Simply the solution is to decrease benefits or increase revenue or some combination thereof. Right now, the most popular approach seems to be to means test the benefits and increase the costs by taxing the wealthy more. Medicare is a welfare program and a redistribution of wealth program. It will become more so if it is to survive. In the meantime, our children and grand children will be saddled by the debt that has already been incurred to support these programs.
I'd keep the present system until a new one is created for comparison. I regard it like fire insurance where all homeowners pay but only the one whose house burns down, collects.
LOL. I am sure you would since you are getting out three times what you paid into the system. The problem is that the country cannot afford the costs. From the 2013 Trustee Report
"The Trustees project that the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund will be the next to face depletion after the DI Trust Fund. The projected date of HI Trust Fund depletion is 2026, two years later than projected in last year’s report, at which time dedicated revenues would be sufficient to pay 87 percent of HI cost. The Trustees project that the share of HI cost that can be financed with HI dedicated revenues will decline slowly to 71 percent in 2047, and then rise slowly until it reaches 73 percent in 2087. As it has since 2008, the HI Trust Fund will pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures than it receives in income in all years until reserve depletion."
"The drawdown of Social Security and HI Trust Fund reserves and the general revenue transfers into SMI will result in mounting pressure on the Federal budget. In fact, pressure is already evident. For the seventh consecutive year, the Social Security Act requires that the Trustees issue a “Medicare funding warning” because projected non-dedicated sources of revenues primarily general revenues are expected to continue to account for more than 45 percent of Medicare’s outlays in 2013, a threshold breached for the first time in fiscal year 2010.
FYI: The most urgent problem is the depletion of the DI Trust fund in just three years. From the Trustee Report:
Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) program satisfies neither the Trustees’ long-range test of close actuarial balance nor their short-range test of financial adequacy and faces the most immediate financing shortfall of any of the separate trust funds. DI Trust Fund reserves expressed as a percent of annual cost (the trust fund ratio) declined to 85 percent at the beginning of 2013, and the Trustees project trust fund depletion in 2016, the same year projected in the last Trustees Report. DI cost has exceeded non-interest income since 2005, and the trust fund ratio has declined since peaking in 2003. While legislation is needed to address all of Social Security’s financial imbalances, the need has become most urgent with respect to the program’s DI component. Lawmakers need to act soon to avoid reduced payments to DI beneficiaries three years from now.
You raise some good points but the next generations perhaps can regard it as payback for the years of education and infrastructure that they received. We've stuck them with the cost of wars too. But I think generational wars are out of place in this country, they are not family friendly. Regards,
When I became eligible for Medicare, I already had private insurance through my husband’s retirement plan. I was told that private insurance was much better than Medicare and that I should try to stay on it as long as I could. HOWEVER, the insurance company I was covered under informed me that, since I was eligible for Medicare - regardless of whether or not I had it, they would only pay secondary and I would have to pay what Medicare would have paid. They essentially FORCED me to go on Medicare and drop them!
If you notice, the Obamacare plans don’t let you even know about premiums much less sign up for them if you are over 64. You ONLY have Medicare as your insurance choice.