My good friend Don pointed out a factual error in my last Ezine I want to correct. The enlistment age was not raised to 36, but rather to 42. That’s a move in the wrong direction, in my opinion.

Think of the reaction of the alumni of universities of the Big 10, Southeast Conference, Big 12, or PAC 10 if they discovered the following. Their scholarship offerings were so anemic those schools have given football scholarships to 42 year olds to play against 19-21 year olds. In addition, the schools have been unwilling to offer sufficient scholarships to completely fill their roster. As a result, the school will only put 7-8 players on the field to match the other team’s 11 players.

How long do you think the University President and Athletic Director would keep their jobs? Please realize what we are doing with our military is a strong parallel with what I just asked you to imagine about college football programs.

My friend Don is one of the smartest people I know. Our friendship is one of the true blessings in my life. Our discussion the other night was an intellectual feast for me and I’m still savoring the leftovers. I had already made a decision to write about the predictable patterns I see emerging from the Health Care Insurance Reform debate, but Don gave me several new perspectives to incorporate. You can expect that series to begin next week.

Over the last 10 to 15 years much ado has been made over the impact of the so-called Death Tax. The real name of the Tax was, of course, the Estate Tax. The reality was the Estate Tax was structured so only the top 2% wealthiest households were affected by its existence. No matter, the issue was described as if every household had sufficient income to be impacted.

Now we have developed a true Death Tax in our approach to medical care. This tax puts at least 16% of the population at risk so far and the number grows bigger every day. I’m talking about the risk of getting sick enough to die without medical insurance today before age 65.

One goal of working is to build sufficient assets in savings and investments so you can someday stop working. In other words, the proceeds from your savings and investments means you no longer have to be involved in day to day work in order to afford your life style. When you die, you hope to pass on that wealth to your heirs to make their lives better. You further hope your heirs will take the same approach with their own money. In this way, America has (as one of several reasons) been able to have the next generation live better than the preceding generation.

This approach is one reason Medicare was . . .

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