When you say "Our retirement system" to what are you referring. I guess you mean the U.S. Calling it a system is a misnomer. There is no one U.S. retirement system.
I guess you think there should be a Federal System that covers everyone. Who is everyone? Citizens, residents, illegal aliens, refugees?
Maybe you mean (and I would agree) that the social safety net should capture more people and provide better benefits.
Regarding how to plan and save for your retirement when you can't predict inflation or how long you will live. You can get good advice about that with some research. One thing you can do is buy long term care insurance so you don't get dumped in a nursing home for people that only have Medicaid, those are not very nice places. Some of them are not that bad but how to make sure you would get into a good one?
Spending your retirement savings in a way that it does not run out before you die. You can use the 4% rule suggested by Forbes. Only withdraw 4% of your retirement savings each year. That way you will never run out of money. Of course, if you retire later or as you get older you can maybe increase that.
How to deal with inflation uncertainty? You hedge the inflation rate either by inflation adjusting investments like TIPS or something like Gold or select stocks. Some investments increase faster when inflation is higher.
Medical expenses are dealt with in retirement just like they are pre-retirement. You need proper insurance. Sure you will have out of pocket costs but you need to budget them just like you need to budget the cost of the insurance.
Sure all of this is out of reach of a lot of people and that is why we need a safety net that captures more people. Medicaid sucks, it is not enough.
Properly done universal health care would go a long way to making retirement a possibility for everyone but it seems a stretch to imaging a proper universal health care system in the U.S.A.
TEK