Those on Medicare have already pre-paid that tax. We still pay income taxes short form now even on SS/Medicare/Tricare Life, Navy Pension.
I agree with you with adults on Medicaid. A sliding scale for income on ins and co-pays could be considered. So the poor at least pick up part of their care.
Which is why a high risk ins pool is needed. Some Chronically ill patients can never work, thus DSSI or Medicaid picks up the tab. Unless you are as rich as Bill Gates. Working poor are another batch. Lack of education, skills, add in chronic health issues many of them caused by doctors, or life styles, where do they turn, Medicaid/DSSI as it takes both. They paid some into Medicare, but not enough. When a 3 yr old becomes that chronically ill person with MD the cause, and ends up first a wheel chair then bedridden on a breathing machine they will never work.
Then you have to factor in hospitals jack up the prices big time Saline IV is a $10 to produce product factoring in materials and labor, why is it costing 300% more? Docs get kick backs for scripting new drugs, instead of the older ones, not that the new work better, they haven’t enough research or history to prove they are that effective or better than an older proven drug. Tons of factors no one considers, Big Pharma needs to be broke up with the Sherman Act, stop the incestuous relationship between them and Congress members, most of their lobbyist are former congress people, and the FDA needs a serious revamp.
Medicare alone has a $60 BILLION YEARLY WASTE AND FRAUD ISSUE. Same goes for VA and Medicaid. Not to mention the Illegals and Refugees being put on it, that they don’t or didn’t earn the right to.
This Opioid Crisis is a LSM and researcher’s Manufactured crisis. Heroin laced with Fenyatal stolen or cooked like Meth is the biggest cause.
Hubby’s 3 day stay in the ER for angina attack, a few years ago because the small hospital had no bed for him was $55K ER rates not a room rate. Couple of Nitro paste, a whole aspirin a day, EKG which the leads where left on and hooked to a monitor, IV’s, meals, and a walking stress test is all he had, besides the Heart Doc who was called in who billed separate. That is far higher than it should have been. I hate to think what this new partial knee is going to be. Bills for it have not come in yet.
Thanks for the detailed and considered response.
Of course, Medicare recipients are on average taking out far more than they put in—making it one of the biggest wealth-transfer entitlements we have. My own parents I’m sure are in that category, though they also pay for the supplements, and I of course wouldn’t want anything different for them. Or three-year-olds with MD, etc.
Really, there are two issues complicating each other here. One is the lack of free markets and free market pricing, which drives up the costs.
The other is assuring that everyone gets the care they need, which for the large part already happens. Should there be means testing for Medicare above a certain threshold of costs? I think so. Likewise, those who for whatever capability or life-choice reasons incur bigger bills than they can afford short of bankruptcy, I think it could be argued should go through bankruptcy before the taxpayers start simply picking up their bills.
Again, I look to the fairness issue for those we force to stay impoverished for their Medicaid and those we allow to stay more affluent, while forcing others to pay their bills.
It sounds like we are in agreement that some sort of sliding scale approach to Medicaid support should be used to encourage those on Medicaid (and SSI—I know people who get qualified for that in a rough patch, and then are afraid to ever work again because they don’t know if they could get coverage again if they felt at some point they needed it).
A lot of our job outsourcing now, for example, goes to call center work in India and the Philippines, when many of our in some way disabled folks would be perfectly capable of learning to do that work from their own home.
Looking at the bogus nonrepeal repeal of Obamacare the GOP are trying to palm off on us when they control the House, Senate and presidency, however, doesn’t bode well for our being able to straighten out all of the perverse incentives, fraud, and exorbitant costs currently larded into our system.