From the Washington Examiner:
As things now stand, according to the trustees, Medicare’s Part A will run out of money for reimbursing hospitals for elderly care in 2017, while the Social Security shelf goes bare in 2037. Spending on the two programs exceeded $1 trillion last year and is now increasing at an annual rate that will double it in 2050. With Barack Obama determined to add trillions in new health care and social welfare spending, there is simply no way – short of slashing benefits for the old and infirm – for the government to generate sufficient revenues to cover its promises without massive tax increases on productive, working Americans.
The situation is actually more dire than suggested by the trustees report. The trustees say the crisis in Social Security can be delayed by turning to “trust fund assets.†Those are those mythical IOUs in the Social Security “lockbox.†To understand why those assets are meaningless, just imagine a family that borrows from its IRA to pay everyday living expenses, while writing IOUs to itself to cover the transfers. The family’s IOUs are worthless when retirement day comes, just as the Social Security lockbox IOUs will be.
Medicare’s situation is even more serious. Part B, which covers doctors and outpatient care, and Part D, the prescription drug program, are already totally dependent on general tax revenues, to the tune of $179 billion last year. Curiously, the trustees are unconcerned by these facts because “current law automatically provides financing each year to meet next year’s expected costs.†In other words, Washington can always raise taxes to cover increased benefits.
Whoever said you can’t get blood from a stone had no inclination of just how hard a desperate politician would be willing to squeeze…
It’s sad, I realize — but were our children to kill us all in our sleep, they’d be almost justified in doing so. After all, it is their freedoms we are taking, and it is their slavery we are ensuring.
Should we really be surprised when they decide it’s time to put us out to pasture, then?
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Soylent Green: Your Government Approved Nutrition Source.
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I believe that the “Social Security Lockbox”™ is in a file folder, in a file cabinet, in the Robert C. Byrd room, of the Robert C. Byrd wing, of the Robert C. Byrd Public Administration Building, on Robert C. Byrd Drive, in Robert C. Byrd township, in Robert C. Byrd county, in the State of
Robert C. ByrdWest Virginia.Either that, or we could hie ourselves off to the melting ice floes and wait, with hope, for 2012.
By rights, government ought to be, if only accidentally where not intentionally, acquiring terrific skill at unwinding Ponzi schemes right about now, having as it does the ongoing Fannie/Freddie mess, the rest of the home mortgage industry, the credit default swaps, the Madoff swindle, Chrysler, GM and their pension plans, the various other employee pension plans across the US which will never fulfill their terms,… hmmmm, what am I leaving out? it feels as though something is missing from the list… anyhoo, so dealing with the unwinding of the huge and ridiculous Ponzi scheme that is our entitlement system should be a relative breeze.
Ha. Sure it will.
The design for mobile euthanasia vehicles is old tech. It could be quickly put into play to stave off a budget crisis. Efficient, cost effective, and so caring. All hallmarks of our new masters, thankfully.
I just feel for those newly-minted AARPers who flock to the polls every time some Democrat proclaims “Republicans are going to steal your Social Security”. They’re going to bear the brunt of it. I’m young (late 20s), I can wait and see what happens.
How are all those votes the 50-60 yr. group makes gonna look in a few years or a decade?
…behind a sign which reads, “Beware of the leopard.”
IIRC, the time when SoSec starts depending on its IOUs, meaning the time that its “surplus” cannot be used as general revenue, is actually slated to begin in 2018; 2037 is simply when FICA collections can’t meet its obligations. For Medicare/caid that time, when the IOUs come due, is supposed to be 2010 or 2011.
And that was before Bush went on a last quarter spending spree, and then Baracky doubled down.
In February, Social Security sent out more money than it collected in payroll taxes (I haven’t heard about March or April). So where does that put a) the regular budget which is funded by SoSec surplus like it’s Visa and b) the time when SoSec actually goes bankrupt?
These are old, old, old numbers they’re using already. I think the end is nigh for the welfare state, honestly, within the next five years.
At least I’m young enough to farm. And I can eat my parents before they get all stringy and gamey.
I walk along the city streets what respect for individual liberty and economic freedom used to walk along with me.
