Voters and Debt

[chaz345]

But think about what they're doing to the next generation. They're expecting my generation to put into the system for our lives and then not receive the benefits. If we take someone who is 55 now who gets to keep their benefits for about 30 years because "they paid into it their entire life" then that means I will be paying into it until I'm 54, and then I get it cut off for me. This is of course in addition to paying off the debt the boomers have been driving up for 40 years. They're expecting me to pay the piper with none of the benefits, and are not making any sacrifices for themselves.

My generation has a worse economy, lower wages than ever before, higher prices on housing and medicine than ever before, and the boomers expect me to pay into medicare without getting it back and pay off their debt and lower their taxes?

The issue you have though is exactly why SS is a bad idea. Because it's not a generation paying in to find their own retirement(even though that's what it was supposed to be) but rather one generation paying in to find the retirement of the previous generation. If it had been impossible for the government to treat SS funds as a giant slush find to pay for whatever at the time(both parties equally guilty) then we'd have a case where the monies paid in by the boomers were funding their generation's retirement. But the fact that SS funds have been historically spent on whatever and replaced by an IOU is precisely why I, and many other conservatives, think that the government is not to be trusted with more money.

 

[Corey]

[snip]

Contango...it seems to me that you're operating under a false assumption: we must cut or do nothing.

As a point of fact there are several ways to handle the problem that may not lead to cuts in benefits:

1. Medicare Part E...covering everyone. It creates a giant pool of a insurees that will lower costs overall.

2. Part D Negotiation. Allow the CMS to negotiate drug prices. If you're a free market true believer, then you must accept this.

3. Drug Patent Buyouts. Government buy-out of all drug patents. Placing them all in the public domain. Fund all drug research through the NIH and other agencies with all results being in the public domain. Note: this will also result in safer drugs since the profit motive that drives selective reporting will be removed.

4. Science-based medicine. Panels that evaluate care practices and their efficacies at treating diseases. These panels are the ones that Republicans lied and called death panels.

5. Fee for outcomes rather than fee for service.

Look...5 things that will reduce cost in the long term.