Does SS, Medicare and Medicaid have financial problems?

[unkachuck]

Do you believe that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are becoming insolvent or unfundable?

[Tx4obama]

1. From the White House regarding SS/HealthCare/Medicare etc ....

FACT SHEET: The President's Framework for Shared Prosperity and Shared Fiscal Responsibility
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/04/13/fact-sheet-presidents-framework-shared-prosperity-and-shared-fiscal-resp

[Generic Other]

2. If theft is a problem, then yes they do

Give me back 30 years of SS payments withheld from my paychecks.

[leftstreet]

7. +1

[Journeyman]

3. I voted Yes, because cretins are always trying to defund them. . .

[reformist2]

4. The Repugs have gotten good at "scaring with big numbers," sort of like "lying with statistics."

The truth is the unfunded liabilities in SS and Medicare/Medicaid can easily be paid for with modest tax increases.

[WheelWalker]

5. That sounds a lot like

"becoming pregnant" to me. So I voted "other". Maybe I'm just becoming difficult?

[DJ13]

6. Theres nothing wrong with Social Security that an increased cap wouldnt solve

And all that would need to be done to make Medicare solvent would be to institute Medicare For All, which would bring healthier younger people into it, which would increase the funding base while decreasing the numbers of enrolled people who need to use it (since younger people arent as apt to need medical care).

If Medicare For All was instituted there wouldnt be a need for Medicaid either.

[L0oniX]

8. Why does a millionaire need SS? ...or Medicare?

They don't need it! So what if they paid into it. They should have paid more into it. They got rich from doing business in this country ...from using our labor, resources and infrastructure.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. Because it exists for eveyone, and all the jollies you might

derive from not giving a rich person 2500 a month would be balanced by all the means testing to follow, applied to those with less and less, until it is gone. Need has nothing to do with social security, need it or not, contribute and you get it, that is how is must remain.

[L0oniX]

13. The term "social security" and who it was thought to be meant for...

does not apply in any way to those who don't need it. They are more secure because of all their money than anything that SS and Medicare could ever give them. I see which side you are on.

[Bluenorthwest]

10. They are not the same program with the same funding so

the question should be asked three times, not one. In general, no,none that can not be easily addressed. But each is a separate program.

[madrchsod]

11. in many states medicaid is in trouble...

the states do not have enough money to cover those who need medicaid and owe health care providers billions of dollars

[raouldukelives]

12. I think it can use some help but is in no dire straits

I keep trying to picture what its going to look like in 20 years. I hope we can strengthen Medicare & Medicaid. I see a lot of poor people in need of long term nursing home care in the future with no way to pay for it. The Presidents plan today of taxing the wealthy to bolster SS & Medicare sounds great! Hopefully with the increased funds we can increase benefits as well.

[kenny blankenship]

14. Medicare has a problem: the iron triangle of private insurance, profit-driven hospitals and PHRMA

Medicare doesn't use different drugs or a completely separate system of treatment to delivery medical care to its millions of beneficiaries. Although there are lots of Doctors who are too good to treat Medicare patients, so by discrimination it is separated in one way. But in the main, it has to live in a very expensive world not of its own making.

Medicare exists in an environment where out of control greed from insurers, Rolls-Royce Drs. and their AMA guild, profit driven private hospital corps, and Big Pharmaceuticals is allowed to drive prices up in a never ending spiral. Medicare is one of the only things in the equation HOLDING THAT SHIT BACK. Privatize Medicare, and the whole system of delivery will rapidly collapse for everyone but millionaires.

Different countries have different systems, but the one thing that all advanced societies do, that is, all countries with better results than our system of pricey employer based, cover-the-lucky, charge-em-an-arm-for-their-leg, is that they take the profit seeking middleman out of the delivery of BASIC healthcare (read: out of 75%-80% of the total market). Many of them like Japan simply dictate by government fiat what procedures, services, medicines, CAN cost the insurance cooperatives; and for-profit hospitals are against the law. Other countries replace for-profit insurance with NON-profit mutual associations and back them up with payment drawn largely from the Social Security system. Others have the government act directly as universal insurer - again with no intent to make a profit. Others like Switzerland require private insurers to offer basic health insurance AT NO PROFIT. None of them do what we do, which is to maintain a totally "market driven" delivery system for basic healthcare, where individuals or individual companies go out and purchase coverage, treatments, hospitalization, and drugs from market participants overwhelmingly driven by the desire to profit in your hour of need. Our traditional system has added group policies through one's place of employment, but because of the centrality of profit in basic healthcare our system it is not too much different from the tradition of medicine in England and the colonies at the time of our founding: if you have a whole lotta money you can afford a Doctor and all that he can do; if you have plenty of money you can see a Doctor but don't expect too much attention, and if you don't have a lot of money BETTER CALL FOR A PRIEST. Priests are always free, their care isn't metered by your credit rating, and you only really need them that one time.

[customerserviceguy]

15. I cannot believe the level of denial here

Social Security is paying out more every month than it takes in, Medicare will go broke before the end of the decade, and the numbers of people who have lost their health insurance and been forced on to Medicaid have made it's financing more dismal than any time in it's history.

It's all a matter of which solutions we adopt to fix the problem, whether it's the Repukes' idea of cutting benefits, or our idea of raising taxes on those able to afford to pay. But when we deny there is a serious problem, we look like the reich wing denying climate change.