>> All my working life I have paid for Medicare...in four years I will be eligible. Why do you say such things?
>> Maybe what you mean is that I didn't pay enough for it?
There is no way to determine today whether you or I paid enough for it, or any specific person. But what we do know is that on average, no one has. This is what we refer to as the "unfunded" obligation or liability -- the excess of the benefits that will ultimately be claimed over the amounts paid in, as adjusted by earnings on the corpus.
On average, a person pays in $61,000 in Medicare taxes over his/her work life. On average that same person will draw benefits totaling $180,000 (male) or $207,000 (female). (Actually, these figures understate the difference, but that's a different topic).
So, on average, you, me, everyone, underpays by a rather substantial amount.
And this, of course, is the reason the program is such a huge failure and will have to be shut down. In spite of being able to shift costs to commercial insurance companies (by setting its payments arbitrarily low), Medicare cannot come CLOSE to paying its obligations.
And the country certainly doesn't have the money. |
