Regarding Medicare, providing health care to those over 65 years old, yes it is critical to cover disease and illness and broken bones, etc., but if we talk about 'quality of life', why doesn't Medicare cover dental, hearing and optical? How great can life be to spend age 65 to death, maybe 30+ years, with painful dental issues, poor to no hearing, and can't see well? Why must Medicare (and other government programs) be half-assed in design...
Many Medicare Advantage plans do have hearing and vision coverage. Not sure about the dental. Probably need a separate plan for that.
Thanks but I was thinking about the root Medicare coverage of why does the government leave out and/or ignore dental, optical and hearing? Gotta wonder how much more productive...and happy...aging people might be if they could afford to maintain their dental, optical and hearing?
It's a primitive plan, but hey, it was set up in 1965. It only got a prescription plan a decade ago and we still have not figured out how to pay for it. And that's why I doubt it will be updated with even more benefits. We're already broke. The plan goes bust in about 14 years anyway.
I'm thinking the costs for dental, hearing and optical would be quite small in comparison to the basic medical care costs of Medicare. And more productive people will be healthier which offsets some of the medical costs. And dental issues can lead to poor nutrition and bacteria in the system causing further medical problems. But I know the country is broke, the taxpayers aren't going to go for anything that costs more, and government actually doesn't give a rip about this stuff...
In this state dental care and optical are covered by Medicaid - perhaps so in others as well. Whatever the case, all forms of needs should be covered.
I think the neglect of dental, hearing and optical care explains a huge portion of the unhappy and disgruntled people today. We've all got typical problems which slap us in the face all the time like not enough income, too much debt, no savings, unemployment, taxes, just trying to keep up with things, then in parallel we're struggling with eyesight or hearing or dental issues and everything is exacerbated...
