Set the record straight on Medicaid and Medicare

Since the vast majority of people making high incomes are Republicans,

Another kevin lie

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-family-income-home-ownership-union-membership-and-veteran-status/

Of those 3,863,906 voters, 1,368,528 voted for Trump, compared to 2,495,378 who voted for Harris. In other words, voters in America’s 15 wealthiest counties chose the former vice president by a margin of nearly 30 percentage points (64.58-35.42).

There's three ways you can make Medicare/Medicaid solvent.  Some combination of the three will be required.

(1) you can cut benefits

(2) you increase taxes 

(3) you can make it more efficient or knock down fraud

 Democrats favor (2) and (3).

Republicans favor (1) and they talk about (3).  But they had to be dragged kicking and screaming when Biden reduced negotiated drug prices.   And DOGE fired  inspectors general DOJ and FBI personnel (those are the people who look for fraud).     So once you understand Republicans are full of shit with (3) then cutting benefitis is all they have left.  

"Endless" is how they do it in the rest of the industrialized world.  Its not that radical of an idea.     

Here in the good ole U.S. Billionaires pay more taxes in terms of dollars than do construction workers.   But They pay far less in terms of cents on the dollar.   The latter is largely a unique attribute of the United States.

Thats a big reason why social mobility is better in Europe than it is in America.   Kinda of Ironic that the AMerica dream of going from rags to riches is easier to achieve in almost every European nation than here, dont ya think?

If push comes to shove and AMerica has to choose between sacrificing healthcare or sacrificing higher tax rates for billionaires which do you think they will choose?      I think the answer is clear on raising taxes.   Republicans have always bet the other way.   It never works out well for them.

Tom is right

Medicaid helps red states alot more than blue states.  Blue States invest in education so their people get good jobs that dont require government funded healthcare.

I think it would be a very intesting socialogical experiment to kill Medicaid for one year and see who cries loudest.   

Lets see what happens to Kentucky, West Virgina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Alabama when you remove 1/3 of their population from their only source of healthcare.  Lets see how long their rural hospitals can stay out of bankruptcy.     

Thats the big thing Republican leadership struggles to understand.   Alot of those toothless, trailer park inbreeders that show up and Trump rallies are on Medicaid.   

You run into the definition of "fairness" here. Obviously, at some point, millionaires are paying for benefits they will never receive, whether we're talking about SSI or anything else. And obviously, a millionaire receives no more armed forces, no more interstate highway, no more FDA (if that still exists; has Trump destroyed it yet)? So the system is obviously "unfair" from that standpoint.

I've read that an "equitable" per-capita tax system would cost Americans about twice as much per taxpayer as the present system. So the rich are indeed subsidizing the poor.

And you know what? I'm fine with that...because the marginal utility of money decreases with income. Take $1000 from a rich guy, he'll barely notice; give it to a poor guy, and it'll make his life much better.

Robin Hood had it right.

Vegas Vic was referring to SS though.  The rest of this thread is talking about Medicare.  Medicare tax doesn't have a cap.  

If we are talking about SS, it should have a cap since the benefit maxes out.  And don't get me going about how poor the return is on those SS taxes being "used" for 45+ years has been.  

Yes, I was talking about SS, I shouldn't have put that in a Medicare/Medicade thread.  And no the cap shouldn't be eliminated but it should be raised to 250K. 

Social Security doesn't have a cap on the benefit (or perhaps it does if one lives until what...167 years? How many are those?)  

Social Security Disability may end if one is determined to have fully recovered from the disability for which the benefit is being paid.  I doubt that happens very often, but I really don't know.

I think a lot of discussion is mixing up the terminology: Social Security, SS Disability, Medicare, Medicaid, premiums for M and M, what is taxed (which varies by state), etc.

At least the price of eggs is down.

Candy

Amount-wise annually it does though.  We are already getting robbed blind with what we get for SS.  

"Robbed blind" by what metric? Did you know that the average Social Security recipient gets back all the money they've paid in within two years?

But it's not accurate to think of your Social Security payroll deductions as some kind of investment anyway. The average person lives over four times as long after turning 65 as he did in FDR's day. At some point, it became apparent that the payouts would be much larger overall than envisioned. The answer was to use existing collections to fund payouts. The "shoebox with your name on it" fiction has always been a comforting lie.

But the silver lining! FEELTHY IMMERGENTS have delayed Social Security insolvency from its previous 2022 date to 2030! Wait, what's that you say? Trump is doing what? Oh shit...