Social Security is toast. So is Medicare.
This from reason.com.
Too many of us old people live longer, so there are not enough working people to support us.
Soon both Social Security and Medicare will be broke.
And our politicians don’t have the guts to do anything about it. Or even talk about it.
The rationale why is obvious:
People do not take kindly to change.
For example: The president of France, trying to keep his country’s pension system from going broke, recently raised France’s retirement age from 62 to a measly 64.
People have been protesting ever since.
In America, politicians who even hint at such solutions get screamed at by misinformed seniors:
Don’t touch my retirement funds! You took money from my paycheck for years; that’s my money I’m getting back!
But this response is nearly all incorrect. People in their sixties and beyond rarely realize that most now get back triple what they paid in.
When Social Security began, a government retirement plan made financial sense. Most Americans didn’t even live until age 65. Social Security was just for the minority who did.
But now Americans live, on average, to age 76. Henry Kissinger, for example, is 100. Since most of us live so long, there are not enough workers to pay for our Social Security.
Yet our vote-hungry politicians won’t say that in public.
Even President Trump has in the past said:
No one will lay a hand on your Medicare or your Social Security.
Even the most clueless, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–VT), deny the obvious truth. He shouts:
Social Security today is not on the line going broke!
But, in actuality, Social Security is going broke. Reserve funds are projected to run out by 2034.
Medicare’s reserves will run out even sooner.
And no one seems to be paying attention to costs. Everything seems free.
A doctor says:
Get an MRI.
So, we immediately do. We don’t ask the cost. The MRI people don’t mention it either.
Months later, a complex notice arrives in the mail that says the cost of the MRI was $2,625 and we must pay $83.65. Or sometimes, nothing. But who did pay? Insurance? Taxpayers? The paperwork is so complex. Does anyone really understand all the chicken scratch on the paperwork?
Old people who scour supermarkets to save a dollar on groceries never comparison shop for MRIs or heart surgery.
Why should we? Someone else pays.
Click HERE for a video illustrating Medicare and its short burning fuse.
Economist Dan Mitchell of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity has said:
Sooner or later, it will blow up.
Politicians figure oh, well, maybe it blows up in five years or 10 years or 20 years.
I won’t be in office anymore.
Some claim raising taxes on rich people would solve the deficit, but it won’t. There just aren’t enough rich people. Even taking all the money from every billionaire wouldn’t cover our coming bankruptcy.
The only solution is cutting benefits, raising the age when benefits start (sensible, since we live longer), or, Mitchell’s preference, privatizing retirement plans, like Australia and Chile did.
America’s politicians won’t do any of those things.
So, what will happen?
Mitchell said:
The only other alternative is printing money.
And if that is the solution our leaders choose, soon we will be like Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s president printed money to fund his deficit spending. When the currency collapsed in 2009, Zimbabwe was printing hundred trillion-dollar bills.
Yet politicians don’t learn. The current debt ceiling deal on the table has the nation adding approximately $4 trillion to the deficit next year.
Speaker McCarthy said Medicare and Social Security were “completely off the table.”
And, yes, a decade or less from now Medicare and Social Security will be off the table—having been scraped from the chopping block into the receptacle of things no longer viable.
Mitchell concluded:
Sooner or later bad things will happen to senior citizens.
The government will either cut their benefits or all of a sudden start rationing health care.
Or reimbursement rates will be so low that you won’t be able to find a doctor or hospital to treat you.
