Bush's Dirty Little Medicare Secret »
Posted By engineer 1 year, 2 months ago in News
Let's travel back towards the end of President Bush's first term in office. In preparation for his reelection campaign against Democratic Party Nominee Senator John Kerry, Bush instructed his Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill to commission an economic study to determine how much the U.S. government owed for the fiscal year 2004. As a part of this study, Dr. Jagadeesh Gokhale (senior economic adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland ) and Dr. Kent Smetters (economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania ) examined Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They concluded that the total present value of the liabilities needed to pay some 80 million baby boomers for Social Security was $22 trillion. When Medicare and Medicaid were added, this obligation totaled $43 trillion. Finally, adding Part D Medicare brought the total to $51 trillion.
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engineer
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My background is Biomedical engineering with an MBA As you know from all my comments where I almost stand politically. I have loads of ...
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TheRealizer1 year, 2 months ago
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People who were too busy or not interested in voting are destined for a rude awakening in 10 or 15 years when the U.S. can no longer find buyers for the worthless treasury notes......
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If we still had a industrial-manufacturing base things would not look so grim, but we export wealth and import poverty.... -
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hyperbola1 year, 2 months ago
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This kind of scare article doesn't contribute much. What is really needed is discussion of the percentage of our GDP that is spent on various possible matters.
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Let me give an example of a more serious analysis of the costs of social programs that I happened across recently. In this case, Europeans were addressing what the costs of their welfare programs would mean over the next 40 years. Remember that they have a more serious aging problem than we do.
In contrast to the silly scare stories in the US media, the entire analysis was in terms of the increase in the percentage of GDP that would be necessary to continue the programs unchanged. Came to about 4% of GDP. -
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cushi1 year, 2 months ago
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As a disabled citizen dependent on Medicare for my healthcare, this is a very frightening and unsettling piece of information. And, I know that at least one part of it is absolutely true - that is, doctors are refusing more and more to accept Medicare patients! I developed a new issue recently that required a referral to a specialist, and it took nearly a month for me (yes, me, not my primary physician - the buck is passed to the patient, now) - to find a specialist in the field that encompasses my issue. Then I had to wait while they figured out whether or not they still accepted Medicare patients, and then they had to check the plan I am under because they had never even heard of it before! This whole process took nearly a month and a half!
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Right now, those in the working world may not be too concerned about this, but as everyone turns 65, no matter how well off you are, Medicare becomes your primary carrier! That could pose major problems down the line and people had better wise up and start addressing this issue now.
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