As Usual, Ignoring Broader Protection Issues

As for a national life and retirement road map, I wasn’t expecting much from the Republican National Convention last week in Cleveland. Needless to say, leaders from that side of the political aisle delivered on cue.

No discussion about long-term care. No segue into mental health treatment in the wake of horrific shootings. Lifetime income and retirement? Not a sound. Millions of Americans underinsured for life, disability and long-term care – met only with silence.

Not even a peep about Social Security, the largest and most far-reaching annuity program ever devised.

In short, other than passing references to eroding income, there was no talk about “tsunami” issues that threaten to drown our nation in still more debt and massive obligations on future generations.

There was lots of talk about Benghazi, though, plenty of screaming about keeping us, a nation of immigrants, safe from “outsiders,” even a photo or two outside the convention halls of an assault-weapon clad supporter of Ohio’s open-carry firearms policy.

Yes, those issues matter too and I’m not saying they shouldn’t be brought up.

Yet they pale in comparison to challenges surrounding the financing of lifetime income, the fraying of life and income protection, the erosion of spending power due to rising medical deductibles and how the gains of a nation already great may well contribute to its long-term demise.

Where’s the talk about that kind of protection? Border protection is important. Broader protection even more so.

The issue isn’t making America great again; it is how to make it greater, stronger more resilient.

We need to hear more about where leaders stand on finding better solutions to secure the long-term welfare of U.S. citizens, and less about building physical and psychic walls designed to segment and exclude.

And we need to hear about that right away.

It’s no wonder we seem to lurch from crisis to crisis as we react to individual “waves,” of this and that, at the expense of broader tidal movements with time horizons stretching out 30 years or more.

As the Democratic National Convention meets in Philadelphia this week I’m straining to hear what that assembly has to say about protection.

In the meantime, I got to run. My mentally wobbly 76-year-old mother-in-law is waiting for me to drive her less than a mile to Sherwin-Williams for wallpaper because she lacks the confidence and memory to drive there herself.

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Writer Cyril Tuohy has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. Cyril may be reached at cyril.tuohy@innfeedback.com.

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