Booming Medicare When Medicare was introduced in 1965, woman 65 had, on average, 18 more years of life, men, 13.5. Today, those numbers are 21 and 19 respectively. In 1980, Medicare consumed 5% of federal spending; now it’s 13.5%. Raising the Medicare age to 67 cuts Medicare spending by $148 billion, it trims government spending by just $113 billion due to increased subsidies to the elderly for Medicaid and exchange purchased insurance.
Tag Archives: Medicare
Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News
Over the next 20 years, 10K baby boomers turn 65 daily, doubling the number of Medicare enrollees. In part, that’s why annual Medicare spending is expected to reach an unsustainable $1 trillion by ’21; 20% of all government spending. While per capita costs continue to grow slowly of late, demographics will swamp any cost-containment solutions. That leaves raising taxes, cutting benefits, or some combination of both. An apple a day….
“Doc-Fix” is Broken
Unless Congress acts by 1/27/12, doctors treating Medicare patients will suffer a 27% fee cut. Last year, and every year since ’03, Congress passes a temporary “Doc Fix.” Problem is, every year, the size of the “Fix” gets bigger. The need for this annual display of fiscal dysfunction stems from a formula (the Sustainable Growth Rate) passed well over a decade ago designed to control Medicare spending that totally failed, but has never been repealed.
Budget Brawl Begins
The budget battle over FY ’12 is here! The R plan makes big cuts to Medicare & Medicaid, ignores Social Security (SS) and keeps the Bush tax cuts. The D plan, will also ignore SS (2 risky) and will propose; cuts to many programs, reduction of popular tax deductions, increased taxes for the rich and lower tax brackets for most. The center of this debate will be the Bowles-Simpson report released earlier this year.
Republicans Budgeting Badly
The Ryan G.O.P. Budget Proposal to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers to be used to buy private health insurance may be a great idea but privatizing Medicare does nothing to limit health-care costs. In fact, it almost surely raises them by adding a layer of private sector bureaucracy.Yet his plan assumes that we can cut health-care spending as a percentage of G.D.P. despite an aging population and rising health care costs.