Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Samuelson on socialized medicine and the coming Medicare/Social Security Crisis

Robert Samuelson has two columns that do a good job of the insanity of Obama's and the voter's choices.

Obama's Unhealthy Choices:

"What really drives health spending, the study finds, is that Americans
receive more costly medical services than other peoples do, and pay more for
them. On a population-adjusted basis, the number of CT scans in 2005 was 72
percent higher in the United States than in Germany; U.S. reimbursement rates
were four times higher. Knee replacements were 90 percent more frequent than in
the average wealthy country and are growing rapidly. In 2005, there were 750,000 knee and hip replacements, up 70 percent in five years, reports the journal Health Affairs."


In an October 22, 2008 WaPo column he has this:
Young Voters Get Mad

"You're being played for chumps. Barack Obama and John McCain want your votes, but they're ignoring your interests. You face a heavily mortgaged future. You'll pay Social Security and Medicare for aging baby boomers. The needed federal tax increase might total 50 percent over the next 25 years. Pension and health costs for state and local workers have doubtlessly been underestimated. There's the expense of decaying infrastructure -- roads, bridges, water pipes. All this will squeeze other crucial government services: education, defense, police. "

"Obama's your favorite candidate (by 64 percent to 33 percent among 18- to
29-year-olds, according to the latest
Post-ABC News poll)."

"Click on the
Obama video. You'll see some world-class pandering. There are
three basic ways of reducing the costs of Social Security and Medicare: increase
eligibility ages; trim benefits; and require recipients to pay more for their
Medicare benefits (higher premiums, co-payments or deductibles). In his talk,
Obama effectively rejected all three. "


Why would young voters go against their own interests? Perhaps it's form of generational altruism, knowing in the end they'll take the lumps (huge). I think the answer is simpler than that - they're woefully ignorant of finances and purpose of state-hood. They believe they're voting for security (theirs) when actually they're voting for the financial equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. We'll see in the future that the purpose of state-hood is to provide for an orderly society and not guaranteed financial security.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen. The stats are overwhealming. I particularly like the arguement that we paid in while we were working and now it's our turn. Social Security and Medicare were NEVER a savings plan...not designed that way. When you were in the working world, you were paying into ss and Medicare to fund the prev generation. If you didn't agree, you should have demonstrated then. The thing is that it wasn't worth it...with 15 workers to a retiree, it wasn't breaking your back and better than having Mom and Dad move in with you, right? The problem is that you didn't have nearly as many kids as your parents and so that 15:1 ratio is now 3:1, soon to be 2:1 and it IS going to break our back...it already is and it's not going to get any better. If someone's truly in need, I'm more than willing to help, but we are forking over thousands of dollars a month to couples who have anything they could want or need. Fine if we had an endless supply, but that $$ is eventually going to either come from taxing your kids and grandkids or it's going come from the budget of schools, research, defense...you name it. We will essentially be investing in the past not in addition to the future, but instead of it and this will be catastrophic.

Anonymous said...

...And the arguement that the govt wasted the surplus doesn't hold water either. We are a democracy - YOU are the govt. YOU voted in the reps who voted to spend the money (on your generation by the way) and now you want your kids and grandkids to pay...not fair or just.