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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (47098)	11/10/2010 8:59:29 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Doing it that slowly might be ok, if its also cut in some other way. For example you could slow the increase in benefits paid to people who are old enough to qualify. Social Security is a huge problem, but an even bigger one is Medicare. Medicaid is huge as well. The so called "reform" didn't solve those problems. Cuts in payouts for procedures that are performed aren't going to work to a large enough extent, either they won't happen (which is reasonably likely) or they will just create shortage of doctors to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients, which will likely eventually get the larger payments restored, or which will cause the system to be a general failure. I would move the Medicaid age up, along with the Social Security age, and I think larger co-pays or deductibles, perhaps a restoration of the "doughnut hole" would be reasonable. Medicare itself is likely a bad idea, for poorer people you could have still had Medicaid (or some other program aimed at the same target), while for non-poor elderly people you could have them pay like everyone else who isn't poor (either out of pocket or more likely with private insurance), but that's hindsight a couple of generations later, ending the program now isn't plausible, and ending it quickly isn't even reasonable.