No, the previous commentator is right. Benefits paid out to current recipients FAR AND AWAY exceed anyhting they ever paid in, even assuming a real rate of return equal to the market.
You are ignorant about entitlement spending. I suspect you are a senior demanding more government benefits. Social Security and Medicare are generational Ponzi schemes. Early retirees contributed relatively little but received increasing benefit levels. Congress has raised benefit levels many times to buy votes of seniors like yourself demanding higher benefit levels. Congress substantially raised payroll taxes starting in the mid 80s to pay for benefits so the situation will be reversed for most baby boom retirees. They have paid lots of payroll taxes, especially for Social Security. High end earners have paid very large amounts of Medicare taxes since the mid 90s because the earnings cap was lifted.
If you are a baby boom retiree, you have some reasonable justification for feeling ripped off. Otherwise, you are just demanding more welfare.
From a national economic perspective, your position as a baby boom or greatest generation does not matter. Congress has spent excess payroll that should have been saved to support retirees. The ship is sinking from the combined weight of excess government spending. Government spending will be drastically curtailed directly or indirectly. I prefer direct reductions with initiatives to produce such as elimination of Social Security benefits in exchange for opting out of payroll taxes. Indirect reductions are much more likely however. The Democrats will raise taxes (even on the elderly). The value of the dollar will fall leading to inflation and other woes.
A day of reckoning is coming. The combined weight of unfunded liabilities (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal pensions, state and local pensions) along with huge increases in other government spending will have a profound impact on the economy.
I will draw you a nice analogy.
If you pay $1,500 a year over 40 years into a fund that is supposed to pay for all of your expenses then at best you would have saved about $180K using a 5% interest rate.
Most people have $1,500 a year deducted from their paychecks/employer match for Medicare savings.
Please tell me how that amount is anywhere close to covering the cost of someone for the last 12-15 years of their life? It isn’t and by law the general tax fund is subsidizing the cost. People who receive subsidies are freeloading off of someone else.
And, insurance is based on an expectations of potential accidents. It is not by its nature a service plan.