"Medicare for all" is one of the main talking points for the Progressives this election cycle.
Most people our age worked 45 years and had 2.9% skimmed off as taxes to fund Medicare. Half of that 2.9% was visible and showed up on our pay-stubs. The other half was extracted from the employers and was a cost of labor that was not available to pay as wages to retain productive employees.
There are currently about 70 million people receiving Medicare benefits. The Progressives propose to increase that to 350 million or by a factor of five. Is the plan to increase the payroll tax to 15%? If the median household income in the US is about $60k, then we are talking about dinging the average household for $9k/year. Will that be enough? The unsubsidized cost of Obamacare for a married couple is about $24k/year.
I know that "Boomers" have a reputation for being resentful, but where is the fairness of paying into a system all of your working life and just as you start getting the benefits, those benefits are extended to "...all", even the guy who slipped into the US without documentation?
How about "free food for all". Or "free houses for all"...or "free cars for all". The evil people proposing this know it's impossible. The goal is to destroy Medicare. And replace it with NOTHING. And the millions of marching morons who believe these criminals in power are too stupid to understand that there is NO SUCH THING as free. And regarding "marching morons" there is a story by Cyril Kornbluth from 1951 called "The Marching Morons"...well worth the read.
ReplyDeleteAt a certain level of eating, food is so inexpensive as to be practically free. Rice, beans, vegetables from a garden, and trapped animals and fish caught with a cane-pole and worms.
DeleteAt another level, a certain level of medical care is free. Old, off-patent drugs that are available OTC are pretty effective as long as you don't get overly ambitious. NSAID, antihistimines, antacids, vitamins, topical ointments, soap-and-water, sterile bandages. That level is far more advanced than what was available 150 years ago and is available for chump-change.
Free housing? Yeah, that is when the tramp throws a brick through the bank window so he has three-hots-and-a-cot for the winter.
The price of everything increases by a factor of 100 to 10,000 when quality dining in restaurants is the expectation or surgery or 1200 square-feet of housing with amenities.
None of the above are truly free. Some are inexpensive...or merely require personal effort. But Heinlein was oh so correct when he stated "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" TANSTAAFL.
DeleteThe Free Shit Army is in full commie mode b/c they know if they cheat like previous years they'll get caught.
ReplyDeleteA few thoughts. My wife and I are on Medicare and between what we have deducted from the Social Security checks and what we pay for coinsurance it costs better than $1000 a month for “free” medical care! Also Medicaid goes thru the state and if we didn’t have coinsurance and needed Medicaid they could sell our property to cover major expenses!
ReplyDeleteI hope things work out for you. I think it was messed up before, but through consumer choice, kinda sorta worked before. After obammacare, its obvious its all a fraud. Nothing but a handout to the insurance company donors. Our politicians are such feckless skin suits...
DeleteHealth care costs amount to 18% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Medicare-For-All would have to apply an 18% tax rate to every GDP transaction, not just wages, to be revenue neutral.
ReplyDeleteImports, exports, stock transactions including IRAs & 401ks, bank account interest, Social Security & welfare payments, and every government income & expenditure would all have to be taxed at 18%. Then all the other taxes required to run governments would be would be additional.
"where is the fairness of paying into a system"
ReplyDeleteWhere-ever did you get the idea govt benefits were supposed to be "fair"?
I dunno, Joe.
ReplyDeleteBut… I started reading TIME magazine in grade 3. And I started driving my boomer mother nuts. I’d read articles from economists with colourful graphs explaining that socialized medicine was going to blow up sometime in the next century. Mom called those columnists “delusional old geezers’ that will hopefully die soon, go to hell and stop bothering reasonable women like her! 😂 That was back in the early 70s.
So I asked mom how they were going to fix it and she said ‘they’d just figure something out’ and then I got sent outside to play…
The point is we knew it would fail 60 years ago. And it is blowing up right on schedule too. The money we paid in was spent and stolen decades ago. Currently so much money has been spent, squandered and stolen that we have unborn grandchildren that will inherit the debt. We knew going in back in the early 60s that this would happen. And we did it anyways - knowing full well the kids were going to take the hit. It isn’t vindictiveness that is going to hit us.
It’s karma.
I come at the Medicare for all from a bit different angle. First, I have worked as a Health Care Recruiter. Let me tell you, if everyone could get Medicare level health care ( cost aside) there simply are NOT enough health care providers to go around!! A lot of people currently get by, walk it off, go with home remedies or whatever. A time or two in the ( thankfully distant) past I was like that. If all of the people get in line the line gets mighty damn long !!! Some people like to point out that Canada and the UK have free or reduced cost healthcare for all and so we could do that. Yet social media ( and some people I actually know) have told me that with so very many in line for care , surgeries, and other needed treatments are often put off for months or YEARS !! Some people who needed a joint replaced waited 2 or more years. Put em on painkillers until then. Do YOU think 2 years of painkillers is a great solution ??
ReplyDeleteAlso, when everyone gets healthcare , the healthcare industry will find ways to jack the prices and costs along to the Government. I think the costs will go up and up each year !! ( You know, like many colleges raised tuition costs year after year, at a rate much higher than inflation, when they realized the students could just keep getting student loans,