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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
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
