Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
Our union faces another threat to its integrity and this time it comes in the form of cuts to the budget.
Medicare makes up about 20% of the whole federal budget so if one wants to make cuts it is tempting to make them here. And there is talk of reducing the number of people who can claim medicare. Since the states run medicare for the feds (the dirty little way they got around the constitution) each state would be responsible for making the cuts. Arizona is thinking that they would cut parents without children and parents with children who make more money.
But medicare is supposed to be like an insurance policy not like an entitlement program. The people who pay into the system are supposed to be the same ones who collect their own money later when they retire and need medical care. These cuts would be the equivalent of an insurance company telling you that they don't plan to pay for your house fire after you have paid premiums for 30 years because you have more money in the bank than they think you should have.
These cuts would also increase the unfairness among our population as more and more money is redistributed from those who have paid in and earned the payouts to more and more people who have not paid into the system. This kinds of unfairness will eventually destroy our republic.
The solution to medicare's problem is not to make the system unfair and cheat people of the contributions they have made but to make it more fair and cut the aspects of it (added later after its inception) that make payments to people who have not paid into the system.
Yes, once the system stops making payments to people who have not paid in it will balance better. But there will still be times when the number of people who are collecting will exceed the number of people who are paying in (like right now with baby boomers). That is the nature of ponzi schemes and the only thing to do is to suck it up and live with it knowing that there will be other times when the number of people paying in will exceed the number of people collecting.
And obviously another way to fix it would be for congress to stop using the funds as their own personal bank account. Medicare funds must not be mixed with other funds.
Lastly, to really fix the system we need to reduce the payments in and the payments out gradually until the whole plan is scrapped and replaced by a new workable one. I would recommend reducing it by 1% every year for the next hundred years. Somewhere in those hundred years we can create the replacement and eliminate it sooner. Payments into private health care savings accounts that would reduce ones payments into FICA would be a good start to eliminating the program.
If we really wanted to get radical each and every state could refuse to cooperate with the feds and stop running the program. Then when it collapsed they could force the feds to return every dollar paid in back to the people who paid those dollars - with interest. Each person would then have their own money back to use for retirement. Older people who would have paid in longer would have more. Younger people would have less but would have more time to build a nest egg without the crushing burden of paying social security taxes. Of course it will never happen.
Medicare makes up about 20% of the whole federal budget so if one wants to make cuts it is tempting to make them here. And there is talk of reducing the number of people who can claim medicare. Since the states run medicare for the feds (the dirty little way they got around the constitution) each state would be responsible for making the cuts. Arizona is thinking that they would cut parents without children and parents with children who make more money.
But medicare is supposed to be like an insurance policy not like an entitlement program. The people who pay into the system are supposed to be the same ones who collect their own money later when they retire and need medical care. These cuts would be the equivalent of an insurance company telling you that they don't plan to pay for your house fire after you have paid premiums for 30 years because you have more money in the bank than they think you should have.
These cuts would also increase the unfairness among our population as more and more money is redistributed from those who have paid in and earned the payouts to more and more people who have not paid into the system. This kinds of unfairness will eventually destroy our republic.
The solution to medicare's problem is not to make the system unfair and cheat people of the contributions they have made but to make it more fair and cut the aspects of it (added later after its inception) that make payments to people who have not paid into the system.
Yes, once the system stops making payments to people who have not paid in it will balance better. But there will still be times when the number of people who are collecting will exceed the number of people who are paying in (like right now with baby boomers). That is the nature of ponzi schemes and the only thing to do is to suck it up and live with it knowing that there will be other times when the number of people paying in will exceed the number of people collecting.
And obviously another way to fix it would be for congress to stop using the funds as their own personal bank account. Medicare funds must not be mixed with other funds.
Lastly, to really fix the system we need to reduce the payments in and the payments out gradually until the whole plan is scrapped and replaced by a new workable one. I would recommend reducing it by 1% every year for the next hundred years. Somewhere in those hundred years we can create the replacement and eliminate it sooner. Payments into private health care savings accounts that would reduce ones payments into FICA would be a good start to eliminating the program.
If we really wanted to get radical each and every state could refuse to cooperate with the feds and stop running the program. Then when it collapsed they could force the feds to return every dollar paid in back to the people who paid those dollars - with interest. Each person would then have their own money back to use for retirement. Older people who would have paid in longer would have more. Younger people would have less but would have more time to build a nest egg without the crushing burden of paying social security taxes. Of course it will never happen.
