Looks to me that it simply eliminates Medicare - without saying so. Would you agree to that?
No, but it changes it a lot (which I consider a good, even necessary thing, although other changes are possible)
Annnnnd, it leaves Medicare in place for everyone 55 and older.
Politically its difficult enough to change it at all, its near impossible to change it in a way that cuts back spending on those who are receiving or soon to be receiving benefits, at least until you reach an actual crisis point with Medicare, rather than just the obvious long term road to worse and worse problems that we have now (and maybe even when you do reach such a crisis point, look at how hard any cut backs in Greece are fought by those who receive benefits)
and then you have to pay for your own insurance after you retire
You get a government voucher for it. The amount for the voucher is larger than what Medicare pays now (although smaller than what its projected to pay in the future by the time I retire).
BTW I'm in that group your talking about (40s and 50s), but I still support the change. The alternative is not Medicare as we have now, because it won't be affordable. The alternative is probably government rationed care in a command and control manner. Or maybe its fiscal collapse as the recipients of Medicare, and those soon to receive it, and those who are younger but like the idea anyway, combine to stop cost containment measures.
If the benefits had no sort of inflation or cost indexing, than I would figure that the government would have the fed enough money to pay for them (devaluing what the recpients get and money for everyone else as well), but the costs go up with inflation, as does government borrowing cost, so this won't work. It might be tried anyway. We could revisit the inflation of the 70s again or worse, but it won't solve the problem, or even put it off by much.
What we have to do is restrain spending. We can do that with vouchers and market forces, we can do it with central planning and explicit rationing (the so called "death panels"), or we can do it by giving benefits to fewer people (raising the age when people receive benefits, or we can increase co-pays and deductibles, or some combination. But a lot of people are going to be unhappy about however its done.
What we shouldn't seek to do now is provide government subsidies or support for more people. |
