Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare
It was one of those tragic ironies, beloved by the gods, that the impending fiscal collapse of Social Security and Medicare was announced the same week as the White House
convened a conference of healthcare providers, which is the opening salvo in what will be a long sad debate on National Healthcare.The Trustee announced that Social Security will start running deficits in 2016, and be totally depleted by 2037. Medicare is already running deficits, and will fiscally collapse by 2017,
Only a recent immigrant from Mars is unaware of this problem. However, politicians have been, and continue to be, paralyzed in dealing with it. George Bush's proposal to partially privatize Social Security was roundly rejected by both parties. It may have been an imperfect solution, but at least he came up with something.
The real problem with these Democratic Party Pillars of Social Welfare is that one was spectacularly ill-conceived from the beginning, and the other just a dumbass idea from day one.
When all is said and done, Social Security
is nothing but a
ponzi scheme. It depends upon the enrollment of new victims inorder to make payouts to retirees. Just like the downturn in the economy brought down scammers like Bernie Madoff, demographics will bring down Social Security.
As the Boomers head for the rocking chair and elephant grave yards of Flordia and the Southwest, there are simply not enough Gen X and Millennial enrollees to keep the dance going—even if the American economy was not undergoing a massive readjustment.
This is both astonishing and unsurprising. Just like the federal government can not profitably operate a legal whorehouse, they are unable to run a pension plan— which are generally considered one of the more lucrative and sought after pools of money in the private market. The federal government has the same business model as do low level mobsters who take over a legitimate business. The gangsters loot the legitimate business until it is worth nothing but the fire insurance policy. Likewise, Social Security funds were treated as a congressional slush fund.Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal Social Security program is actually nothing more than a Bernie Madoff fraud. At this point there is really no way to fix it---people my age are not operating under any delusions that we will ever get back a dime of what we put into Social Security.
Social Security contributions are just another tax—and the only way to “fix” it is to raise the tax, and reduce the eligibility and size of benefits.
The crowning achievement of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was Medicare---which is perhaps the most expensive and destructive domestic program ever conceived by the federal government.Can anyone explain to me the social policy behind the idea that the federal government should pay Warren Buffett's medical expenses? The notion of our government paying the doctor's bills of all seniors regardless of need, is the biggest political pander of all time. As a group, these guys control the bulk of the wealth in this country--and they tend to vote.
Medicare is a fiscal black hole that sucks money out of the pockets of young Americans to keep their parents and grandparents healthy enough to get in 18 holes before the retirement community mixer.
Medicare, along with the idea of employer provided health insurance, which was originally pushed and demanded by the labor unions (and came into being as a result of government tampering--a way around war time wage controls), are the primary cause of our current healthcare crisis. The government is, by its nature, notoriously bad at controlling costs. And healthcare providers took them to the cleaners. A doctor friend refers to the seventies as the “golden age of American medicine.” By that he means gold poured into their offices.Eventually, there were efforts to control these costs—but by then it was too late. It was not really all that long ago that doctors, like lawyers and dentists, made a decent salary—but there were not the obscene amounts of money involved that we see today. It's all because the medical industry was given a blank check.
So now we move on to the third big Democratic Party Social Program— national healthcare.While there is no question this is a very serious problem...
come back in ten years and let me know how Obamacare is working out.
Related Articles:
-
The recent health care reform law has had many myths, lies, and misleading characterizations... Read Full Story » -
We in the U.S. have a rather uncharming tendency to think that our way is always the "right way... Read Full Story »
Comments
