Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Draper
Liberals, do you see this as a great betrayal?
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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
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