"...when Congress approved the universal Medicare drug entitlement, it approved the largest single spending increase since the Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, complete with massive deficit financing.... But the bad news, which is clearer and clearer every day, may force them to. Medicare’s Trustees now say that the program is in the hole for $29.7 trillion in total. This represents Medicare benefits promised to current and future retirees that nobody has any idea how to paid for. It’s no great surprise that Members of Congress don’t want to discuss whether and how, precisely, they’re going to sock young American taxpayers with this bill. The alert and attentive may have noticed that the latest Medicare Trustees Report shows that Medicare’s unfunded liabilities jumped roughly $2 trillion in just one year. Indeed, the unfunded liability for the Medicare drug benefit alone jumped from $8.1 trillion to $8.7 trillion. So, in just one year, the long-term estimates of the drug entitlement increased a whopping $600 billion—imagine what that number will be next year!"
Yep.
I've been saying much the same to you for a while now.
But, I hardly think that 'tinkering with' the system (or 'delaying the introduction of drug benefits by one year') as the Heritage Foundation is agreeing with will accomplish much of anything at all.
Hardly worth the bother.
One fact I'd like to call your attention to: costs in PRIVATE health care plans has been rising EVEN FASTER then the costs have been rising in Medicare/Medicaid for MANY YEARS now.
Clearly, the problems in America's approach to health care are far larger than any one government program!
(Not to minimize the FISCAL PROBLEMS created by Medicare/Medicaid though... which, as I've mentioned, are of a magnitude some 4 or 5 times LARGER over the next 50 years then even the underfunded SS problems....) |