Raising taxes is the “supply side” solution to Soc-Sec and Medicare, “supply” more money. Getting the elders (oh my, I’m almost one) to kick off sooner and cheaply is the “demand side” solution. Doesn’t the left always prefer “demand side” solutions to all economic crises?
I just got my SS Statement, so some of you may have, too. On p. 2, it says that if I retire at 70, I’ll get my full benefits.
I thought I’d be too damn old to work before I was 70…
ushie
You’ll work AFTER you’re 70 or no healthcare for you!
BTW, Techie? I have refused to join AARP no matter how much junk mail they send me.
Every time a senior is encountered shrieking about potential changes in Medicare, going on about how they “paid in all these years” etc., they need to be asked: “So, what did YOU do during your younger years to try ending this Ponzi scheme? The warnings about unsustainability have been around for ages — what efforts did you make to get rid of this thing? All that money that got ripped out your paycheck, week after week, year after year — wouldn’t you like to have it right now, instead of relying on me and some politicians and OUR whims?”
I don’t mean that the elderly should be screwed over. They did “pay in” with a promise attached, and they’re in no position now to suddenly scrounge up some other way to fund their medical care.
But we need everyone to get clarity on this whole thing, and fast. It has to be revealed for what it is. And somebody is going to have to bite the bullet. Somebody is going to have to get screwed. Somebody, at some point, is going to have to do the “paying in” part with the “promise” part no longer attached.
A lot of people are gonna end up just having to die with not a whole heck of a lot of care, Jonas. That’s what happens when dirty socialists are in charge. Stop trying to fight it.
You want we can talk about which people.
we could have…like..a die-a-thon to raise awareness
about dieing and shit…
have-like- have farrah fawcett host it
or sumtin
Sure hope the Boomers were nice to their kids. This is going to go old-school, I think. Strong families and strong communities are the only way the elderly live. Those who don’t will die like it’s a heat wave in France.
or- like-totally shakespeare in the park grants
with lots of stabbings and shit
gas chamber mall walk-a-thons?
just throwing it out there
for the children
plug in adult diapers?
Please, everyone, calm down.
Euthanasia for the elderly will merely be redefined as “extremely late term abortions.”
Heck, society abdicated responsibility for sex through easy abortion. So, society will also abdicate any responsibility for the elderly through extremely late term abortions.
Nothing like a little redefinition to salve the conscience….
Should I send my sweet daughters out into the stygian gloom to commit murder upon those responsible for their financial havoc, I’m pretty sure I could come up with a more detailed hit list than “us”. In fact, I’m pretty sure I could be as precise as a frickin’ laser beam!
people try to put me ddddown
hope i die before pete townsends new album
new album is released
[sorry)
Far be it for me to flog my own blog — OK, maybe not so far be it! — but I noted, with charts I can’t install here, that hospitals are already losing money on Medicare and Medicaid patients. In 2006, nationwide hospitals spent $225.1 billion on Medicare patients, but were reimbursed only $205.7 billion. Hospitals spent $83.3 billion giving care to Medicaid patients, but were reimbursed only $72.6 billion.
I went further, and ran a calculation, assuming a single payer system and that the government would reimburse hospitals exactly as they now reimburse for Medicare patients, the most direct and honest comparison I could draw. Were that the case, using 2006 figures, all hospitals nationwide would spend $592.3 billion on patient care, but receive only $530.3 billion in payments, leading to an 11.7% operating loss. Hospitals nationwide would go bankrupt and close. As high as Medicare taxes are now, we still undercompensate health care providers for services rendered; it would take a tax increase just to get us even!
Compensation for individual physicians is a similarly bleak story, but I didn’t break down those numbers.
What good is “free” medical care if there is no place to get medical care?
That’s easy, Dana. The Unification Board will simply ban price increases or changes in service and will make it a felony for anyone to quit or be fired without permission from the Unification Board.
Duh.
For thousands of years, “retirement” translated as “when you’re too old and sick to till the fields, you can spend a few years sitting on your kids’ porch, shelling peas, until you die”. Expanding wealth in an expanding population convinced some people a century and half ago that it could be otherwise. Now, we’re finding out that with a declining population and a stagnating economy, it’ll be back to rocking on the porch.
