Posted on 03/17/2008 10:56:14 AM PDT by InvisibleChurch
Ask Alan Greenspan what he considers the greatest threat to the U.S. economy, and he will answer immediately with a single word: Medicare. Sometime in the next President's first term, Medicare Part A will go cash-flow-negative, and it's all downhill from there, says Fortune magazine.
Medicare provides a wide range of services and subsidies to more than 40 million old and disabled Americans. As the country ages, Medicare and Medicaid (for those of any age with low incomes) will devour growing chunks of U.S. economic output. So will Social Security, but its cut of gross domestic product (GDP) should stop increasing around 2030, says Fortune:
The federal budget has averaged about 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the past several decades. If that average holds and if the rules of our social insurance programs don't change, then by 2070, when today's kids are retiring, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will consume the entire federal budget, with Medicare taking by far the largest share. But wait -- the situation is actually much worse, says Fortune:
Those estimates, reported in the latest Financial Report of the U.S. Government, assume that Medicare payments to doctors will be slashed drastically, by some 41 percent over the next nine years, as required by current law. It won't happen, says Colvin. Every year for the past five years, Congress has overridden the mandatory cuts. As for future cuts, the Financial Report says, reductions of this magnitude are not feasible and are very unlikely to occur fully in practice. So in reality, Medicare will go into the hole even faster than official projections reflect. If Medicare had to be accounted for like a company pension fund, it would be underfunded by $34 trillion. Obviously those long-term scenarios won't happen, because they can't happen -- we won't be shutting down the Army, Navy and so on. But it's easy to see why the candidates don't want to discuss it, says Fortune.
Source: Geoff Colvin, "The $34 Trillion Problem," Fortune, March 4, 2008.
For text:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/03/news/economy/104239768.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008030405
For more on Federal Spending & Budget Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=25
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Memo to Baby Boomers:
You are royally f****d.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Not for awhile. In the meantime, the Feds are going to bleed us dry before admitting defeat. So we’re the one’s royally f****d.
Not the boomers who are f****d, it is those of use who come along after. :(
Eat sensibly, exercise, die healthy.
That’s my plan.
No doubt that Medicare & SS will blow up.
And it won’t be pretty.
With all those votes? What do you think retired baby boomers are going to vote to do? Correction: Memo to Baby Boomers Gen X'ers and beyond: You are royally f****d.
There’s an easy solution. Get rid of Medicare all together. If the elderly and disabled can’t afford health care let nature take its course.
Healthcare will be nationalized long before that happens.
“let nature take its course”
No matter how much is spent, nature will, every time.
Now there's a winning campaign strategy. /s
The suppliers - doctors(who's costs are driven up by legal tort), hospitals (really just business corporations), and the medical goods, medicines and equipment - all have driven up costs higher than if they had been left alone to fulfill the original goal (heal people).
The users - are to blame too for not shopping for their care as they would for a pair of shoes, for making a social day at the doctors' office complex to gab with other geezers on medicare, for being hypocondriacs because they don't have to pay for it, etc.
The hospitals - for having to fund the cost for indigent and illegal care through overcharging the government
and finally, the suppliers ---slap that "medical" tag on it and it becomes a whole 'nother level of item.....
The government is always to blame when it takes money from someone who's earned it and gives it to someone who didn't.
I've got no real solution for the medicare/SS problem for the future, so I'm trying to built my estate for them, so that when the crap hits the fan, they will have enough to sustain themselves.
I know it's selfish, but since I can't save the world, I'll do the best I can for my family.
I could have saved more people, but the gummit took too much of my money via taxes, so it's up to the gummit to save the rest of the people.
Yes, and get rid of the cops and law enforcement. If people can’t protect their property, then someone else should have it. At least, that seems to be the planned solution for the borders.
We should stop pumping all that money into the last few months of a person’s life. Unless they’re in a vegetative state of course, then anything goes.
The shiite IS hitting the fan! I am also a 60 yo, and ready to spit into the faces, and on the graves, of all those who got us here! This is not the way we learned it in school! This isn't even the same country, as far as I can tell (se habla espanol???)
Last one out the door, hit the switch!
Yes and by all means let's let the same group that makes rules about our health care (soon to be the Gov't) decide who is and who is not a veritable. It doesn't take a Nostradamus to predict more veggies in our future. ;-)
Or people could work and save and scrimp so they’d have enough for retirement like my grandparents have, and my great grandfather did. They’ve never suckled on the government teat like so many people on Medicare.
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