Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Trustees Break With Bush Administration, Say Medicare Is Real Crisis
We reported on this blog weeks ago that, while the Bush administration doggedly focuses on Social Security, Medicare is actually in much worse shape. Now, in a report published March 24 in the Washington Post, it is revealed that two independent trustees overseeing Social Security and Medicare have broken with the administration to point out the urgent need to address Medicare's ills.
Trustees Thomas R. Saving and John L. Palmer say that Medicare's financial condition has "deteriorated dramatically" since 2000 while Social Security has actually stabilized and even improved a bit. Both agree that Social Security is in need of changes, but note that Medicare's trust fund is projected to be depleted a full two decades before Social Security's!
"The question in my mind is why are we even talking about saving Social Security?" said Bruce Bartlett, a conservative commentator with the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Looking 75 years into the future, according the Trustees, Medicare expenditures are projected to approach 14 percent of the economy - nearly the total tax take today. (!) That is nearly triple the same Medicare projections made in 2000.
In other words, Medicare's costs are exploding exponentially and no one really knows where it will end.
Unlike Social Security, which can be fixed through a combination of many tactical options (cutting benefits, increasing returns on trust fund investments, creating private accounts, encouraging Americans to save more, etc.), Medicare has few options.
We're all going to get old and we're all going to need increasing amounts of health care.
In fact, the only real way we can control Medicare (and Medicaid, which a whole other crisis not even addressed here), aside from crushing our children and grandchildren under a weight of taxes that will reduce their standard of living compared to ours, is to get healthier and stay healthier!
Chronic illnesses, especially those attributed to obesity, account for the lion's share of all healthcare expenses. In fact, a new RAND study shows that obesity causes far more chronic health conditions than smoking, and identifies weight reduction as an "urgent public health priority."
Gov. Mike Huckabee is the only potential 2008 presidential candidate who is talking about the health care crisis in America and has the ideas and plans to address it.
BSR
