I am getting just a bit disturbed by the Dem talking points lately which include the words ‘entitlement reform’ when speaking about getting the country back on track. The latest example was Claire McCaskill on Rachel – the ‘entitlement reform’ was included in a laundry list of stuff she thinks we need to do.

Yes, the financial industry is a mess. The housing market is a mess. The jobs market is in the tank. We are in two plus wars We are falling off a cliff.

But one thing that is NOT in trouble is Social Security and Medicare.

That’s not to say that both programs have some issues but they are minor and compared with all this other crap – I would think they need to be off the table.

Social Security actuaries are required by the Social Security Act to forcast the health of the Social Security System every five years. Their forecast must run out 50 years in the future. Do you know anyone? Anyone at all who can forecast anything financial out 50 years? I don’t. But these people give it the old college try using census data, jobs data, manufacturing data, demographic shifts and all manner of other stuff to try and make these predictions.

So far they have been wrong – EVERY SINGLE TIME!

But that’s not all bad. They have been wrong in predicting the health of the fund in the right direction – in other words – they said it would have X dollars – and it has always had more.

The Reich-wing screams and yells that the Fund is running in the red now (more money going out then coming in.) Yeah? So what. It has done that already three times in its history – and the system is still solvent. The Fund would be more solvent if the Rethugs would stop robbing it (see Al Gore’s lockbox). But the actuaries’ most recent forecast is that Social Security will be solvent if we Do Absolutely Nothing until the year 2054. Given their track record – I feel pretty comfortable with that.

If there is one tweak for Social Security I would like to see – remove the earnings cap and tax all income fully. The current system allows the fat cats to pay nothing after a while – and that very effectively lowers their rate of participation, while the working poor pay on every dime.

Medicare – An easy fix for this would be universal coverage. If all the money that is currently put into health insurance premiums was paid to Medicare and everyone was covered – our total (nationwide) per capita cost of care would go down, we could actually fully fund the new system – for less than what we are paying now in taxes and premiums plus co-pays and deductibles, and our system would be better than anyone elses.

The current system is the best provider of ‘insurance’ in the country with overhead running only around 3 percent compared to private companies 12-35 percent overhead and profits costs. People keep yelping about ‘socialism’. But when asked if they would take away their parents’, grandparents’, disabled relatives’ Medicare benefits the answer is always absolutely not. Hmmm.

One immediate change – Re-do the Part-D prescription plan to require negotiation of drug prices for participants – and get rid of criminal penalties for reimportation of drugs from Canada and Europe.

So…I guess that is entitlement reform.

Why am I so scared?