Two Lives Collide Decades Apart in Age and (Future) Benefits

By Cyril Tuohy

Last week my 13-year-old Swiss-American daughter, Sarah, met her 89-year-old Swiss grandmother, Johanna, face to face for the first time in 10 years.

It was a moment of contrast.

My daughter, at the beginning of a life full of promise here in the U.S., spent precious hours with my mother in the twilight of a long and winding life.

The images Sarah has of her grandmother are drawn from old black-and-white photographs taken in the early 1960s.

Grandma Johanna was much younger then and the picture affixed in Sarah’s mind is of her grandmother sitting in a café, cigarette in hand, in Rome or Paris.

It is the image Sarah expected to see on this particular Tuesday afternoon in late July 2017, when she walked into the assisted living where my mother has lived for the past 10 years.

But that is not what she found.

Fast forward several decades from the black-and-white photo hanging on our wall.

Sarah’s grandmother, suffering from depression, spends her days in a darkened bedroom on the ground floor of her assisted living complex in Geneva, Switzerland, where she lives. She’s confined to a bed except to get up and go to the bathroom.

Grandma cracked a big smile at the sight of her granddaughter, who was only two years old last time they met.

Considering her age, grandma isn’t in bad physical shape at all.

She benefits from daily supervision and physical upkeep, paid for by a decent pension earned while working for a Swiss governmental institution for several years, Swiss Social Security, American Social Security (she was married to my U.S. father) and a modest investment fund she inherited.

Globally speaking, Grandma is among the more privileged 89-year-olds living on Earth, by far.
Fast forward several decades once more, when Sarah crests 89, which will be in March 2094. What will be the state of the U.S. benefit system?

Will Sarah have access to Social Security? Will U.S. Social Security even be around in 2085?
What of Sarah’s children? Will she visit me and my wife with her children? Will our grandchildren be protected by a group benefits plan from Sarah’s employer?

Will our nation have converted to a single-payer system by then? Will another solution come along that we’ve not dreamed of yet?

Will Sarah even be living in the U.S. in 2085? Or will she choose to live in another land where basic health benefits are guaranteed, as they are in France or Italy, or available at a fraction of the cost, as in Costa Rica?

In time, Sarah will answer these questions for herself, with her life still to live. Right now, grandma has been lucky enough to benefit from an era of generous benefits.

The day is approaching when Sarah and her grandmother will no longer have the chance to dwell in each other’s company, but at least grandma was adequately cared for and lived long enough to see her only grandchild four or five times.

I can only hope that Sarah, at 89, 99 or even 109, cracks a smile as wide as that of her grandma’s or any grandmother’s, when they lay eyes on her grandchildren.

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Writer Cyril Tuohy has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. Cyril may be reached at [email protected].