This slow economic growth coincides with the aging of society and waves of baby boomer retirements that threaten the stability of social programs and may lead to rapidly rising deficits, said Quinn.

“I’m still an optimist,” she added. “I’m not the kind of person who smells flowers and looks around for a coffin.”

Yet Quinn did sound alarm over the U.S. healthcare system and the state of healthcare reform. Congress will probably succeed in repealing parts of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, she said, including taxes that helped fund Medicaid expansions and rules requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions without inflating premiums.

The immediate impacts of these changes will be deep cuts to state Medicaid programs and large premium increases, said Quinn.

“Planners who have not paid attention to insurance might want to take note,” she said. As almost all insurers, and many policyholders, leave the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges, the entire insurance market will be severely disrupted.

The aging trend should have more Americans considering long-term care coverage, said Quinn, but advisors must help clients sort good providers from the bad, as much of the long-term care industry is unstable and many of the holders of LTC coverage will experience “massive losses.”

With longer lives and muted investment returns, retirees and near-retirees should consider higher allocations to stocks in lieu of bonds and other asset classes, she said.

Quinn urged advisors to keep an open mind about using low-cost insurance products—like some annuities—to help create a more diversified income stream in retirement.

She also panned the trend of replacing a portfolio’s traditional income stream, via bonds or bond funds, with other  income-generating products like MLPs and REITs.

“I don’t see what the point is, all that should really matter is a portfolio’s total return,” Quinn said. “We’ve all seen high income investments that attract the eye. Junk bonds, for example, over the long run lose more money via defaults and dividend cuts than they create via higher yields. Investors never capture the income reported. Concentrating on dividend payers cost you diversification. Bond alternatives are not bonds.”