Sincere question: Since Medicare/Caid/SS are overrunning by about 600B this year (no doubt due to lower tax revenues, but partially b/c of the cost of medical care skyrocketing), but old people are fighting to keep it no matter what (based on the ad on CNN today)... What are the downsides to a Medicare/Caid compromise? Raise the medicare tax to pay for the overruns (from the 2.9% to potentially 8% or more) while cutting a percentage of benefits. For instance, Medicare/Caid were budgeted for $780B in the 2011 budget (bottom of Page 8). Total receipts for Medicare/Caid/SS were $864B. The Medicare/Caid portion of that comes to roughly $164B. The budgeted overrun of Medicare/Caid was the same size as the entire Department of Defense, including the "Overseas Contingency Operations". Right now the Medicare/Caid tax is 2.9% (of which 1.45% is paid by the employee). To just fund the budgeted levels, that tax would have to be raised to 13.9%, a.k.a. adding an extra 5.5% pay cut for you and an extra 5.5% from your employer just to fund this year's budget...and the costs are projected to get higher, quickly. So if you had a choice, would you: (a) increase the Medicare/Caid tax to 13.9%, so that SS/M/M taxes would be 26.3% of your pay and Medicare/Caid would fully fund this year's budget. (b) increase the Medicare/Caid tax on a sliding proportional scale with age limit increases (tax goes up to 6% or so, but people up to, say, age 70 are cut off from benefits) (c) increase the Medicare/Caid tax by a given percentage on a sliding scale with across-the-board benefit reductions (for instance, if the tax increase gets you revenues that cover 75% of the budgeted amount, then every recipient gets 75% of what they were "supposed to" (d) keep the tax where it is, do across-the-board reductions AND age limit increases to get it down to the same level as outlays (which would require a reduction of about 80% of budgeted cost) (e) just overrun as required...those 47M people who are disabled, 65-and-older, or on dialysis deserve health care more than we need a military or roads or education. (f) something I didn't say
I voted for run over as required. I think the real issue is there needs to be more efforts to reduce healthcare costs. The only thing in the latest healthcare bill to reduce costs is electronic filing. There should be more incentives for people and programs to promote to healthcare careers. There are probably more ways that I'm not aware of. The other issue is health insurance, medicare, medicaid in general. People are detached from the costs of healthcare. They don't search for the best prices and are more willing to do tests that are unnecessary if they don't see the costs.
Keep taxes as are, cut benefits. Too many people receiving services that are not entitled. Get rid of their butts.
bump. For those saying we need to "compromise" on cuts and taxes, and get rid of sacred cows, what is your answer to this very specific question?
So if you had a choice, would you: (a) increase the Medicare/Caid tax to 13.9%, so that SS/M/M taxes would be 26.3% of your pay and Medicare/Caid would fully fund this year's budget. (b) increase the Medicare/Caid tax on a sliding proportional scale with age limit increases (tax goes up to 6% or so, but people up to, say, age 70 are cut off from benefits) (c) increase the Medicare/Caid tax by a given percentage on a sliding scale with across-the-board benefit reductions (for instance, if the tax increase gets you revenues that cover 75% of the budgeted amount, then every recipient gets 75% of what they were "supposed to" (d) keep the tax where it is, do across-the-board reductions AND age limit increases to get it down to the same level as outlays (which would require a reduction of about 80% of budgeted cost) (e) just overrun as required...those 47M people who are disabled, 65-and-older, or on dialysis deserve health care more than we need a military or roads or education. (f) something I didn't say
