Read: Teach your retirement savers well

But, just like you can't trust the headline numbers of political polls and marketing surveys, the real meaning of these numbers reveals itself when one takes a peek under the hood at the internals.

It turns out, when you look at the government data, nearly nine in ten employees have access to retirement plans– if they work for a company that employs five hundred or more people.

If, on the other hand, you work for a company that employs fewer than one hundred people, you've got only a fifty-fifty chance of having access to a retirement plan.

In order to combat this perception of a universal lack of accessibility, some policy planners fault the deficiency of the available retirement plan vehicles and have offered new and different alternative vehicles.

Read: A motto for fiduciaries: 'Don't confuse effort with results'

But if roughly 90 percent of one segment of employees do have access (and, based on other articles, are very satisfied with their 401k), do we really need another vehicle?

After all, a 401k is a 401k no matter how many employees a company has working for it.

Before taking various shots in the dark, wouldn't it more sense for these policy makers to look at the aforementioned internals and determine why small firms are less likely to offer a retirement plan than larger firms?

Perhaps it's not the plan itself, but the currently regulatory framework enveloping the plan.

We all know the compliance burden and associated fiduciary liability that comes with it can be daunting to owners and executives who can't afford to hire specialists.

Or maybe it's the way the retirement plan service industry has evolved.

A common complaint among smaller firms (and policy makers) mentions the high costs entailed in offering and operating a retirement plan. The largess of the bigger firms represents a real bargaining chip for negotiating lower fees. Smaller firms simply do not have the assets to negotiate in the same way.

If we look at the root causes for the lack of retirement plan offerings by smaller companies, we might stand a real chance to successfully address the dearth of retirement plans in those firms.

Indeed, a better question might be why, in a competitive service environment, we haven't seen a free market solution to this obvious marketplace need.

Who should we tag with the responsibility of discovering practical answers to this issue?

It's clear that if politicians, regulators, and industry leaders each advocate only their own resolution, we're likely to end up with a suboptimal result.

We need all three to work together and, if necessary, take the necessary individual steps to allow others to develop the best responses to the "retirement crisis."

And don't be fooled.

There's no doubt about it. There is a retirement crisis, but it depends on the size of the firm you work for, not the lack of an adequate retirement savings mechanism.