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Old 03-05-2013, 05:37 AM
 
Location: 500 miles from home
33,942 posts, read 22,461,411 times
Reputation: 25806

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Quote:
Originally Posted by aneftp View Post
I agree with you 100%. We have a limited number of health dollars.

We overspend billions each year on many medical conditions especially near end of life.

I am a physician and have repeatedly said the only way to truly control cost is to ration care.

But it comes down to "yeah ration care for the other guy". "Just don't ration care for me" type of society we live in.
The minute someone says 'ration care' ~ I immediately hear screaming about 'death panels'.

 
Old 03-05-2013, 06:13 AM
 
Location: Annandale, VA
5,094 posts, read 5,162,772 times
Reputation: 4231
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mircea View Post
Is there any substance to this? I mean are there specifics?

You do understand that exactly $0 comes out of the General Fund for Social Security, right?

Social Security is entirely funded by the FICA payroll tax, so what part of the budget is Social Security?

No part.

So how can one possibly speak of budget cuts for Social Security, when Social Security is not part of the budget?

Now, Medicare is a different animal.

Medicare is funded by both monies from the HI (Medicare) Tax and from the General Fund. However, note that the reason Medicare has to be funded in part from the General Fund is due to the fact that Congress have repeatedly refused to implement any of the suggestions offered by the Medicare Trustees in their annual reports. So for the past 15 years or so, every Congress has either refused to increase the HI (Medicare) Tax or refused to implement the service/payment cuts.

What my data shows is that you can raise the HI (Medicare) Tax to the level recommended by the Medicare Trustees in their 2012 Annual Report without causing any harm to your economy over the short or long terms.

However, my data also shows that you cannot save Medicare over the long-term without a major overhaul of the Medicare system.

My recommendation would be to "go Euro" with Medicare.

You can do just like the Germans, the Brits, the Swedes, the Ioti, and everyone else does.....

"In the past 20 years, our overriding philosophy has been that the health system cannot spend more than its income." -- Franz Knieps German Minister of Health (2009)

Okay, so for calendar year 2012, the HI (Medicare) Tax generated $205,729,561,955.19 --- $205 Billion -- in revenues.

So that's all that you spend on health care for Medicare. In reality, the figure is slightly higher, because you do actually generate interest off of the tiny bit left in the HI (Medicare) Trust Fund -- which will go belly up in about 4 years -- and you do collect monies from means-testing Social Security benefits --- that would be the "Taxation of Income" thing.

Like in the Euro-States, when you spend up the $205+ Billion, that's it....Game Over....no more money to be spent on health care for that year.

To resolve that problem, this is what the Germans have done...

"Virtual budgets are also set up at the regional levels; these ensure that all participants in the system—including the health insurance funds and providers— know from the beginning of the year onward how much money can be spent". -- Franz Knieps German Minister of Health (2009)

The Germans use virtual budgets to plan their health care spending for the year, to try and stretch those limited tax dollars as far as they possible can.

To do that, Germany, like Britain and Sweden and Canada deny health care to people, or they delay health care treatment, or they dilute the health care to the put of being ineffective.

So, like Alzheimer's patients, uh, you can't cure Alzheimer's, so spending money on medication -- even if it is nothing but generic drugs like Europe and Canada use --- is totally stupid and pointless. You provide only palliative care until they die (which hopefully is very quickly so they don't suck up too much tax money for health care).

I'm guessing the NAZIs will be out in full force and the propaganda and disinformation running thick and heavy on Social Security and Medicare.

Seeing...

Mircea

Money BORROWED from the Social Security trust fund must be repaid using GENERAL REVENUES sometime.
 
Old 03-05-2013, 07:01 AM
 
Location: Great State of Texas
86,052 posts, read 84,321,515 times
Reputation: 27718
Well they are not cutting medicaid, TANF or SNAP so his base has no fear of getting less allowance next month.
Only those programs that Americans contribute their money to are on the table to be cut.
 
Old 03-05-2013, 09:31 AM
 
7,214 posts, read 9,375,282 times
Reputation: 7802
It's not going to happen. We've been hearing this crap about "Obama is going to cut SS and Medicare" for at least two years now and it never happens.
 
Old 03-05-2013, 10:15 AM
 
Location: Ohio
24,623 posts, read 19,105,746 times
Reputation: 21738
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spaten_Drinker View Post
Money BORROWED from the Social Security trust fund must be repaid using GENERAL REVENUES sometime.
Not necessarily.

By law, the interest on the non-marketable securities in the OASI/OADI Trust Funds has to be 3% or greater. Your National Debt is $16+ TRILLION, including $11+TRILLION in public debt, and $5+TRILLION in intra-governmental debt.

Converting the Trust Funds is a matter of decreasing intra-governmental debt while increasing public debt...the National Debt remains the same.

Since interest rates on public debt are less than intra-governmental debt, you would actually save money on interest payments.

The non-marketable securities are converted to marketable securities and sold. That doesn't come out of the General Fund per se, although the interest would, but then as I pointed out, the interest would be less --- at least for now --- and you'd actually save money.

Clarifying...

Mircea

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo1 View Post
The minute someone says 'ration care' ~ I immediately hear screaming about 'death panels'.
Mortality on the waiting list for coronary artery bypass grafting: incidence and risk factors

Helena Rexius, MDa, Gunnar Brandrup-Wognsen, MD, PhDa, Anders Odén, PhDa, Anders Jeppsson, MD, PhD Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden
Accepted for publication May 2, 2003.

BACKGROUND: Insufficient capacity for coronary artery bypass grafting results in waiting times before operation, prioritization of patients and, ultimately, death on the waiting list. We aimed to calculate waiting list mortality and to identify risk factors for death on the waiting list.

