Posted on 04/30/2015 2:45:36 PM PDT by entropy12
Your private insurance will usually require that medicare be your primary provider, and the private on secondary. The doctor who accepts you as medicare patient will get paid only what medicare approves, and he must write off the rest.
My problem has been, whenever we move to a new location, fewer and fewer doctors accept NEW medicare patients.
When polled, Americans over the last 50 years have consistency voiced support for limited government, that is, in general. As soon as you start asking them about specific programs, like Social Security or Medicare or veterans’ benefits, they dtart singing a different tune. They are all for reductions in government programs so long as it isn’t the programs from which they benefit.
As long as that is the accepted "wisdom," this free republic cannot be rescued and restored.
Yup.
Actually, it’s only a portion of your money.
If you invested your SS taxes into the stock market, you could expect a 7% annual return (i.e., doubling the investment value every 10 years),
Any idea of what your return is with SS?
1% at best!
If the intention was to force people to save for retirement we would have followed a similar model, forced contributions where the money is not accessible to the government. The intention of SS and Medicare was to expand government and usurp wealth, sold much in the same way as Obamacare. Roosevelt was lying to anyone with a microphone that SS was not a tax but a savings program and then having his lawyer scum arguing to the supreme court that it was indeed a tax.
No, we don’t like SS and Medicare, and if we were given the chance we would opt to be reimbursed everything we’ve paid into the programs, and be done with it.
My Best Friend from Childhood passed away last October at age 61. His Wife got $255 to Bury him.
He worked continuously since he was 16 Years Old, Fulltime at age 20 and he made pretty good Money the last 30 Years.
His Wife does get his Survivor Benefit, but it isn’t much more than she would have received through her own SS Account since she worked most of her Life in Finance.
She is 65 now and I think her Survivor Benefit is about $150 a Month more than she would have Received on her own.
As an aside. some years back I had our Financial Guy estimate how much Money we would have if all the SS and Medicare Money paid by us and our Employer’s (a misnomer since it all part of Employee Compensation) was Invested in the Market.
The Result? At Age 66 he estimated that I would have built up Investments totaling $2,250,000 and my Wife would have Investments totaling $1,250,000. He said he was being Conservative in his Estimations. No Pie in the Sky Stocks.
So much for that.
Replying to myself
Ok small correction: Ida Mae paid in about $25 but received $23K.
Another personal comment about the Bismarkian system.
Think about Imperial Germany.. you know Kaiser Bill.. Hun in the Sun and all that!
Took a less cynical approach to it’s people’s “Golden Years” then Saint Franklin & his heavenly choir of do-gooders!
The only proposal which might have even a minute chance would be the one with across the board cuts in all programs. Selectively cutting programs will raise the ire of different individuals who benefit from their pet program.
SS and medicare are NOT government programs, they are social contracts between americans and their government. Americans want these contracts to be honored!
Of course you will never get such a chance.
But if you did, like current payments, it would have to come out of the hides of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, without their consent.
Three Golden Rules straight from my Parents.
1. Life isn’t fair.
2. Nobody owes you a Living.
3. You help People who CAN’T help themselves, not People who WON’T help themselves. They weren’t referring to the Government, they were referring to Charity.
As long as the Ruling Class forces People to pay in to the System, they are obligated to meet the Program’s promises.
Until those Funds are set aside rather than being mixed in the General Fund, it will never get any Better.
The only (temporary) solution is gradually raising the Full Retirement Age to 70 for both SS and Medicare over a specified period of time.
The simple fact is that Life Expectancy “at the time” was used to estimate the Program’s costs, not that Ponzi Schemes have viable Financial Models in the first place.
I think I read here on FR that the Politicos of the time said Medicare would NEVER cost more than $30,000,000,000 a Year adjusted for Inflation. Well, that worked like a charm.
Yep, there are plenty of hypocrite “conservatives” who whine about the size of government and deficits, right up until someone takes aim at their goodies, then their fangs come out. See it all the time even around here.
“WE JUST WANT THE MONEY WE PAID INTO IT ALL OF OUR WORKING LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “
Even if that means bankrupting the country, or selling your own posterity into debt slavery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SS and Medicare aren’t even remotely comparable to banks. There are no “accounts” to speak of. They aren’t investments. They’re purely taxes that you paid to fund the previous generation of entitlement recipients.
Basically, you just don’t want to be the generation that gets left out in the cold when the Ponzi scheme collapses.
“we are so far into it that it would be impossible to shut it off now.”
Perhaps politically impossible to shut it off now voluntarily, but it will be shut off, eventually, since it isn’t sustainable. If we don’t do it voluntarily, it will be forced on us by reality.
“That is true but wasn’t that how it was set up? “
No, at the time SS was set up, the minimum age to receive benefits was greater than the average lifespan. So basically, it was set up so that only a minority of people who contributed would ever get a single penny back.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.