Medicare Sinking Fast

Some in Washington want to put all of us in Medicare. That might not be such a good idea.

You see, Medicare is expected to run out of money in 2017.

Contributing factors?

Millions fewer people are working and paying the taxes that support the programs; yet health care costs are continuing to soar, millions of baby boomers have begun receiving Social Security retirement benefits, and Americans are living longer.

Medicare expenses are now expected to surpass Social Security’s in 2028.

Did you catch that?

The cost of running Medicare is expected to surpass the cost of Social Security in less than 20 years.

The report comes a day after President Obama embraced a pledge from health-care providers to slow the increase in their costs over the coming decade.

Bad timing.

O-man wants to expand government health care and they can't even manage what they have now. Let me remind you: Medicare is slightly over 40 years old and the folks in Congress have already broken it.

Blue Cross started in 1939. Kaiser Permanente started in the 1930's and became available to the public in 1945.

Both are solvent and have never taken a dime of taxpayer money.

Am I missing something?

“Correcting the financial imbalance for the H.I. Trust Fund — even in the short-range alone — will require substantial changes to program income and/or expenditures,” it says.

The trustees project adequate funding for a separate Medicare trust fund that pays doctors’ bills and other outpatient expenses, known as Part B. But it cautions that about one-fourth of Part B enrollees face “unusually large” premium increases in the next two years.

The standard Part B premium has already increased by 64 percent in the last five years.

Easy solution.

Doc's charge less.

Patients quit getting sick.

Problem solved.