Puna economy needs retirement homes

[terracore]

I wasn't trying to belie your very good idea, it has a lot of merit and there are a lot of USA communities and third world countries competing for US retirees. A guaranteed income stream is very attractive for host communities.

I think the hangup is #2 on the list: Healthcare. If I lived in Belize and needed acceptable but also affordable healthcare, Mexico isn't far away. I have friends in Saipan (part of the USA for those who don't know) and they go the Philippines when they need more than their islands can provide. They don't come here. In Hawaii we are pretty much stuck here, and our healthcare options are going to continue to decline each year. It needs to be going the other direction to attract the elderly. Or at least level out. As it is, many of our healthcare workers are temporary employees employed by agencies on the mainland. That costs a lot, and is a temporary stopgap at best. In order to get them we're not only paying a salary, but housing, travel, per diem, etc costs as well.

[randomq]

Good point. Once established I think a nexus of such communities would attract much needed medical talent. But how to get to that point? Probably massive investment, and/or huge tax incentives.

[terracore]

Our daughter is in college pursuing a medical degree, and she works at Queen's medical center in HNL. The reason why there isn't anybody entering medical professions is because nobody can afford the schooling. Meanwhile, trucking companies can't hire enough drivers at 80K per year that don't require a high school degree. And young adults with crushing student loan payments for their political science degrees can't make their payments by working at Starbucks.

The problem for obtaining the professionals is... priorities. The problems with the health care industry go way deeper than this online forum.

In the near-term, the USA will plug these holes by continuing to recruit health care workers from other countries (currently 1 in 6 and rising). Meanwhile, you can learn all about leftist political ideology from your Starbucks barista.

[kalakoa]

because nobody can afford the schooling

At least those tuition increases paid for new state-of-the-art lecture halls and huge raises for all the professors so as to create a higher-quality education for the students.

[ckg]

I would add another big issue with the elderly and healthcare is that federal payers are notoriously extremely low and have a huge regulatory burden attached to their payouts. The reality is Federal payers (medicaid/medicare) pays very little compared to other insurers but cover many people especially the elderly. Very tough for small outfits (provider or provider groups) to stay solvent and causes a lot of overhead/cost for larger entities (hospitals and the like) to have to comply to keep the very small (generally fixed per DRG) federal dollars per service they get. On the other hand rich retirees already come here if they want to. They may have private healthcare insurance from their working lives to help or just cash pay for service.

[terracore]

Post deleted as warrants own thread