Jim Hoefler, of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, who is the author of a recent book on death in America, notes that boomers have a fear their parents never knew: that an impersonal health-care system may hook them up to an array of beeping machines rather than admit failure.
The plan would transition Medicare from a defined-benefit system, in which the government is on the hook for whatever services seniors desire, to a defined-contribution system, in which the government pays out a dollar amount for health services, growing with inflation, incentivizing all participants in the system to prioritize health spending to those services that are most valuable.