Comments on: A Higher Medicare Age Means a Lower Quality of Life

By: Fred Donaldson

Fred Donaldson — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:17:22 +0000

Putting all the theory and politics aside, raising the Medicare eligibility age will help prevent raising taxes on the rich to pay for more Medicare. Since the rich don’t need Medicare, they don’t care if you don’t have it.

The 65 to 67 group will pay the highest rates for insurance, maybe $2,000 a month per person, which will demolish their average Social Security benefit of $1,400 and make them BEG for a job at any wage in order to buy cat food.

Canes and crutches are our reward, and we live longer on drug-induced near comas, medical devices and it ain’t always pretty when you are 85 going on dead.

Anything that is good for insurance companies – more customers – and makes the politicians not raise taxes on the rich, has to be good for those enjoying the very, very good life in America.

By: clarence swinney

clarence swinney — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:48:30 +0000

ENTITLEMENT CRITICS
SOCIAL SECURITY is praised worldwide as the very best program.
I gladly paid a little for 35 years for a small pension. I appreciate it.
It pays it’s way. Since 1981, the government has borrowed 2700 Billion from it.
It draws interest on those securities.
The top rate can be increased as needed to keep it solvent for decades.
A change to tax “all” income will do much to keep it solvent.
Gambling in derivatives should be taxed. It is usually simple one on one betting.
Such actions adds nothing to our Standard Of Living.
MEDICARE is pay your way. The problem for 50 years has been rising costs.
The World Health Forum ranks us 37% on Efficiency in Health Care yet we pay far more than most efficient. President’s audit team has gotten billions in fines and paybacks from overcharges.
VETERAN ADMINISTRATION. Yes! They earned our upkeep for fighting our wars.
Try criticizing benefits to top 10% for such as tax breaks, refunds, etc.

By: Howard

Howard — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 12:17:38 +0000

anybody remember what Kruschev said about the selling out of Americans and the downfall of this country coming from the inside not the outside..??

By: Yvom Heckscher

Yvom Heckscher — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 04:41:49 +0000

I think this topic needs more development. Intuitively – and let me say right away that I do not for a moment believe that what strikes the mind as intuitive is necessarily more informative, more convincing, more reliable than plain old logic – one would imagine that, since people’s longevity today is reported to have increased from where it was, say, 10 years ago, social security benefits will also be payable for longer than they were, say, ten years ago, and, therefore, starting the benefits later by the same number of years of increased longevity, would be revenue and expense neutral for the Social Security System.
In essence, you are saying to to that and offering an apparently sound argument.
Way back in the Middle Ages, when I was a university student attending classes in Logic and Philosophy, my co-students and I learnt to use a quick trick to test most any proposition, including but not limited to those that are time related. The trick was not represented to be foolproof – few tricks ever are – but it often seemed to work when testing for hidden errors in the logic. The trick consisted in substituting for any one value a parameter increasingly greater or smaller than the value on which the argument was based. and seeing what the effect of the change was on the result. The result did not always turn out to be what simple logic predicted but it gave us an idea of the effect on the validity of the argument when the parameters were changed.
So, what if the retirement age were changed to, say, 70, 80, 90 consistent with a putative equal increase in longevity at some time in the future. We also ought to make part of the hypothesis a parallel shift in the incidence of disease and other mortality causes, an experience Nature might not agree with. Let us also posit that such magnified increases in the retirement age were accompanied by a parallel social and political consensus.
So, with multiple caveats, would you say that the social and economic results you predict for increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67 would be proportionately, logarithmically or any other justifiable scale, worse, more undesirable as the retirement age increases? Would the converse be true: lowering the retirement age would yield socially and economically better results?

By: Donna Crane

Donna Crane — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 04:36:50 +0000

This idea is a totally bad “non-starter” to solve any problems. All the outcomes for this scenario are far more costly than what they will save, and much of the cost will be in human lives.

By: Maryann Farrell

Maryann Farrell — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 23:36:22 +0000

Don’t forget that the Democrats will be right there with the Republicans.

By: bobpomeroy

bobpomeroy — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 22:45:37 +0000

you seem to have omitting observing that early discovery of a problem means an increased value of treatment vs later years. it’s like good prenatal care. besides the relative societal value of kindness over greed. prosecute the abusers of such an approach

By: DHFabian

DHFabian — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 22:45:21 +0000

The same number of young adults entering the workforce, fewer workers retiring/leaving the workforce, in an era of continued massive job outsourcing. Add in all those family-supporting, middle class jobs broken down to serve as workfare labor, prison labor, pt. time, etc. This should go pretty far toward increasing unemployment and desperation (which might be the only solution to our plutocracy). That said, who didn’t know that ending welfare aid (and virtually all anti-poverty programs) was a necessary first step toward ending Social Security? We’ve learned to accept the idea that it’s preferable to let people die as we continue to redistribute taxpayer dollars into the bank accounts of the elite.

By: Greg Wall

Greg Wall — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 22:08:07 +0000

Bowles didn’t know what he was talking about, and his committee never approved it. Talk should center on lowering the Medicare age, not raising it. At age 62 roughly 20% of our workforce can no longer work. This increases with age. I am surprised the increase is only 3.7 billion. Short term deficit reduction is not a problem we should even be addressing at this point, and using medical care as a means of reducing the deficit at any point is immoral.

By: Jack Lohman

Jack Lohman — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 21:48:01 +0000

Hey, keeping geezers in the work force two extra years is not the best for our unemployment rates! But as long as our “lower tax seeking” class is happy, what the hell. And they fund the political campaigns.