re: #800 lostlakehiker

Medicare and Social Security will both self destruct if not reformed. Obama has granted that something must be done, and suggested raising the retirement age.

The numbers simply don’t work, not with tax rates and benefits as they stand. Now, does it destroy SS to nudge up the retirement age again?
Incrementally, yes. But consider this: what if we left the early retirement age where it is, and nudged up the full-benefits age? Those working in physically demanding occupations could continue to retire at the earlier age. Their situation would remain unchanged. Those working desk jobs would have to soldier on a bit further to snag full benefits.

Does it destroy SS to raise SS taxes? Again, incrementally, yes. If SS is meant to serve social justice, a loose term but it has its uses, then raising taxes on today’s young, who make less than their forerunners, so as to fund a more generous retirement for those who in general have already done better, is no way to achieve social justice.

One way or another, there are going to be changes in SS benefits. Downward. The young simply cannot come up with the kinds of taxes that would be needed to balance the SS books in the teeth of the baby boomer wave of retirement. Not and stick with the current projected benefits. It’s not the GOP, but reality, that dictates this.

As to Medicare, the fee schedules for care providers are out of touch with reality. The services of good doctors and nurses cost more than Medicare pays. In effect, Medicare levies a tax on them. The same demographic retirement and aging wave that poses a challenge to social security benefits will hit Medicare.

Doctors and nurses, and all the other health care workers, will have to work more, for less money, as more of their patients become Medicare eligible. Is this sustainable?

Economics tells us that talent goes where the wages are. The quality of people we have now in the medical profession reflects the current balance of earnings and workload and talent required to do the job right. Push that balance, and it will budge.

The quality of care will suffer, even if the system doesn’t openly and dramatically crash.

first of all, don’t lump social security and medicare together. they are very different programs with very different problems

the social security trustees currently predict that soon the fund will start taking in less than it pays out on a continuing basis(it has always made a profit until the past two years), and the fund will not be able to pay full benefits by 2036 or so. at that time they estimate that if nothing has been done by then, they will only be able to pay out about 75% of benefits

the social security trustees are the board legally charged with the management of social security, so i tend to believe what they say a lot more than the many pundits and columnists who sound off on the subject with vague, alarming, inaccurate pronouncement

many people estimate that social securities problems could be solved by increasing the current cap on social security contributions from $106,500 to, say, $150,000. this would mean that people making over $106,500 per year, as well as their employers, would have to pay at most another three and a half grand per year into the fund. i would be among those people and i think i could manage it

as for medicare, i know much less about it and it seems to be a much more difficlt problem. i will only say that it is well known that we pay more for less excellent overall health care than many other nations whose medical systems would be considered ‘socialized medicine” in the context of the united states

of course, all other nations have more socialist medical financing systems than the united states

all of them