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Medicare reform was going to happen eventually no matter who is elected. Today's program is not viable. For many years, I've had $10K per year penciled in as my best guess for what my individual retiree medical insurance would cost me to get the kind of coverage I'm used to. If you don't have the $1,000/month, you're going to get pretty lousy coverage. That's probably 75% of the late-Boomers. I'm now wondering if I've underestimated the cost? If it's $1,500/month, I'll pay it.
The issues with that plan are what about the people who can't afford that? Are we as a country okay with just accepting that people with money have "good/high quality" health outcomes and everyone else has "bad/poor quality" health outcomes? That used to not be the case, but in today's environment it seems much more acceptable to a majority of citizens.
Further - for young people, they can do some things to adjust their retirement savings to account for that (though it would still be a small % of people that could self fund $18,000 per year in health insurance expenses in retirement) - but what about older persons? Like current medicare recipients? What will they do?
If you start to subsidize the costs for lower-income/savings individuals - it becomes "Welfare" and the 1/2 of the country that is against welfare will also be against those vouchers (just as they are against SNAP and WIC and every other welfare program).
I'm 20+ years away from this affecting me, and I doubt that I'll be able to save enough to offset the destruction of medicare (if that is what ends up happening). Few people make enough to be able to afford to put away $20k+ a year towards retirement expenses. If you have to double that to account for lack of medicare .... that's going to be an impossibility for most folks.
Especially if you add in changes to Social Security. And if they change medicare substantively, there's certainly nothing to stop them from cutting Social Security.
Good luck to us all. Thanks a whole bunch Trump voters. Trump's picks are scary, downright scary. I used to think that Social Security and perhaps Medicare were the third rail, but no longer. Four years of this administration is going to rip up what little safety nets there are, especially for older people. Privatizing these 2 programs will be a disaster. I cannot even begin to express how disappointed I am and how incredulous I am that the wheels are in motion for huge changes in these programs.
Well....you're welcome. I was a proud Trump voter! I think the future President will minimize corporate regulations and allow companies to thrive again. Here's hoping to a 20,000 DOW by the end of next year!
HEar! HEar!
Yep, looks like he's going to try to dismantle the federal government, starting with health insurance and social security, under the guise of "private enterprise can fix everything!" If you can't afford it, too bad. And his followers don't care.
In response to Geeo, you are correct, his followers don't care. To wit, note the response from Cruise the World, who only cares about the stock market going up. I mean, who really cares about the environment, affordable health care, I could go on and on. It's truly sickening.
There are plenty of frightened people who voted for Trump because of fearmongering. The boogeyman is coming to get us - not comprehending that doing so brought in the whole GOP enchilada of dismantle the ACA, Medicare and then SS.
If anyone thinks dismantling Medicare and SS aren't their long-term goals, then you know nothing about these people.
Ironically, the reason they are so gung ho to dismantle Medicare is because by dismantling the ACA they have removed Medicare financial support which has strengthened Medicare. So, under the guise of "Medicare Modernization" they have to HIDE their direct undermining of Medicare by quickly privatizing it (which means eventual elimination) before they get blamed for defunding Medicare. Thus, they kill two birds with one stone - ACA and Medicare - and don't get pilloried for either.
They are sneaky devils.
And the poorest among us - and you know who you are - will be paying the price.
In response to Geeo, you are correct, his followers don't care. To wit, note the response from Cruise the World, who only cares about the stock market going up. I mean, who really cares about the environment, affordable health care, I could go on and on. It's truly sickening.
Very well....thank you. We are getting ready to leave St. BArts. It was 82 deg here and overcast.
Made sure to return to the ship early as we always have to take a tender back to the ship.
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