The New York Times > Washington > Report Says Medicare Is in Poor Fiscal Shape
Well, the trustee’s report came out on Social Security and Medicare. Looking for something to hang their hat on, the GOP seized this nugget:
The trustees’ report did not change the financial picture much, moving forward by one year the date when the Social Security trust funds are projected to have insufficient reserves to pay full benefits. It also advanced by one year, to 2017 from 2018, the point at which benefits first exceed tax revenues.
Which caused privatization propagandist Treasury Secretary John Snow to erupt like Mt. St. Helens:
“The report underscores the fact we need to do something,” said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow. “The report underscores the need for legislative action.”
Strangely absent from Snow’s discovery of underscores was the report’s most urgent issue:
But the trustees emphasized, as they did last year, that Medicare’s financial outlook was “much worse than Social Security’s” and predicted that the monthly Medicare premiums paid by almost all Americans 65 and older would rise by 12 percent next year after a 17 percent increase this year.
Yeah, but to be fair, Medicare money couldn’t be used to enrich the Wall Street fatcats who donate a lot of money to Repugnican coffers. Sick people are just inconvenient… unless judges allow their feeding tubes to be removed. Gosh, what are we going to have to do to protect our seniors?
To pay all scheduled benefits over the next 75 years, the government would have to raise an additional $4 trillion in today’s dollars, $300 billion higher than the figure projected last year.
Jeepers, that’s a lot of money! How could we ever come up with such a princely sum?
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
If the tax cuts the Administration wants to make permanent are made permanent… Over the next 75 years, the cost of these tax cuts… would be more than the combined shortfall in the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust funds.
Wait, if we just repealed the Bush tax cuts that primarily benefit incomes over $300,000 per year, we wouldn’t be having this argument? I just can’t accept that! That would mean that Bush puts the welfare of rich people over the welfare of poor people. That’s neither compassionate nor conservative. there must be a typo somewhere…
