I didn't say that seniors should pay more for Medicare; on the contrary, with all health care costs continuing to increase year-over-year, and with prescription medicine costs increasing relentlessly, I have asked why -- NOW -- of all times, why would the goverment choose NOW to refuse to provide SS with a cost-of-living-increase at exactly the time that Medicare costs are going to increase for a huge number of people...?
*sigh*
They didn't "choose." The law states that Social Security cost of living adjustments are pegged to CPI-W. Since there was essentially no inflation in the required time period,
including medical costs, Social Security does not
need a COLA adjustment. Thus, one is not scheduled.
The only way to increase the benefits payment is for Congress to explicitly decide that "even though Social Security is designed to be a fixed income, and increases are only supposed to keep pace with inflation, we're gonna give all these old people some free money anyway!" I seriously doubt Republicans would agree to such a plan. I also see no reason to ignore decades of data just because seniors are accustomed to getting a raise each year.
Bonus! Medicare costs aren't skyrocketing. They are growing slower than in the past, in no small part due to ACA features like penalizing hospitals for Medicare readmissions, rewarding better patient outcomes, etc. In fact, in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars,
Medicare costs per capita declined 6.67% between 2011 and 2014.
It amazes me how often people have to be reminded that whe ever they get "free stuff" from the government, SOMEONE had to pay for it! Simple wealth-redistributrion: somebody can't pay for the health care he wants, so, he pays "X", and the government credits him with a "subsidy" to make up the difference. How is that fair?!
Erm....
Uh....
So you want to give seniors free money for no reason, and you try to convince people to do this by... complaining that people don't understand that when you give people free money, someone has to pay for it?
Gasoline? Well, you can make the arguement that a small portion of wealthy, retired people get in their land-yacht motor homes and travel all around the country, enjoying all the bountiful gasoline savings.....
Or, you can understand economics, and the CPI-E.
It isn't just gas that is cheaper, it's
energy and
petroleum products. Any use of energy, with the sole exception of flying (long story), costs less. Heating oil, electricity, the gas used to transport food to the supermarket, are now all cheaper. All those little plastic doo-dads and chemicals, all cheaper.
And as I outlined above, the experimental CPI-E does recognize that seniors spend less on transportation, apparel and food; and spend nearly twice as much on medical expenses as the general population. And yet, over the course of well over a decade of data, CPI-E is nearly the same as CPI-W.
I.e. seniors spend less on some things, more on others, and it basically evens out.
Have you been paying attention to the plummeting labor force participation rate in this country?!
Yep. Probably more than you, as I know that LFPR started dropping around 2001, that male LFPR started dropping in the 1970s, that female LFPR started increasing in the 1970s. After 2001, both male and female LFPR started dropping. It got a little bump in 2008, but by then the trend was already well established.
Retirement is probably not a big part of the LFPR declines yet. More likely is women going to college in larger numbers (students are out of the workforce usually), and more women staying home to care for children and family members (as wages tend to be low, and paid care is expensive).
You can't have it both ways. If the government is going to jack up Medicare costs, then there needs to be an off-set.
News flash! There already IS an offset for Medicare premiums when there is no COLA adjustment.
As I mentioned already, Medicare premiums are frozen for 70% of seniors. That includes Part A and B, and kicks in
specifically because there's no COLA adjustment. (And again, per-capita costs fell between 2011 and 2014.)
Anyway. The remaining 30% will get whacked with an increase. These are people with high incomes, who are on Medicare Part B but don't collect Social Security (i.e. they have some other income), or are new to Medicare in 2016. That is, unless Congress acts, and *COUGH* gives seniors a bunch of Free Stuff.
This is all a result of pre-existing, pre-written laws that stipulate what happens when there is no inflation, or a deflation.
