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Medicare insolvency would move up to 2023 under Obamacare repeal bill

Greenbeard said:
Read through the thread from start to finish. Review all of your attempted hand-waving away of the fact that the GOP is attempting to screw beneficiaries and weaken the finances of Medicare. All in the name of providing a tax break to the wealthy.
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Didn't think you'd find one, because if anything I've suggested the opposite.
 
Taylor said:
You didn't read the article. Or didn't understand it? It discusses at least a couple of alternative scenarios that don't involve raising taxes. No reason I should have to paraphrase.
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:roll:

The listed alternatives are:

• Cut Medicare by 14%. Given that it is one of the most popular government programs, that is highly unlikely to happen.

• Send IOUs to the hospitals. There is no way that will work.

• Take money from general revenues. That could be the most rational version, but that has to be paid out of either taxes or by borrowing.

And again: Greenbeard said "here's the tax they'd cut." You replied, and I quote, "So we get the money elsewhere." That implies you don't want to cut it, which means someone has to pay for it.

So again... Who pays? Are we going to increase taxes? Are we going to borrow, and kick the costs down the road?

Social Security is in the same boat, by the way. What do we do when SS is insolvent? Will both SS and Medicare be supplemented by general revenues? Will that happen without any tax increases at all?
 
Visbek said:
:roll:

The listed alternatives are:

• Cut Medicare by 14%. Given that it is one of the most popular government programs, that is highly unlikely to happen.

• Send IOUs to the hospitals. There is no way that will work.

• Take money from general revenues. That could be the most rational version, but that has to be paid out of either taxes or by borrowing.

And again: Greenbeard said "here's the tax they'd cut." You replied, and I quote, "So we get the money elsewhere." That implies you don't want to cut it, which means someone has to pay for it.

So again... Who pays? Are we going to increase taxes? Are we going to borrow, and kick the costs down the road?

Social Security is in the same boat, by the way. What do we do when SS is insolvent? Will both SS and Medicare be supplemented by general revenues? Will that happen without any tax increases at all?
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you know when Obama was in and those of us decrying government spending on SS, lib/progs would tell us that there is NO WAY that SS would be allowed to go belly up. What happened to those arguments? Isn't it funny that an opposing party gets in and all of the sudden, the world is going to end.
 
Greenbeard said:
It actually is that simple. A tax cut for the wealthy that takes revenue away from Medicare. The relevant piece of the AHCA:

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It strips out the additional Medicare tax on income above $250K. Weakening the finances of the program.
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Why are we calling this an Obamacare Repeal bill? Your posting only concerns the 1986 tax bill.
Perhaps the ACA threatens the sustainability of Medicare by adding additional costs without putting in additional revenues?
 
j-mac said:
you know when Obama was in and those of us decrying government spending on SS, lib/progs would tell us that there is NO WAY that SS would be allowed to go belly up. What happened to those arguments?
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The people who protect those programs lost power. And those who attack them gained power (see the OP).
 
Greenbeard said:
The people who protect those programs lost power. And those who attack them gained power (see the OP).
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Yeah, I'm just not willing to say the sky is falling just yet...Too many politico's still in, needing re election for that.
 
Eric7216 said:
Why are we calling this an Obamacare Repeal bill? Your posting only concerns the 1986 tax bill.
Perhaps the ACA threatens the sustainability of Medicare by adding additional costs without putting in additional revenues?
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The ACA didn't add additional costs to Medicare; it actually lowered the program's costs by hundreds of billions of dollars.

And the Medicare tax we're talking about was created by the ACA. That's why it's being repealed.

2vmvjw6.png
 
Visbek said:
I did read the article.

Medicare is running out of money. As Greenbeard pointed out, the ACA has a specific tax on higher income earners. This will accelerate the insolvency by about 2 years.

Your response, since you already managed to forget somehow, is "we will get the money elsewhere."

