War on New Deal drumbeat: Baby Boomers Expected to Drain Medicare (ABC)

[somone]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/baby-boomers-projected-drain-medicare/story?id=12507968

Baby Boomers Expected to Drain Medicare
The Biggest Generational Wave in History Could Leave Medicare System Broken
By JOHN DONVAN and MAGGY PATRICK

The first baby boomers will turn 65 Jan. 1, beginning a flood of applications for Medicare benefits that experts fear could drain the economy and hold political repercussions for President Obama.

The baby boomer generation marked a huge reproductive uptick between 1946 and 1964, when 76 million children were born, creating a higher demand across the nation for schools and consumer products, and an upheaval in popular culture. But this post-World War II generation's overwhelming demand on the Medicare system could possibly leave future generations with a bigger bill.

Medicare currently covers 46 million people, costing the government about $500 billion a year. But when the last of the iconic generation reaches 65 in about 20 years, more than 80 million people will be eligible for Medicare coverage, although the number of working people paying into the program will have decreased from 3.5 per person receiving benefits to 2.3.

The increase in the number of people eligible for benefits paired with the rising costs of health care and longer life spans threatens the program's sustainability. It could force the administration and Congress to come up with a plan to reduce costs, either by cutting benefits or raising taxes...

[BeyondGeography]

1. It's like nobody was supposed to get old

There, you went and turned 65 on us. Too bad for you.

[BlueJac]

2. The baby boomers paid their own way......

and now they are going to get the big American screw job and thank you! This is a sorry lying country full of broken promises and failed leadership. Keep your fucking hands off my Social Security you fucking crooks, and make the corporations and the rich pay their share, and I don't care if you lose you campaign funding. You don't deserve it anyway!!!

[whathehell]

5. Damned right they did...They paid for their AND their parents' retirment.

You're sentiments are shared wholeheartedly by me.

[TBF]

9. +1000 nt

[dkf]

10. Your social security and Medicare contributions paid for other seniors. It was a tax.

And the money is gone and spent.

[dflprincess]

21. That was true in the past

but part of the fix made to SS during the Reagan administration was to up the FICA tax so that Boomers (and their employers) were paying for both their parents and their own retirements.

[me b zola]

22. Then whoever the fuck took my money needs to give it back

...or go to jail for theft. Fuck anybody who wants to kill the New Deal--its a Big Deal to me.

[dkf]

28. Most went to grandma and grandpa.

The rest went to the same place as your income tax money.

[me b zola]

30. Fuck anybody who wants to kill the New Deal

because its a Big Deal to me

[dkf]

32. I don't think they realized how f-ed up people like George Bush could make things.

It takes a monumental amount of incompetence to get a country into this mess.

[eridani]

33. Wrong. Boomers prepaid their own Social Security n/t

[eShirl]

34. If I borrow money and instead of paying it back, tell the bank it's "gone and spent"

think they'll buy it?

Why do you think the American people are going to buy this line of B.S. then?

[Kolesar]

3. The War budget doubled from $350 billion to $700 Billion in the last ten years

There's your federal money. Tell the satellite and submarine makers that they aren't going to get everything they want.

[Skink]

4. If you voted Reagan in 1980 you must renounce your benefits.

because you believe Government is the problem.

[whathehell]

6. No Reagan vote, here bro...Never voted for a repuke in my forty year voting history. n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. Reagan received more votes from the so-called "Greatest Generation" than from Boomers

He, like Nixon, was part of the cultural backlash against the 1960s.

[Hannah Bell]

39. the boomers were the group least likely to vote for reagan.

[deminks]

7. More of the 'prosperity for me, austerity for you' corporatist theme for 2011.

Happy New Year for the corporoMEdia.

[dkf]

11. More of facing reality.

Your government made promises to pay your money back but went on a spending spree and used it all. . Wishing it weren't so won't work. Nor will denial.

You were tricked into supporting raising a regressive tax that was used to make up for shortfalls in the progressive tax structure. What a scam.

[neverforget]

13. So what do you think should be done?

[dkf]

18. First of all we need to acknowledge that future workers will be paying for future retirees.

We will call them funds from the payroll tax or funds from the general fund but they come from the same source and are affected mostly by ability to pay.

The tax structure at the time needs to be based on the distribution of income. It is probably the case that if we try to keep social security funded with contribution that the needs will outweigh the ability of a regressive tax to pay for things.