An acquaintance in her mid-30s bitched that she’d have to save more than 100% of her income to retire in comfort, and concluded from that that we really need national pensions. Guess what, sweetheart: we already have national pensions; they’re called “Social Security”. And your kids won’t pay yours, because you don’t have any kids. Lotsa luck when you turn 70, and find that your SS check won’t even buy dog food.
Life as a supplicant to the Central State is essentially a round-robin purse snatch, Akatsukami. But eventually everyone stops carrying a purse.
It will be easy for the Obama govt to encourage euthanasia; just offer 20k to anyone whose parents pass away.
Move the immigrants to the head of the line.
let’s call them patriot [what’s the opposite of immigrants?)
brain freeze
how about- death pioneers/ or/ heaven heroes?
Good for you! Their politics are horrid — a lot being liberal claptrap having nothing to do with helping retired people — and I refuse to have anything to do with them.
Bear in mind that hospital accounting is a bizarre process, whereby those $3 aspirin and $5 bandaids on the bills of the insured are converted into the funds required to cover the uninsured clogging the emergency room. Their hearts and ethics are in the right place — and I don’t hear the insurance companies complaining very loud — but their accounting practices often look a lot like fraud, so I wouldn’t pay too much attention to those figures.
i’ve noticed that people who want to go
to the hospital/ who would normally call a cab
then have to wait in the emergency room
now call an ambulance/
and get right seen by a doctor
i don’t know what it means
but it means something
Sort of. But Obama didn’t get elected by just old people, a lot of kids voted for him too.
i would like to keep
the world far and fast asleep
for doktor pepper
on some hillside/ somewhere
sometime
lets hold hands/ except the left/
cuz i wipe…uhh..something with it…
pray tell my thinkin
’bout economic crisis
penny for your thoughts?
haikus!
On the medical side Health savings accounts with a mandatory catastrophic policy, perhaps that could be subsidized at the Fed level with the start up costs of the pre-existing conditions perhaps parceled out like the lottery to all insurance companies. Some thing like that anyways.
On Soc Sec. Bush had a decent plan but that was too many years and Dow points ago. Soc Sec looks like the, been down so long nothing looks like up to me. As far as us Boomers go, who do you think agreed to have the tax go to 15% back in the 80’s when we got told that would “fix it forever”.
Sold a bad bill of goods there. Water under the cesspool now. Congress spent everything and called some worthless IOU’s a “Lock Box”. All those sons of bitches need to go in their own private “lock boxes”. Starting with Mr. Lock Box man, the Goreacle.
Should we really be surprised when they decide it’s time to put us out to pasture, then?
Going out to pasture is a good thing, I think they have something more aligned with this.
Swen: I’ve worked in a hospital while in grad school, and my wife is an RN in a hospital now. The process of getting an aspirin in a hospital is very labor intensive, with the medication being distributed up from the central pharmacy, and handled by the floor pharmacy tech and the nurse. To keep a bottle of aspirin by the patient’s bedside seems a simple solution, but then the hospital has no control over how much medication is taken, and when. If the physician had neglected to write a prescription for the aspirin, the nurse may have to go through the process of calling the doctor and getting an order for the aspirin in the first place. In the hospital, even OTC medications require written prescriptions.
However, the sources that I used were sources of hospital expenses, not hospital billings. Even if you think that the aspirin was ridiculously billed, the expense is what the expense is.
As for AARP, they’ve been sending me junk mail ever since I turned 50, but, it’s the American Association of Retired People, and I am not retired. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll keep working until I drop dead.
#6 – Heck, I am 42 and I have always planned for my retirement with the idea that there would be no Soc Sec. I saw the abdication of responsibility for fixing the system back in the 1980s and planned accordingly.
#16 – don’t make me try to find you and swat you with a rolled up 1970s Farah poster.
I can think of at least 100 or so seniors, give or take, inside the Beltway I’d like to volunteer for that late term dieathon.
It just occured to me that if all the “die-ins” that the leftards staged since the sixties had lived up to their billing, we wouldn’t have nearly the problems we do today.
I’m sorry but the comment by ginsewa is beautiful. Well played.
#16
i like shakespeare in the park
w
more stabbings/myself