Demographic Deluge: There seems to be a flood of stories from around the world about hospital bed scarcity. Maybe it's the season, but I doubt it. This has been a very mild flu season. There hasn't been the influx of emphysema and pneumonia patients that we usually see in the winter. More likely it's due to the aging boomer generation, and it's likely to get worse as they get older, no matter what the Census department says:

Released yesterday, the United States Census Bureau's 243-page report on the aging population, among the largest and most comprehensive on the subject that the bureau has ever compiled, showed that today's older Americans are markedly different from previous generations. They are more prosperous, better educated and healthier, and those differences will only accelerate as the first boomers hit retirement age in 2011.

"Older Americans, when compared to older Americans even 20 years ago, are showing substantially less disability, and that benefit applies to men and to women," said Richard J. Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, on whose behalf the study was conducted. "All of this speaks to an improved quality of life."

Well, that may be true, but money can't buy you health. It can save you from back-breaking labor in your advanced years, but it won't save you from the ravages of time - cancer, heart disease, strokes, arthritis, worn out lungs, worn out bone marrow, worn out immune systems. Everything wears out eventually, and when it does, you get sick. No matter how much prosperity you may enjoy.