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Medicare is on an unsustainable financial course. All serious economists agree. How bad is it? Medicare spent 3.6% of gross domestic product in 2016, more than six times the share it consumed in 1967. It is on track to exceed 9% - and that's with very optimistic assumptions. With pessimistic assumptions, it could be double that in less than 75 years.
There are 3 fixes we need to implement:
First, Medicare’s eligibility age is much too low. Back in 1967, the average 65-year-old American was expected to live 14.8 more years. In 2016, 65-year-olds live 19.3 more years on average—a roughly 30% jump while the government has not adjusted the age required for benefits. The solution is to raise Medicare’s eligibility age incrementally so it once again provides for about 14.8 years of benefits on average.
Second, there has been a fourfold increase since "the disabled" among working-age adults. We need to restore the original disability standard—which has become lax—so that people qualify for benefits only when they are “unable to work any job in the economy.”
Third, we need to raise deductibles and coinsurance premiums. The average beneficiary today consumes six times more medical services than in the previous generation, even without counting the drug benefit introduced in 2006. At the same time, most Medicare beneficiaries pay 68% less in deductibles than the previous generation and are charged coinsurance on steeply discounted rates. The solution is to charge actuarially sustainable rates for deductibles and for co-insurance.
One way or another costs have to stop consuming ever larger shares of GDP.
There is plenty of room for improvement, but as long as the legislatures are making the decisions we're doomed.
They will steal from the system until it collapses.
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
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Control LTC and obesity related diseases.
Lots of people will spend clown or use their retirement benefits knowing thinking that the state will pick up LTC costs.
Lots of people will consume services that are obesity related. Already diabetes is a separate issue in medicare.
Control LTC and obesity related diseases.
Lots of people will spend clown or use their retirement benefits knowing thinking that the state will pick up LTC costs.
Lots of people will consume services that are obesity related. Already diabetes is a separate issue in medicare.
I'd agree with both, but the problem with long-term care is that few can afford either savings or insurance that can fully cover it. "Spending down" what might be a year or two of costs is hardly where the problem lies.
As for the obesity epidemic, chase that back to the root cause: massive and relentless marketing of oversized, unhealthy foods for at least three generations. Coupled with the war footing of the food conglomerates who will make and market grossly unhealthy foods rather than lose a point of market share. (The food industry is insane even on an assumption of unchecked capitalism; the major conglomerate each regard all the others as interlopers on their turf. It's not a matter of market share; it's a non-stop attempt at winner take all, with consumers - literally - the losers.)
I'd agree with both, but the problem with long-term care is that few can afford either savings or insurance that can fully cover it. "Spending down" what might be a year or two of costs is hardly where the problem lies.
As for the obesity epidemic, chase that back to the root cause: massive and relentless marketing of oversized, unhealthy foods for at least three generations. Coupled with the war footing of the food conglomerates who will make and market grossly unhealthy foods rather than lose a point of market share. (The food industry is insane even on an assumption of unchecked capitalism; the major conglomerate each regard all the others as interlopers on their turf. It's not a matter of market share; it's a non-stop attempt at winner take all, with consumers - literally - the losers.)
[Cue the Budweiser argument.]
I clearly remember the advertising push to make "after school snacks" a thing.
I remember when there wasn't such a thing as "after-school snacks." We got home a couple of hours before our fathers got home--dinner would be ready when he got home. Our mothers weren't going to feed us before then--"You'll ruin your appetite. Go outside and play." If we declared we were starving, "Eat an apple." They certainly did not buy anything specifically for snacking. Oh, such things as Twinkies and Moon Pies did exist, but those were rare treats. Our mothers did not have them sitting in the cupboards waiting for us when we got home from school.
But I remember the advertising push to create the concept of "after school snacks," the idea that good mothers should stockpile sweet, processed carbohydrates for kids to eat as soon as they got home.
National Health for everybody. It works in other countries, it would work here. Let people who can and want to pay private providers do so, but make no-cost care available as an option.
Some ten years ago I told a hospital billing agency that I would pay the reasonable and customary charges, that is, what Medicare pays. The agency was outraged. They didn't see anything wrong with charging Medicare $200 and charging a private patient $800 for exactly the same service.
At the very least, we can charge the National Health services of other countries for Medicaid services rendered to their citizens, even those here illegally.
I remember thinking to myself there should be a scale each would-be customer should stand on prior to being allowed to enter a restaurant.
Nowadays, I shake my head at morbidly obese mothers with overweight 4 year olds at the grocery store, loading the cart up with "food" -- if you could call it that.
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