OK Boomer: About Healthcare...

I am, for better and for worse, a Baby Boomer.  We're the rock-and-roll generation, the generation that challenged authority, the generation that some prefer to call the Me Generation.  And we're the helicopter parent generation, the Facebook generation, and the generation that has failed to address crucial issues like climate change or wealth inequality,

We're also the generation that increasing finds fault with the generations that follow us.  Take your participation trophies and get off our metaphorical lawns.  Got it, snowflake? 

What I didn't know until today is that younger generations have a meme to mock us: "OK Boomer."  InsideHook says the phrase "...has become a mass insult Generation Z routinely hurls at the un-woke."  As Urban Dictionary defines it: 

When a baby boomer says some dumb shit and you can't even begin to explain why he's wrong because that would be deconstructing decades of misinformation and ignorance so you just brush it off and say okay.

I'm thinking that there is a lot about our current healthcare system that must make younger generations roll their eyes and just say, "Ok Boomer."

I read about it in The New York Times, but I quickly found that NBC News and InsideHook also addressed it today, and outlets like Stayhipp and The Daily Dot had already addressed it.  Had I been on Tik Tok, I might have known about it sooner, but, like most Boomers, I'm not. 

One 19 year-old told The Times: "The older generations grew up with a certain mind-set, and we have a different perspective...Teenagers just respond, ‘Ok, boomer.’ It’s like, we’ll prove you wrong, we’re still going to be successful because the world is changing.”  Another complained: "Everybody in Gen Z is affected by the choices of the boomers, that they made and are still making.  Those choices are hurting us and our future."

Similarly, NBC News said:

The phrase is a culmination of annoyance and frustration at a generation young people perceive to be worsening issues like climate change, political polarization and economic hardship. The 10 teens and young adults who spoke to NBC News about the phrase said “OK boomer” marked a boiling point for Gen Z and younger millennials, who feel pushed around or condescended to by older generations.

It is already being merchandised, and there is, of course, a song:

Healthcare is perhaps not on the top of Gen Z and millennials' minds, but it is up there.  They complain about not being able to afford health insurance (especially after they can't stay on their parents' health insurance), and when they do have to interact with getting healthcare system, they must just roll their eyes.  Faxes?  

Our healthcare system was, in many ways, shaped by the Greatest Generation: anchored around big institutions like hospitals and health insurance companies, with expectation of acquiescence to authority and tolerance with waiting and certain indignities.  

Despite our rebellious youth, Boomers have done precious little to really reshape the healthcare system we inherited.  If anything, it has gotten even bigger, more monolithic, more specialized, and certainly more expensive.  Meanwhile, we're less healthy and living less long.  

Boomers are proud of ourselves for using Dr. Google to do research and (sometimes) challenge our doctors, but our idea of victory is to have options like patient portals, televisits, and Apple Watches, none of which we actually use very much nor have done much to deliver real change to the healthcare system.  

OK Boomer.  

A healthcare system built by the Greatest Generation and only tinkered with by the Boomers is not going to cut it for Millennials/Gen Z.  Our healthcare system is much like climate change: it is already a disaster and is only going to get much, much worse unless we take drastic actions quickly.  Yet we do not.  As Greta Thunberg has shamed us, how dare we?  

Credit: CS News

These are generations born using technology.  They expect to be able to find what they want immediately, to obtain it almost as quickly, and to share what they are doing in real time, as well as benefit from others sharing similar experiences and interests.  These are generations going to climate change and gun violence protests -- much as Boomers might have gone to Vietnam War protests in our youth.  

The healthcare system they are going to demand will end up giving them experiences more like what they have come to expect elsewhere:

• It will be more on-demand;
• It will be more on-demand, 24/7; 
• It will be more participatory and more based on sharing/community;
• It will use technology that makes us feel more comfortable, rather than intimidating us;
• It will be more interactive and more fun;
• It will be built into the fabric of our lives.

Those long waits to get an appointment in an office somewhere, those long periods in healthcare settings when you don't know what is going to happen or when, those outrageous (and non-transparent) costs, those unpleasant mammograms/colonoscopes/MRIs, those siloed data -- OK Boomer. 

Chelsea Stahl / NBC News

Younger generations could explain to us why none of that makes sense, but why bother?  As much as Boomers like to complain about our health and our healthcare, they're right: they'd have to deconstruct decades of our inertia and preconceived concepts in order to do, and we still might not get it. 

Boomers seem to think that passing MedicareForAll (whatever that means) and maybe trying to legislate away high drug prices or surprise bills is what we need.  That's not going to cut it.  We're just stepping on the gas of a car already headed towards the cliff. 

OK Boomer. 


As The Times reported: “You can keep talking,” Ms. Kasman said, as if to a boomer, “but we’re going to change the future.”

I don't know what kind of a healthcare system Gen Z/millennials will come up with when they finally turn their attention to it -- they have a lot of other, more-pressing-to-them issues on their plate -- but I know they can't do any worse than we've done. 

Personally, I can't wait to see.