>>Well, John, why not start by recognizing the problem, rather than villainizing Grandma and Grandpa.

In the US I get to recognize the problem every day, fwiw. But recognizing is not solving. So you can expect to hear variants of these observations out of the mouths of politicians and protesters within a year. Grandma and grandpa are going to be presented with these figures and asked why they get to sit on piles of assets while the burden is transferred to current and future workers who can't expect the same when their time comes. You'll see.

>>There is no conceivable funding mechanism that can handle charges like those.

Classic Ponzi scheme: the liabilities grow until there aren't enough suckers to cover them. Who do you suppose did that, and why?

>>My children are being choked by private insurance premiums - blame Grandma for that?

Certainly you can't blame politicians who were punished for proposing a national scheme like the rest of the Free World.

FWIW, Obama gets little credit for the ACA's requirement for 80% of health insurance premiums to be used for benefits, which limits the ability of the insurers to gouge too heavily. The unintended perverse incentive is that you can raise dividends by allowing costs and therefore premiums to inflate. The insurers have no interest in publicly negotiating better Chargemaster rates as ought to be possible, since lower premiums means lower dividends. In fact the insurers do pay less than Joe Average though you won't see calls for national reporting of that. Accordingly, medical Insurance in the US is the most fabulous business because people are conditioned to accept huge premiums for huge published costs that the insurers don't actually pay, and insurers don't need to underwrite for predictable costs of the elderly who are covered by Ponzicare.