We also see how Barack Obama simply threw general fund monies into the social security fund this year. Was it always possible to do this? Why can't there be some estate tax or special tax that also funds social security?

Lastly, did we truly get a proper return on the non negotiable bonds in the SS fund? Were we deprived of a higher return that we would have gotten from long term treasuries? Are they saying it will be insolvent because of the interest rate they decided to give us?

Looking back at this I can't help but think it was a way to raise the only regressive tax a liberal would support. And yes if Clinton had done this I may not be so suspicious but it was Ronald Reagan who did this. Why it rings no bells with the left I have no idea.

[theophilus]

8. This Boomer is ready to reintroduce Flower Power and any other

concept from the "boom" years that will save (and strengthen) Medicare and Social Security. I've had enough of this hogwash. We can take over the title of the Greatest Generation by actually saving this country and the world!

Let's:

Save Social Security for all time

Provide Medicare for all and make it equivalent with healthcare in so many other developed nations

Provide Jobs from Green technologies and cut down use of fossil fuels

Provide Jobs from Infrastructure repair

Secure safe Food and clean Water

Make Public Funding of Federal elections law and wipe out lobbying by those who have been in gov.

Improve our security by using diplomacy and reducing wasteful Pentagon spending and theft

True financial reform....stop future collapses (to the best of the law's ability)

Etc.



Let's not be a party, but let Boomers put the pressure of tens of millions on BOTH parties! And on Corporations!

Flower Power......the Daisy as symbol

Give Peace a Chance

Flash protests and sit-ins! We have computers and aren't afraid to use them!

Let's go Boomers!

[kestrel91316]

12. I am at the tail end of the Boom, and having paid into SS and Medicare

every year of my life since 1972, I suppose now I will get gypped and not see a dime. Thanks for nothing, America.

[felix_numinous]

14. 'The MIC expected to drain the country of every last dollar

and blame it on the baby boomers." -that should be the retort headline.

The MIC has has it in for the baby boomers from the start, who were never on board with their warmongering ways, and they aim to do away with us one way or another! If it is not to starve us out of our retirements, it will be to deny us our healthcare benefits. I swear they want to kill us off, call me paranoid delusional if you want, but for the life of me I cannot come up with any other motive for these great forces that are behind the confiscation of our generations' hard earned retirement benefits. We payed into this system goddammit, and the money is ours.

:rant:

Peace out.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. This "news" story is nonsensical propaganda

The responses to today's snarky NY Times article about the first boomers turning 65 provide some counterpoint.

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/us/01boomers.html

Here is Comment #17:

Uwe Reinhardt started a lecture here recently by projecting a graph of the percent of people over 65 from now into the future. The audience was astonished to see that it is almost flat. If you use the figures over the article, 5% in 19 years is just not that much especially when you compare it to other times in US history or to other countries.

The CEPR has a graphing calculator on its WEB site ( http://www.cepr.net... ) which projects the deficit as a percentage of the GDP well into the future under a number of different scenarios. While the emphasis is mainly on comparing our health care system with those of other countries, there are two curves with just refer to the US. Using current CBO projections, these curves show the deficit if our health care system stays the same and if medical costs remain constant, i.e. the second curve shows the effect of the growth in the percentage of people over 65.

The first curve shoots up to 50% of GDP while the second curve never rises above 10%. Much too much has been made of the "pig in the python" while the vastly larger factor of the rise in cost per person of health care is shunted aside.

BTW you might look at the projections of what happens to the deficit if somehow we could adopt the health care system of other countries. The deficit soon goes into surplus which grows over time.
------

[neverforget]

17. Why go there when you can get your right wing talking points from here

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/08/the-entitlement-crisis

It seems to be all the rage (SS crisis) in the MSM, Republicans and certain Democratic circles. And some like to spout this bullshit here too. The media is to lazy to actually give 2 sides to the story so they just go with the right wing crap.

[craigmatic]

19. The boomers did make alot of problems for the system.

They voted for reagan and trickle down as 30 something yuppies and sacrificed the future for a tax cut trying to get theirs now.

[Le Taz Hot]

35. Nooo, it was the "Greatest Generation"

and the evangelical Christians who got him into office.