So: Where do we get the money from? The only way to raise funds for Medicare is to increase taxes. Who pays those taxes?
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That is not true. For example, Medicare premiums and deductibles could be increased.
 
holbritter said:
Don't go getting Grandma and Grandpa all upset yet. None of this has passed yet and will unlikely pass as it is.
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This shows you the Republican goals. Whatever version is passed, somehow, some way, they're cutting Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, deleting Meals on Wheels....all so as to get money to contribute to the huge tax cuts for the wealthiest in the country. Because that is the ultimate goal of Trump and Republicans in Congress.

They won't SAY that's what is being cut. Just like in this bill, it will be hidden, if it's at all possible to do so. It is up to nonpartisan groups analyzing the programs to tell the public, through the free press, what effect the bill(s) will really have on various things.

This concern for the "single mom in Detroit" is so hokey. The single mom in Detroit is the type of person the Republicans are against, and the ones who NEED the programs being deleted and cut for the benefit of the friends of the millionaire politicians.

They should just push Grandma in her wheelchair off the cliff and make it quick, rather than her dying a slow death lingering in a nursing home with substandard care and bed sores. More money to give to Paul Ryan.

"America First!" (But only an America for Paul Ryan, Trump & friends; the real America treats its most disadvantaged and vulnerable with compassion, dignity, and provides assistance.) America has lost its soul and is going dark, folks. Retreating from the world, from all concern and morality toward others and the earth, for the sole concern of a group of very wealthy people and corporations.

How dark will we go? How closed a society and cut off from the world will we become? How isolated and selfish and uncaring toward our own will we become? We are beginning to see, and it's very dark.
 
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j-mac said:
you know when Obama was in and those of us decrying government spending on SS, lib/progs would tell us that there is NO WAY that SS would be allowed to go belly up. What happened to those arguments?
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Those arguments haven't gone anywhere. Obama did very little about Social Security,and it's not to his credit. Ironically, the one time Obama offered to cut Social Security (by switching to chained CPI), Republicans took a **** all over him... and did nothing about it.

Trump has also publicly stated he won't cut Social Security, and this proposal follows that promise.

That doesn't change anything about what we're discussing:

• A repeal of the ACA will cut taxes that are helping pay for Medicare
• There are other parts of the ACA that save Medicare money
• No matter what, we have to pay for Medicare. So who pays?


Isn't it funny that an opposing party gets in and all of the sudden, the world is going to end.
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Uh, hello? Lots of people, from all political persuasions, have been talking about this for years. The problem is that SS and Medicare are very popular programs, so no one wants to cut them; and Republicans have decided that the hill they will die on has a big sign saying "NO NEW TAXES" on it. The result is that we will probably have to wait until the programs are insolvent before addressing it.
 
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JMaximus said:
That is not true. For example, Medicare premiums and deductibles could be increased.
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Technically that's correct, but in practice that's really just a program / benefit cut.
 
JumpinJack said:
This shows you the Republican goals. Whatever version is passed, somehow, some way, they're cutting Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, deleting Meals on Wheels....all so as to get money to contribute to the huge tax cuts for the wealthiest in the country. Because that is the ultimate goal of Trump and Republicans in Congress.

They won't SAY that's what is being cut. Just like in this bill, it will be hidden, if it's at all possible to do so. It is up to nonpartisan groups analyzing the programs to tell the public, through the free press, what effect the bill(s) will really have on various things.

This concern for the "single mom in Detroit" is so hokey. The single mom in Detroit is the type of person the Republicans are against, and the ones who NEED the programs being deleted and cut for the benefit of the friends of the millionaire politicians.

They should just push Grandma in her wheelchair off the cliff and make it quick, rather than her dying a slow death lingering in a nursing home with substandard care and bed sores. More money to give to Paul Ryan.

"America First!" (But only an America for Paul Ryan, Trump & friends; the real America treats its most disadvantaged and vulnerable with compassion, dignity, and provides assistance.) America has lost its soul and is going dark, folks. Retreating from the world, from all concern and morality toward others and the earth, for the sole concern of a group of very wealthy people and corporations.

How dark will we go? How closed a society and cut off from the world will we become? How isolated and selfish and uncaring toward our own will we become? We are beginning to see, and it's very dark.
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but Trump is gonna Make America Great ....... Again .......
 
Visbek said:
:roll:

The listed alternatives are:

• Cut Medicare by 14%. Given that it is one of the most popular government programs, that is highly unlikely to happen.

• Send IOUs to the hospitals. There is no way that will work.

• Take money from general revenues. That could be the most rational version, but that has to be paid out of either taxes or by borrowing.

And again: Greenbeard said "here's the tax they'd cut." You replied, and I quote, "So we get the money elsewhere." That implies you don't want to cut it, which means someone has to pay for it.

So again... Who pays? Are we going to increase taxes? Are we going to borrow, and kick the costs down the road?

Social Security is in the same boat, by the way. What do we do when SS is insolvent? Will both SS and Medicare be supplemented by general revenues? Will that happen without any tax increases at all?
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Cool, now we're on the same page. We agree on the first bullet point. Medicare is not going to be cut. No broken campaign promises, no Grandma and Grandpa Trumper dying two years early because they "bet their lives (literally!)". We can dispense with all the hysterics this thread rode in on. At this stage, I don't much care to speculate where the money will eventually come from, but I do agree with you that it will come.
 
Conservative said:
I always wondered why people like you never address the problem but always focus on the negatives. Why do you think Medicare and SS are facing these problems? You think they are Trump related? NO they are related to LBJ putting SS and Medicare on budget and spending the money on things other than SS and Medicare which created the current Ponzi scheme we have today. Are people like you ever going to address the waste, fraud, and abuse of the Federal Govt. and spending? Do you think Grandma and Grandpa Trumpster when they were forced to contribute to SS and Medicare only to have their money stolen by the federal govt. tp spend on daily operating expenses of the govt. and to buy votes?
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By putting Medicare and SS on budget, all it did was take revenue surpluses and buy treasury bills with them. Prior to 2008, it was common among right wing think tanks and economists for them to argue that the programs would get a better return if they had been invested in another "safe" investment like mortgage securities. Thank God, we did not take their advice.

You are right that projected shortfalls with Medicare and SS are not the fault of Trump. The problem with Medicare is not that its wasteful or inefficient. It actually has lower overhead than private insurers. It's problem is out of control healthcare cost growth and the fact that it insures the sickest and most expensive to insure demographic, seniors.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
By putting Medicare and SS on budget, all it did was take revenue surpluses and buy treasury bills with them. Prior to 2008, it was common among right wing think tanks and economists for them to argue that the programs would get a better return if they had been invested in another "safe" investment like mortgage securities. Thank God, we did not take their advice.

You are right that projected shortfalls with Medicare and SS are not the fault of Trump. The problem with Medicare is not that its wasteful or inefficient. It actually has lower overhead than private insurers. It's problem is out of control healthcare cost growth and the fact that it insures the sickest and most expensive to insure demographic, seniors.
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Tell me where the money comes from to fund these Treasury bills? Think the govt. has a money tree they can go to for cash? Some people just don't get it, we are 20 trillion in debt, cashing in SS and Medicare Treasury bills require cash and that makes the debt worse so the govt. prints money which makes the value worse, or the sell more bonds to China, Japan and other foreign countries. SS and Medicare were never intended to be used by the Govt. to fund daily operating expenses which in this case started with funding the Vietnam War. The payout was much less than the money coming in so it was never intended that we would be at this point where today's workers are paying for my SS and Medicare.

The problem I have are there are people here who are experts in Medicare or claim to be but I'll bet they aren't old enough to be on Medicare. I am and it sucks!
 
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