"what about cut down social security and make it mandatory for children to take care of their own parents. "
Um..how about..NO. I'll try to be nice and simply put it this way: That's about the single worst idea I've ever seen on this BBS.
There are two basic problems with our current system:
First of all, many people are kept alive even after they've degenerated into nothing more than semi-human poop manufacturing machines. What is the POINT of force feeding (via tube) someone who can't get out of bed, can't think due to alzheimers, and has 0 quality of life? Keeping someone in that condition alive isn't "life", it's torture. They might not know what's going on, but believe me, their screams of pain are real enough after they've torn out their feeding tube for the fourth time because they don't know any better.
Of course, nursing homes and hospitals and such benefit massively from these kinds of long-term residents. Hence they'd fight and and all efforts to stop pointlessly prolonging people's lives.
Second, the entire health care indistry is in dire need of strict price regulation. Check out the annual price of a typical nursing home, and compare it to the average income of your typical working individual. Prescription medication costs are out of control (largely due to pointless advertising which needs to be banned). This is the problem the still-functional elderly have to live with and why the "graying" population will wreck the economy....they lose their entire life savings in a matter of months due to rampant costs.
J_A_B