Pictures of America's Medicare Mess
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama sat down with world leaders at the G8 summit and bragged about his track record of supposed good governance -- how he has worked to "bring down our deficits and debt over the longer term" and made "room to take a balanced approach to reducing our deficit and debt." There are plenty of ways to shoot holes in the president's pronouncement, but there is one glaring example of where he has come up far short -- failing to address America's growing Medicare crisis.
In "Medicare at Risk: Visualizing the Need for Reform," Heritage's Kathryn Nix and John Fleming illustrate the facts about Medicare and why Washington must come to the rescue with innovative solutions to preserve the program today and into the future.
President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law in 1965, creating a program that today provides health insurance to some 48 million Americans. Now, though, that program is in desperate need of reform as the United States grapples with retiring baby boomers entering the system, increasing health care costs and a status quo that simply can't be sustained.
Case in point: Medicare spending is growing faster than the rest of the federal budget, and it's the main cause of America's long-term deficits. As Nix and Fleming show, Medicare's costs are projected to shoot through the roof, surpassing Social Security, Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies and all other non-interest spending by 2050. Want more proof on how bad the situation is? By 2040, Medicare's shortfall will account for 81 percent of the federal deficit.
(Read the whole story about how serious a problem this is, and yet, Obama rams through "another" Federal Program instead of solutions to the Medicare Mess, besides stealing 1/2 $Trillion from Medicare!)
Comments
At least, get the medicare payroll deductions back up to where they were 2 years ago- -that would be a start; then if we can get 20 million unemployed Americans back to work, THAT should take care of a lot of the problem.
It is not about healthcare, it is about power over healthcare.
GREAT Article. I enjoyed watching the "Medicare At Risk" Slide Show. It shows FICA Payroll Deductions should rise from 2.9% to 5.33% (almost double) to pay for Medicare deficits! It has 14 slides with easy to read color charts. A lot of research went into making those charts! SEE the Slide Show. Click on the links in the above news release.
The health care mandate involves eugenics. obama doesn't care about the senior legal citizen population in America.
Communism=obama care.
I believe because Medicare is a vast Federal program, the conditions for fraud greatly increases. Medical facilities have you jump from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist, many not knowing what medications the elderly patient is even on when they prescribe even more medications. I have seen this with my father & mother both. My mother was sent to many doctors to treat fatigue and shortness of breath. The cardioligist wanted to do an angioplasty. I questioned how the doctor decided that when my mom never had any heart problems. She went to another doctor and they found out she has blood loss and needed iron supplements and several pints of blood, nothing wrong with her heart. And the confusion in diognosis with my dad was even worse.
We don't need more Federal Programs like Obamacare, and I believe Medicare & S.S. eventually needs to be privatized with certain safeguards.
Baby Boomers have started retiring last Jan. 1, 2011 at the rate of 10,000 per day!'s 3.65 Million annually. Democrats have consistently ignored solutions for politics and Medicare & S.S. are almost beyond fixing.
p.s. Imagine the unemployment rate if these Boomers were still in the work-force?
Dr. Watson, I'd take in one step further. Doctors have specialized and divided patients up into 'parts' these days-good luck finding someone to treat the 'whole' person. Then the poor family doc has to try and sort through all the things coming in from the docs handling the various parts. I just helped an elderly relative navigate through our health system and it is flat out broke. If an ill elderly person does not have an advocate...they are totally lost being bumped from doc to doc to doc none of which will handle a freakin' cold because 'that's not their party'! And, trying to understand what Medicare does and does not pay for? Geez, what a nightmare!
Add on the individual docs have been 'bought out' by the big medical facilities and are pushed to get patients through and dissect them out to the specialists....and keep those billing going out. Not to mention, addressing a patient's weight issues can get them sued! It's happened!
I review medical records and these days it is not uncommon to see people taking between 10-20 different medications....Americans WANT a pill for everything! Immediate gratification...that's the American way! They don't WANT to work at the root cause of their health problems....and that makes the big facilities and the pharmacy a whole lot of money.
From my perspective, the medical community has done just as much to destroy Medicare as the government. The government, with their constant rules, I believe has ruined 'health insurance'. Just my perspective....
There is no saving Medicare or traditional "Health Insurance" and here is why . The American people are self destructive fools who do not want health care! They want Disease treatment after they cause most of their own diseases with very poor lifestyle choices! Lazy and stupid and gullible!
Just watch the Television for an hour and count the advertisements for drugs both prescription and over the counter , From drugs for Depression to "ED" to heart burn and on and on and get your free glucose meter here and your free electric scooter because Medicare got you covered!
Next take a walk through the super market and examine the items offered and rate them as far as healthy eating is concerned?
Soda pop and snack foods and junk food and processed crap of every kind, and you wonder why we are a sick , fat diseased nation?
What are the medical doctors doing about this? Well most are so busy trying to fight the insurance companies to get paid that they don't have time or the will to address this.
We as a nation deserve what we are getting.