed because of a freak accident.

For millions of people we have a healthcare system which offers the promise of treatment and care in exchange for a lifetime of poverty. Given that the need for medical treatment is inevitable, such an equation is immoral.

Other countries have adopted systems which assure universal medical care. Are such programs perfect? Of course not. Are they better than our system, a system which maximizes costs, minimizes benefits and excludes millions? Of course.

As a start, we need to make sure that everyone has needed and appropriate vaccinations. For those who worry about costs, a not unfair concern, it is much cheaper to provide preventive care than to pay for diseases and conditions later in life. We need to provide major medical coverage for everyone. And we need to include dental and eye care for the obvious reason that teeth and vision are important.

Long ago I had an insurance policy which had a $5,000 deductible. In effect, it covered nothing — except a major health event. Such a policy, if universally available, would be a start.

The point is made that people often get reverse mortgages to provide for medical care. If we had a decent health coverage, such a need would not exist.

Our friend will require months to heal. But at least when the process is complete he will not be impoverished. Everyone should be so fortunate.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 4:34 am and is filed under Reverse Mortgage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.