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Medicare has operated in the red, since inception. Costs now require a 40% subsidy which is deficit spending. This subsidy is expected to hit 50% by the end of this decade.
Just 8 years before the oldest baby boomers would start to become eligible for Medicare, a strong Republican majority passed Medicare Part D, back in 2003. Paul Ryan was in the yea camp.
Medicare Part D gave seniors coverage for prescription medications. At the same time, it prohibited Medicare from negotiating price nor can it be involved in any sort of comparative-effectiveness debate.
As a result, Medicare, the largest global buyer of prescription medications pays more than any other nation for prescription medications.
Putting negotiating drug prices back on the table would have been the kiss of death of Obamacare. The comparative-effectiveness thing almost derailed Obamacare when the Republicans declared such activity to be a death panel and so this aspect was withdrawn.
That there are 50 different and well protected state insurance commissions at play here, too adds otherwise unnecessary baggage and cost to the overall healthcare in the U.S.
Big Pharm ( and medical equipment manufacturers, hospitals and insurers ) own Congress.
I don't think Ryan is a bad person bent to ruin the world. Just extremely misguided when it comes to economics.
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Originally Posted by Winter_Sucks
Look how quick the Obama stalkers started talking about Obama.
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Originally Posted by carterstamp
ooops.
Looks like you fell for DailyKos propaganda garbage again. Why don't you just look at where they got their propaganda piece from. You can find it here:
After that you can delete DailyKos from your bookmarks/favorites folder and then from your favorites bar and then from your homepage because that would be the right thing to do after finding out they think you folks are such complete and utter fools and they used you like Stalin used all of his useful idiots.
Then you can thank me for making your life better.
His grand idea still adds trillions of dollars to the national debt and would run deficits for years to come. America faces a crisis and we have to balance our budget now, not ten or 20 years down the road.
Rand Paul's plan, makes more sense.
Selling all public land to the highest bidder was a tad extreme.
Ok hnsq, ideally you plan for retirement in "multi decade" periods.
lmfao. Exclude issues like divorce, tanking of real estate, 401k losses (thanks wall street), death of a parent or spouse, hospitalization of your child etc.
Live in the real world. Come back in 15 years and tell us how its going.
The GOP represents the 1%. No one else matters, partisan politics is all they care about, not the health of the US economy.
The S&P 500 calculation of 9.6% lifetime CAGR is assuming the person retired in 2008.
Do the math yourself if you don't believe me. You don't plan for retirement in one year periods, you plan in multi-decade periods. Over a working lifetime, the S&P is very riskless. Don't say there are 'missteps in the calculation' when you don't even bother to do the math yourself. MTA, if you actually do the math yourself, I assumed you would reinvest dividends, and not use them as income. If you aren't fluent enough in finances to do the calculations personally, here is a site that does it for you. It somewhat simplifies the calculation as I used CAGR and they did not, but you will still see the retrun % of the S&P always being greater than the 6.5% return that low income households gain on SS.
I just did the calculation at your linked site and get a real return of 7.34%, not 9.6%, using 1943 as the start and 2008 as the end. But again, it ignores risk.
Ok hnsq, ideally you plan for retirement in "multi decade" periods.
lmfao. Exclude issues like divorce, tanking of real estate, 401k losses (thanks wall street), death of a parent or spouse, hospitalization of your child etc.
Live in the real world. Come back in 15 years and tell us how its going.
The GOP represents the 1%. No one else matters, partisan politics is all they care about, not the health of the US economy.
You invest in index funds on a monthly basis that tracks the S&P 500, Russell 1000 and bond markets. You re balance standing amounts at the end of every year to your original percentage distribution.
If you would actually do the math, you would see that the return in any 15 year period following that strategy dramatically outperforms SS.
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Originally Posted by MTAtech
I just did the calculation at your linked site and get a real return of 7.34%, not 9.6%, using 1943 as the start and 2008 as the end. But again, it ignores risk.
I did the math outside of that site as I have the info. available to do it in Excel, so the numbers will be slightly different. Also, you do realize that 7.34% is still higher than anyone has ever gotten from social security, don't you?
And it absolutely does not ignore risk. Using strategies which put an equal amount into a portfolio on a monthly basis mitigates the risk over a lifetime of investment. With regular investments, you lose on the downside but buy during the downside as well given the automatic, regular investments, so you gain on the upside that follows. The growth curve of the investment at time of retirement ends up being a smooth curve, eliminating the risk. That strategy is extremely risky if you are investing in the short term, but very risk free over a 30-40 year investment horizon.
With all due respect, this is why our country is in such poor shape financially. As you are demonstrating, many people (including politicians) flat out don't understand finances or economics, and when they make decisions about the direction of the country, people lose out financially. If we take the 0.84% difference between your number of 7.34% and the highest return you could possibly get on SS of roughly 6.5%, one dollar invested over 40 years at 0.84% would turn into $47.70 at the time of retirement. Now given how much money is placed into SS, think of how much money current retirees have lost out on thanks to social security.
Ryan submitted a budget that does not ask for an increase in taxes and raising taxes is Obamas reason for existence.
So now it's demagogue Ryan time now? Democrats put out a advert showing them throwing granny off the cliff. Hey it worked the first time why wouldn't they do it again.
No, not just now. We've been saying how much Ryan is a sucky manchild for years now.
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
8,852 posts, read 10,456,964 times
Reputation: 6670
Quote:
Originally Posted by hnsq
Talking about social security, let's look at numbers instead of looking at it emotionally. Take a person born in 1943. If you are a low income household, you will receive a little over 6.5% as an inflation adjusted rate of return. If you are a high income household, you will receive a little under a 4% rate of return over your life, adjusting for inflation. Now let's compare that to the stock market. Using a CAGR calculation, the rate of return over the same investment period for the person born in 1943 is 9.6%. So let's compare:
Social Security:
Low Income: 6.5%
High Income: 4%
S&P 500 Index: 9.6%
The facts state that a retiree would have more money in their pocket today if they invested in an index fund of the S&P instead of using the current social security system. What fact do you have to prove that SS as it stands today should not be privatized?
And unlike you, I have a graduate degree in business and work in the financial services industry. If you are a nurse I would trust you completely when you give me a recommendation on my health. You are the expert, not me. Why wouldn't you trust the experts on a business/finance decision?
Well aren't you special. BTW, so does Alan Greenspan... for all the good it did. And regardless your "math", SS was never designed to be folks' only source of retirement income, so nobody's stopping you from setting up your own IRA or retirement plan... and paying all those commissions Wall Street is really so hungry for (regardless whether their retired clients win or lose).
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