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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (1122)	4/14/2006 1:22:38 AM
From: Robohogs	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

To me, it means many of the elderly did not save enough and spent too much (how very American!) and now want someone else to pay. Seems wrong to me. SS was a huge wealth transfer (and returns for new retirees are now dropping dramatically) and this new prescription plan is another huge transfer. It will never stop until younger folks vote. The problem is that the older folks vote and hence politicians listen more to them. Jon

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (1122)	4/14/2006 10:27:32 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

You have touched on another major distortion to the system. When SS was implemented people on average collected SS of about 18 months. At that time a retirement age of 65 was probably fair. Today the elderly are accustomed to thinking they should collect SS for twenty or more years. The retirement age needs to be raised drastically. Raise it to 70 right now and then index is one year per decade and it would extend the life of both SS and Medicare. Also using real actuarial computations for SS benefits instead of allowing politicians to keep robbing the treasury would help. Reimbursing doctors fairly so that the system would not force distortions and we could evaluate the real costs would be an improvement.