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"Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: Ted King
Date: August 22, 2012 12:25PM
[www.urban.org]


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"Patients Would Pay More if Romney Restores Medicare Savings, Analysts Say"
Posted by: Ted King
Date: August 22, 2012 12:39PM
[www.nytimes.com]

Quote

While Republicans have raised legitimate questions about the long-term feasibility of the reimbursement cuts, analysts say, to restore them in the short term would immediately add hundreds of dollars a year to out-of-pocket Medicare expenses for beneficiaries. That would violate Mr. Romney’s vow that neither current beneficiaries nor Americans within 10 years of eligibility would be affected by his proposal to shift Medicare to a voucherlike system in which recipients are given a lump sum to buy coverage from competing insurers.

For those reasons, Henry J. Aaron, an economist and a longtime health policy analyst at the Brookings Institution and the Institute of Medicine, called Mr. Romney’s vow to repeal the savings “both puzzling and bogus at the same time.”

Marilyn Moon, vice president and director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research, calculated that restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by $342 a year on average over the next decade; in 2022, the average increase would be $577.

Beneficiaries, through their premiums and co-payments, share the cost of Medicare with the government. If Medicare’s costs increase — for instance, by raising payments to health care providers — so, too, do beneficiaries’ contributions.

And those costs would be on top of the costs involved with a full repeal of the health care law, which would eliminate expanded coverage of prescription drugs, free wellness care and preventive checkups.

“One can only wonder what’s going on inside their headquarters in Boston and among their policy people,” said John McDonough, the director of the Center for Public Health Leadership at Harvard. “But there are only two explanations: Either they don’t understand how the program works, which is hard to imagine, or there is some deliberate misrepresentation here because they know how politically potent this charge is.”
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: mattkime
Date: August 22, 2012 12:41PM
I'm not sure what the point is, but most decent retirement plans involve letting your money grow for a few years.



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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: Avenger
Date: August 22, 2012 12:42PM
One more reason none of these programs were well thought out. You are making the case for the right. ALL social welfare programs eventually go bankrupt.
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: cbelt3
Date: August 22, 2012 12:49PM
Quote
mattkime
I'm not sure what the point is, but most decent retirement plans involve letting your money grow for a few years.

I'll agree, but I'll also point out that inflation is also a consideration... note that the analysis was done at base 2010 dollars.

I'm sure there's an actuary somewhere in the woodpile.
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: davester
Date: August 22, 2012 12:57PM
Quote
cbelt3
I'll agree, but I'll also point out that inflation is also a consideration... note that the analysis was done at base 2010 dollars.

I believe you have it backwards. Inflation was taken into account but the results are expressed in 2010 dollars.



"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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Re: "Patients Would Pay More if Romney Restores Medicare Savings, Analysts Say"
Posted by: Lemon Drop
Date: August 22, 2012 01:06PM
Quote
Ted King
[www.nytimes.com]

Quote


“One can only wonder what’s going on inside their headquarters in Boston and among their policy people,” said John McDonough, the director of the Center for Public Health Leadership at Harvard. “But there are only two explanations: Either they don’t understand how the program works, which is hard to imagine, or there is some deliberate misrepresentation here because they know how politically potent this charge is.”


Deliberate misrepresentation has been the modus operandi of the Romney/Ryan campaign so far. Why would this be any different?
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: billb
Date: August 22, 2012 01:20PM
You need to tax women at a higher rate.
They live longer and due to being paid less pay in less.




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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: Ted King
Date: August 22, 2012 01:37PM
Quote
mattkime
I'm not sure what the point is, but most decent retirement plans involve letting your money grow for a few years.

Medicare isn't a traditional retirement plan. The money that is paid is not invested, it goes to pay for the present retirees who paid for the retirees before them. That feature is something that is criticized, but the option was to not make medicare available to those who retired without paying anything into the system or would have gotten very minimal benefits because that first generation to get it would not have paid in for very long.

The reason Medicare was felt to be needed enough for it to pass through Congress is because private insurers are not interested in covering those elderly people who need it the most. That dynamic is still in place today - even if you set up a private account to save up for medical expenses, there would be a whole lot of people who would not have enough savings to pay for their medical costs and the insurers would not cover them to make up the difference.

You can argue that Medicare shouldn't have been set up either at all or as a "pay-as-you-go" plan and have argued that the negative consequences for seniors for at least the first couple of decades would be worth making. But you can't validly argue that you are getting out of Medicare what you put in or are getting out of Medicare what you put in if it was a traditional retirement plan because it isn't a traditional retirement plan.
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: $tevie
Date: August 22, 2012 01:46PM
I guess it's stating the obvious that all of this was worked out before people were living to 80/85 and above on a fairly regular basis.



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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: cbelt3
Date: August 22, 2012 02:11PM
Well of course death panels are the solution to that little problem. (ducks )
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: Ted King
Date: August 22, 2012 02:38PM
[www.tnr.com]

Quote

Supporters for the Romney-Ryan approach to Medicare have a new talking point. They say a new study by “three liberal Harvard economists” proves that the plan’s competition will reduce health care costs without harming beneficiaries. But the study doesn’t say that.

And I should know. I’m one of the economists who wrote it.
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: p8712
Date: August 22, 2012 05:28PM
Quote

I'm sure there's an actuary somewhere in the woodpile.

Watch It.
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: Ombligo
Date: August 22, 2012 07:16PM
Quote
$tevie
I guess it's stating the obvious that all of this was worked out before people were living to 80/85 and above on a fairly regular basis.

Medicare started in 1965
Average Lifespan in 1965 - 70.21 yrs (14th in the world)
Average Lifespan in 2005 - 77.71 yrs (37th in the world - we've been passed by all of Europe and it's socialized medicine)


However the average lifespan is more affected by the childhood death rate than adults living longer. Reduce the deathrate in children and average lifespan goes up (think of it like removing low grades from a class average - the average rises.)



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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: $tevie
Date: August 22, 2012 08:11PM
Shifting gears, don't we have a pretty high childhood death rate, considering we are supposed to have such great healthcare? I thought I read that someplace.



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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: RgrF
Date: August 23, 2012 01:43AM
The higher than average death rate is driven by unbelievably high infant deaths among under or uninsured poor.

by race

Slate.com-The surprising truth about America's infant-mortality rate.
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Re: "Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime"
Posted by: Avenger
Date: August 23, 2012 08:36AM
Democrats gift to the poor...by race

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