Where are the death panels?
Please, enlighten us. Prove that you are willing to take off your partisan ideological blinders for at least 2 seconds and embrace Truth & Reality.
There are no death panels, yet people died on the waiting list because health care in Sweden is rationed.

And the reason health care in Sweden is rationed, is because health care in Sweden costs the same as health care in the United States, but the Swedish government spends less....

....because it's for the Swedes' own good, even though the Swedes are too damn stupid to understand that.
Let's move on....
The risks of waiting for cardiac catheterization: a prospective study

However, only 37% of the procedures overall were completed within the requested waiting time.

Interpretation: Patients awaiting cardiac catheterization may experience major adverse events, such as death, myocardial infarction and congestive heart failure, which may be preventable. Our findings provide a benchmark by which to measure the effect of increased capacity and prioritization schemes that allow earlier access for patients at higher risk, such as those with aortic stenosis and reduced left ventricular function.


The risks of waiting for cardiac catheterization: a prospective study


So, where are the death panels?
Please, enlighten us. Prove that you are willing to take off your partisan ideological blinders for at least 2 seconds and embrace Truth & Reality.
There are no death panels, yet people died on the waiting list because health care in Canada is rationed.

And the reason health care in Canada is rationed, is because health care in Canada costs the same as health care in the United States, but the Canadian government spends less....

....because it's for the Canadians' own good, even though Canadians are too damn stupid to understand that.
Let's move on....
Lung cancer treatment waiting times and tumour growth.

Therefore, 21% of potentially curable patients became incurable on the waiting list.

The delay between the first hospital visit and starting treatment was 35-187 days (median 94);

Limited access to specialists is the reason most often advanced for the poor performance of the UK in treating lung cancer. This study demonstrates that, even for the select minority of patients who have specialist referral and are deemed suitable for potentially curative treatment, the outcome is prejudiced by waiting times that allow tumour progression.


US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

Lung cancer treatment waiting tim... [Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol). 2000] - PubMed - NCBI

Again, where are the death panels?
Please, enlighten us. Prove that you are willing to take off your partisan ideological blinders for at least 2 seconds and embrace Truth & Reality.
There are no death panels, yet people died on the waiting list because health care in Britain is rationed.

And the reason health care in Britain is rationed, is because health care in Britain costs the same as health care in the United States, but the British government spends less....

....because the British are too stupid to understand it's for their own good.

Let's move on and see what the Medicare Trustees have to say....

2012 Medicare Trustees Report Page 2

The Trustees believe that this outcome, while plausible, will depend on the achievement of unprecedented improvements in health care provider productivity. If the health sector could not transition to more efficient models of care delivery and achieve productivity increases commensurate with economy-wide productivity, and if the provider reimbursement rates paid by commercial insurers continued to follow the same negotiated process used to date, then the availability and quality of health care received by Medicare beneficiaries relative to that received by those with private health insurance would fall over time, generating pressure to modify Medicare’s payment rates.

Those "unprecedented improvements" will never happen, because the American Hospital Association who wrote much of Obamacare will never let it happen (not to mention the costs to even attempt to gain improvements is more than you can bear).

Your turn...

Mircea

Quote:
Originally Posted by ALackOfCreativity View Post
He's specifically putting means-tested medicare on the table because retirees who actually saved for retirement vote strongly Republican. It's a political move -- he's saying, well, you want cuts to entitlements, here I'm going to offer the one that would hurt my (Obama's) base the least and yours (Republican's) the most.

Now, he knows this won't fly, but, it lets him say "well I offered cuts to entitlement spending but they didn't take me up on it", which is technically true, and low information voters (and heck, high information voters who don't step back and think about it) won't realize what he's doing.
I think that's a good analysis.

Shrewdly...

Mircea
 
Old 03-05-2013, 03:52 PM
 
Location: Los Angeles
14,361 posts, read 9,766,652 times
Reputation: 6663
Quote:
Originally Posted by jojajn View Post
So the republicans and conservatives want cuts to Social Security and Medicare? Be careful of what you wish for.
What do you not get about reconfiguring them to save them. It's simple math. If nothing is done SS and Medicare won't just be cut, they will be gone.

Is GONE, better than reconfigured?
 
Old 03-05-2013, 04:15 PM
 
9,617 posts, read 6,047,704 times
Reputation: 3884
Do not assume that Blue or Red is inherently wrong, or evil. Otherwise we will never get to the simple and basic math that Mircea underscores. Really. Why should we pay for all of the excess health care costs inherent with my morbidly obese brother's unwillingness to address the very choices he makes, without regard to what the costs are to him, to his family, or the country?


5'11" 325 lbs. Gout, Type 2 diabetes, high chlolesterol for starters. Well, duh!
 
Old 04-05-2013, 03:47 PM
 
10,029 posts, read 10,875,114 times
Reputation: 5946
Default Obama to cut social security and medicare

Unreal. Obama Budget to Cut Spending, Call for Higher Taxes. I have a better idea why not stop wasting taxpayers money? I am ashamed I voted for him (second time I voted Johnson).
 
Old 04-05-2013, 03:54 PM
 
4,684 posts, read 4,563,896 times
Reputation: 1588
It's not going to happen: Boehner has already turned it down. Possibly because he and the rest of the GOP House caucus are wary of a Trojan horse. Just another step in the budget-crisis minuet.
 
Old 04-05-2013, 04:00 PM
 
Location: Area 51.5
13,887 posts, read 13,642,217 times
Reputation: 9171
Quote:
Originally Posted by Idon'tdateyou View Post
Unreal. Obama Budget to Cut Spending, Call for Higher Taxes. I have a better idea why not stop wasting taxpayers money? I am ashamed I voted for him (second time I voted Johnson).
Thank you.
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