[MiniMe]

20. I'm at the end of the boomers, born in 1957

I had a mild heart attack on xmas day, and had a stent put in. Merry f=ing Christmas to me. Spent 4 days in intensive care. No insurance, tons of new prescriptions. I am unemployed, have no idea of how I am going to pay for this. This is not by any means any kind of request for funds, besides the fact that I haven't asked Skinner about it, I will figure it out somehow. But seriously, what are you supposed to do? I went to the urgent care on Christmas Day since I didn't have insurance. I was there for about 10 minutes and they were calling the ambulance to take me to the hospital. I asked them if mhy friend couldn't just drive me, they said no. Don't remember much of what happened at first, but they took me to the cardiac catheterization lab, placed a stent, and took me to intensive care. To be honest, I really didn't have a say in anything that happened, including when they turned the sirens on in the ambulance.

So I'm home now, trying not to stress about how I'm going to find a job, and how I'm going to pay the doctor bills. Sorry about this semi-rant. I'm still trying to get my act together and figure out what happened to me the last week.

[dflprincess]

23. God I feel old. I can remember when the big problem we Boomers

caused was overcrowded schools and they couldn't build new ones fast enough to keep up with us.

Now, all of a sudden, the super-brains in D.C. are pretending the lump in the demographic python has come as a complete surprise. I thought the changes made to SS & Medicare in the 80s were suppose to take care of this.

[slipslidingaway]

25. +1000 n/t

[slipslidingaway]

24. And the Dems did not know this when they silenced not for profit HC advocates...

:mad:

They're Winning - Private insurance companies push for 'individual mandate'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6083122&mesg_id=6083122

"As momentum gains for reforms, insurers hope to turn it to their advantage by supporting a proposal that everyone buy coverage. It would be a boost for the industry, which has seen enrollment decline.


...But this time, it turns out, the health insurance industry has good reason to support at least some change: It needs it. Private health insurance faces a bleak future if the proposal they champion most vigorously -- a requirement that everyone buy medical coverage -- is not adopted.

...Insurers do not embrace all of the healthcare restructuring proposals. But they are fighting hard for a purchase requirement, sweetened with taxpayer-funded subsidies for customers who can't afford to buy it on their own, and enforced with fines.


...The industry's real trouble begins in 2011, when 79 million baby boomers begin turning 65. Health insurers stand to lose a huge slice of their commercially insured enrollment (estimated at 162 million to 172 million people) over the next two decades to Medicare, the government-funded health insurance program for seniors..."


For insurers, getting "run over" would be the adoption of a so-called single-payer plan, where the government pays all medical bills. Such a plan would wreak havoc on the private insurance market, and is widely viewed as politically unfeasible this year. So the best way for the industry to preserve the private insurance market -- and derail the campaign for a single-payer system -- may be to go along with more palatable proposals on the table now, said Jeffrey Miles, a healthcare analyst and president of the Miles Organization, a Los Angeles insurance brokerage firm..."

[dflprincess]

29. That really does explain the mandate, doesn't it?

Now, in addition to gutting Social Security, if they could just figure out a way to keep all those retiring Boomers from taking money from their 401K accounts...

[slipslidingaway]

41. Does to me, it was a perfect time to push SP while discussing...

the boomers move to Medicare - what a wasted opportunity.

At least te 401K accounts for many people have been reduced over time.

:(

[Hannah Bell]

26. fuck the useless fear-mongering media. fuck them with two-by-fours.

what a load of crap.

[Cleita]

27. I really wish someone would contradict them on this

with some basic facts, but I guess because they control the media it will be hard. If Medicare gets rid of the private sector leeching funds from in in Medicare Part D and those Medicare advantage programs, it could be put back on the road to solvency and cover everyone if need be.

[Warren DeMontague]

31. Sounds serious! Okay, here's what you do: Cut the military budget in half. Legalize & tax marijuana.

De-fund the 40B/year drug war, stop spending to incarcerate non-violent drug offenders.


How much of a shortfall are we still looking at, after that?

[Le Taz Hot]

36. And raise the cap

One of those "duh" things Congress refuses to touch fearing they're be accused of raising taxes.

[eShirl]

37. put the tax cuts for the rich into a trust fund, then borrow from that to pay back Social Security.

or, require the IOUs to Social Security to paid back in full before the rich see one single cent of a tax cut, EVER.

[Vinca]

38. There's an easy way to plump up the Medicare budget: let everyone in.

[somone]

42. Exactly. Sadly:

"I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and neighbors." - Barack Obama, Sept. 2009

[SoCalDem]

40. Where was this headline?

"Baby Boomers Targeted to Plump Up Government Coffers for the Next FORTY Years, Prior to Being Stiffed When They Try to Retire"..(circa Reagan Era)

:grr: