Medicare hospital fund reserves likely to be exhausted in 2026: U.S. report

[apdst]

Single payer is not government run healthcare.

That's the entire point, which you completely missed.

It's government run. Right?

 

[Born Free]

Single payer is not government run healthcare.

If it's not government run then who would run the single payer system.

 

[Perotista]

I've paid into SS since the day I began working.

I will actively stand against a single cut to SS. My money is in that system. I am paying into an earned benefit. Republicans have consistently sought to destroy it and thus rob me of my investment in it.

One reason I will -never- vote red. I have no tolerance for Mises autocrats who want to eviscerate our social safety nets and our investment programs.

SS must be funded. If not, be prepared.

The only way I can see to fix is to raise the FICA taxes from the present 7.65% rate paid by the individual and another 7.65% by the employer, which comes out to 15.3% That may have to be doubled. Then what about the age one can draw SS and Medicare? When the 62-65 age was chosen for SS and 65 for Medicare, that was the average age when an American died. In other half of those who paid in would be dead by 65. What is the average age today 75? One could raise the age to draw SS and reap Medicare benefits to 75. That would solve the problem since it was the average age in which an American died was the deciding factor in setting it.

One could also raise the cap. None of these solutions would go over, so congress just puts it off and puts it off hoping for a miracle.

 

[Stealers Wheel]

Medicare's problems go back long before Trumps 1% base. An example of the government thinking it could do something better than the private sector and failing.

You have no idea where Medicare came from, do you?

Back in the 1950's some wise people realized that the budding health insurance industry was writing tons of group policies, but there was one demographic that they were universally avoiding: Retired seniors.

Why would that be? Quite simply, seniors are not profitable when it comes to health care. To the contrary, seniors as a group are quite expensive. Ergo, the private sector had no interest in insuring seniors.

Well, those same wise people also recognized a phenomenon that became known as the "Baby Boom" the significant increase in the U.S. birthrate following WW II. They were also able to project into the future and see that if the current healthcare insurance status quo was able to remain, there was going to be a massive senior citizen population with no access to healthcare starting around 2010.

It was determined that this issue had to be addressed proactively. The result was Medicare.

Medicare has provided access to more millions of seniors than any private sector company or consortium of companies would ever hope to, and has done it with lower overhead costs than any private sector company has ever done.

Medicare a failure? Not hardly.

 

[Obscurity]

It's government run. Right?

Single payer runs the payment system for health care claims. It does not run health care. The VA runs healthcare, not medicare.

 

[Obscurity]

If it's not government run then who would run the single payer system.

Healthcare would not be government run. Single payer/Medicare for All would replace insurance companies with a government payment system which will have no impact on you at point of service.

 

[ALiberalModerate]

Medicare's problems go back long before Trumps 1% base. An example of the government thinking it could do something better than the private sector and failing.

Why do we have Medicare in the first place? It is because the private sector cannot profitably provide health insurance to someone over 65 years old at a price those over 65 can afford. For example, how much do you think insurance would be for a 67 year old man with type 2 diabetes? Easily over 20k a year just due to the risk that individual would pose to an insurer. How much do you think insurance would be for a 74 year old woman with a cancer history? Easily over 40k a year just due to the risk that individual would pose to the insurer. Of course, every year it would go up because every year you are older, your risk is higher to an insurer.

People need to get it through their thick heads, health insurance is unlike any other form of insurance. If health insurance worked like any other form of insurance, there would be a maximum value to your life and that value would increase through your working years as your income increased, and then decrease every year after that. For example, if health insurance worked like any other form of insurance, you might have a value of 800k as a 52 year old finance professional, but only 30k before you would be considered a total loss as a 78 year old retiree. That is how insurance normally works. Yet, we would never want health insurance to work like that. Thus, as you get older, it gets more and more expensive to insure you. Very few people would be able to afford health coverage in retirement absent Medicare or some huge subsidy.

Medicare is facing the same problem that any private sector insurer would face trying to insure the demographic that Medicare provides coverage for.

I am against Medicare for All, but let's not pretend that we can get rid of Medicare. There is a reason we have it.

 

[apdst]

Single payer runs the payment system for health care claims. It does not run health care. The VA runs healthcare, not medicare.

Who's going to run single payer?

 

[JustHanging]

So, let's put everybody on medicare. Makes sense!

Obviously. Only in an Idiocracy would citizens argue to pay twice as much for poorer outcomes. Like in the USA.

 

[Bullseye]

Medicare hospital fund reserves likely to be exhausted in 2026: U.S. report - Reuters

(Reuters) - Medicare’s hospital insurance fund will be depleted in 2026, as previously forecast, and Social Security program costs are likely to exceed total income in 2020 for the first time since 1982, according to a government report released on Monday.

The report from the board of trustees for Social Security and Medicare also projected that Social Security funds could be depleted by 2035, leading to potential reductions in expected payouts to retirees and other beneficiaries.
===========================================
Not good news for te baby boomers. Hospital stays can be very expensive. This won't affect Trump's 1% wealthy base but the rest of us could get screwed in our old age.

The SSA Trusty report also projected its assets, special purpose bonds issued by the government to "borrow" excess contributions would be depleted by 2035 when benefits would have to be reduced to 75-80% of current levels.

 

[Bullseye]

I wonder why Congress won't address this problem.

Oh...wait...it serves their purpose not to. They'd rather use it as a campaign issue to get votes...and then they'll go back to not addressing the problem.

LOL, the have; the Dem Presidential candidates have all come out saying "Medicare is so shaky financially providing healthcare for 65 million seniors let's expand it to provide care for 330 MILLION".

 

[Bullseye]

I've paid into SS since the day I began working.

I will actively stand against a single cut to SS. My money is in that system. I am paying into an earned benefit. Republicans have consistently sought to destroy it and thus rob me of my investment in it.

One reason I will -never- vote red. I have no tolerance for Mises autocrats who want to eviscerate our social safety nets and our investment programs.

SS must be funded. If not, be prepared.

Social Security is funded from the paychecks of those people currently working, the money you payed in is long gone. The problem is, as boomers retire fewer and fewer workers are available to pay all the recipients' benefits.

 

[Bullseye]

So, let's put everybody on medicare. Makes sense!

Absolutely, turn a massive problem into a absolute cluster-**** in one easy step. :lamo

 

[Bullseye]

As have I. And I think it needs to be changed radically to an Australian-style semi-privatized system.



The problem is that you paid into a "Pay as you go" system, not some form of individualized retirement account or a superfund like they have in Australia. You certainly paid into the system, but that money is no more "in the system" for your benefit than the money you put into a slot machine remains in the slot machine for your individualized benefit.



If I may, what investment programs? Australia has an investment program through superannuation, in which every working Australian has the equivalent of a mutual fund portfolio to which they and their employers contribute to save towards their retirement. The superannuation funds are demonstrably invested. What are Social Security funds invested in? How do the Social Security funds grow and benefit the rest of us beyond simply increasing the withholdings of already-working adults and paying it to retirees and the disabled?



Oh, please do not worry, Obscurity. Political cowardice will keep it a pay-as-you-go system forcing all of us both to pay more for it and to be able to claim it at an ever-increasing age. One more reason I prefer private retirement investment rather than in what the Federal government will pay out to me in the sweet by and by for my benefit.

A very similar system has worked in Chile for decades.


Just for fun a few years back I ran the figures from my annual SS "statement" through a stock market simulator investing my annual contributions into the DJIA. As it turned out at retirement I would have been able to withdraw a monthly amount equal to 2 1/2 times my projected SS benefit for 30 years and leave my beneficiaries nearly a half million dollars.


That's pretty drastic, but I've advocated for decades implementing a system where a worker could invest a percentage of his FICA to a portfolio of mutual funds with the caveat that his SS entitlement would be reduced. This would be totally voluntary.

 

[apdst]

Obviously. Only in an Idiocracy would citizens argue to pay twice as much for poorer outcomes. Like in the USA.

Poorer outcomes compared to who?

 

[smallvoice]

I've paid into SS since the day I began working.

I will actively stand against a single cut to SS. My money is in that system. I am paying into an earned benefit. Republicans have consistently sought to destroy it and thus rob me of my investment in it.

One reason I will -never- vote red. I have no tolerance for Mises autocrats who want to eviscerate our social safety nets and our investment programs.

SS must be funded. If not, be prepared.

That's just nonsense. Republicans have never sought to rob you of 'your' investment in it. As an aside, an investment is something someone voluntarily gets involved it, in the hopes of reaping a reward in the form of higher returns.
Liberals didn't give you a choice. You HAD to pay in, even though you have no control, nor input into what the money 'managers' did with it. If I had invested all the money they took from me, I would be significantly better off than I am now, which actually isn't so bad, in spite of the government.
The CONGRESS has destroyed the trust fund, and have allowed folks who didn't pay into Social Security to collect YOUR money. Get on your high horse about that.

 

[smallvoice]

As have I. And I think it needs to be changed radically to an Australian-style semi-privatized system.



The problem is that you paid into a "Pay as you go" system, not some form of individualized retirement account or a superfund like they have in Australia. You certainly paid into the system, but that money is no more "in the system" for your benefit than the money you put into a slot machine remains in the slot machine for your individualized benefit.



If I may, what investment programs? Australia has an investment program through superannuation, in which every working Australian has the equivalent of a mutual fund portfolio to which they and their employers contribute to save towards their retirement. The superannuation funds are demonstrably invested. What are Social Security funds invested in? How do the Social Security funds grow and benefit the rest of us beyond simply increasing the withholdings of already-working adults and paying it to retirees and the disabled?



Oh, please do not worry, Obscurity. Political cowardice will keep it a pay-as-you-go system forcing all of us both to pay more for it and to be able to claim it at an ever-increasing age. One more reason I prefer private retirement investment rather than in what the Federal government will pay out to me in the sweet by and by for my benefit.

Years ago, I decided that I would not expect SS to be there when I needed it, so I planned for an alternative. I invested, took risks of my choosing, and now I don't need SS (except for a little golf money, or a vacation to Europe, or whatever I want to do with it). THAT'S retirement.

 

[Felis Leo]

Healthcare would not be government run. Single payer/Medicare for All would replace insurance companies with a government payment system which will have no impact on you at point of service.

Does this not presume that the doctor will accept the Medicare Plan, Obscurity? Many doctors do not due to low reimbursement rates and the bureaucracy that goes along with opting into Medicare. You work in insurance, so please tell me what will happen to those reimbursement rates when everyone has it as their basic insurance plan? Will it become more efficient and will reimbursement rates increase when suddenly everyone is covered by Medicare for All? Or do you see more doctors opting out and seeking private insurance and/or outright cash for their services? Perhaps Medicare For All also propose mandating healthcare providers to accept Medicare patients?

 

[Greenbeard]

Medicare hospital fund reserves likely to be exhausted in 2026: U.S. report - Reuters

(Reuters) - Medicare’s hospital insurance fund will be depleted in 2026, as previously forecast, and Social Security program costs are likely to exceed total income in 2020 for the first time since 1982, according to a government report released on Monday.

The report from the board of trustees for Social Security and Medicare also projected that Social Security funds could be depleted by 2035, leading to potential reductions in expected payouts to retirees and other beneficiaries.
===========================================
Not good news for te baby boomers. Hospital stays can be very expensive. This won't affect Trump's 1% wealthy base but the rest of us could get screwed in our old age.

Just to be clear, the Trustees Report very explicitly says that health care cost growth over the past decade hasn’t looked like health care cost growth over the 50 years prior: it slowed down materially over the last decade. And their estimates here are (very prudently!) based on the assumption that future health spending will look more like it did in the first 50 years of tracking health care cost growth and not like the historically low health care cost growth we’ve experienced in the Obama era. That’s a conservative projection, which is appropriate for this kind of work.

But this should be taken as a call to action: we need to build on the work of the last decade to keep health care cost growth down and sustain what’s been achieved. We know it can be done, we just did it.

Since 1960, U.S. national health expenditure (NHE) growth rates typically outpaced economic growth rates, though the magnitude of the differences has been declining. The Trustees have long assumed that this differential would continue to narrow over the long-term projection period and that the cost-reduction provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (referred to collectively as the Affordable Care Act or ACA) and the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) would further decrease this gap. Since 2008, average annual NHE growth has been below historical averages, though it has generally continued to outpace average annual growth of the economy. There is some debate regarding whether this recent slower growth in national health expenditures reflects the impact of economic factors that are mostly cyclical in nature, such as modest income growth over the last decade, or factors that would lead to a permanently slower growth environment, such as structural changes to the health sector that could result in lower health care cost growth. The Trustees’ outlook for long-range NHE growth is consistent with the trajectory observed over the past half century and has not been materially affected by this recent experience.

 

[smallvoice]

One thing I've learned is that allowing private companies to operate to the benefit of their shareholders in lieu of their customers, which is a conservative ideal, will render this a complete travesty if retirement is partly or wholly privatized.

Trust me, I love wholly privatized retirement.

However, I would NEVER allow "private companies to operate to the benefit of their shareholders in lieu of their customers" and expect to see even a nickel of my money. That is not a conservative ideal. It's a bit more socialist than I like, but I can see how you might embrace it.

 

[smallvoice]

That was pretty shallow

SS is not a slot machine. There is no gambling involved. The funds are invested in US government bonds which are considered to be the safest in the world

Future shortfalls can be resolved by eliminating the cap on income subject to FICA, lowering the maximum payout, and reversing Trump's tax cuts on high incomes and corporations.

IOW, it is untrue that the fix requires increasing taxes on everyone

US government bonds don't pay squat, and if you allow people who didn't pay in, to take out, the system is doomed.

Your solution is Raise taxes, Screw the people who put in more, and Diddle with someone else's money. THAT'S why you libs won't win.

 

[smallvoice]

How well is the VA system working?

As a veteran I can say without fear of equivocation that it is piss poor medical service. I gave up on it. At least I have Medicare, but I still pay for it monthly.

 

[smallvoice]

No worries. Mexico will pay for it.

No wait. That was a different promise.

Nevermind.... :3oops:

Squirrel!

 

[sangha]

Does this not presume that the doctor will accept the Medicare Plan, Obscurity? Many doctors do not due to low reimbursement rates and the bureaucracy that goes along with opting into Medicare. You work in insurance, so please tell me what will happen to those reimbursement rates when everyone has it as their basic insurance plan? Will it become more efficient and will reimbursement rates increase when suddenly everyone is covered by Medicare for All? Or do you see more doctors opting out and seeking private insurance and/or outright cash for their services? Perhaps Medicare For All also propose mandating healthcare providers to accept Medicare patients?

91% of all doctors accept Medicare patients

 

[sangha]

US government bonds don't pay squat, and if you allow people who didn't pay in, to take out, the system is doomed.

Your solution is Raise taxes, Screw the people who put in more, and Diddle with someone else's money. THAT'S why you libs won't win.

We already won