CHICAGO — Entitlement reform is sorely needed for programs such as top long-term care funders Medicare and Medicaid, a leading economist said Thursday.
Gary Cohn, President Trump’s former Director of the U.S. National Economic Council and the former president of Goldman Sachs, couldn’t have been much clearer in his pessimism during a wide-ranging talk on economic issues. He kept a record crowd of 3,119 chuckling and intrigued during the opening General Session at the NIC Fall Conference.
“The inefficiencies in these programs are just extraordinary,” he said in a Sheraton Grand ballroom. “At some point, we have to re-rationalize from a cost perspective, if not service. Our system is so broken, it’s not funny.”
The need for reform is a given, he said, but he doubted the political fortitude to get it done exists.
“If we start on it today, it’s painful. When we [actually] do it, it will be impossible,” he concluded.
Cohn said part of the solution should be term limits, which he thinks would foster more collaboration.
“If you knew [as a lawmaker] you had to go back to your job, it would be different,” he said.
Not necessarily heartening for the assorted providers, operators and investors in the room, he also predicted a “higher-wage world” in the future. This, he noted several times, will be due to fallout from current economic conditions, which include a very tight 3.8% national unemployment rate and 7.1 million job openings.
In other Fall Conference news:
- NIC announced a new, endowed scholarship fund in memory of Tony Mullen, an NIC co-founder who died unexpectedly earlier this year of a heart attack.
Fellow co-founder Robert Kramer said an initial goal of $400,000 in donations and pledges has already been met to endow studies at the Erickson School at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Kramer projected that the total would be around $600,000 by the end of the campaign. Donations can be made via NIC.
- In a session titled “Understanding Boomers — Beyond Just Real Estate,” panelists called for enhanced programming to complement well-appointed “cool” living spaces.
“A sense of community and purpose really are the antithesis of loneliness and isolation,” said Tim Carpenter, CEO and founder of EngAGE, which describes itself as “a nonprofit that takes a whole-person approach to community and creative, healthy aging by providing arts, wellness, lifelong learning, community building and intergenerational programs” in affordable senior and multi-generational apartment communities.
