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lhf65 commented on the blog post We Must Act Now to Save Social Security and Medicare
Let me say first, that as a Social Security and Medicare recipient, I am heartily sick of both parties using us as props. We care about the future of our country and the nature of the country we are leaving to our children and grandchildren. Agitating, per your Florida gambit, is not going to solve anything. Even the most extreme Republican proposals do NOT AFFECT current recipients and to allege otherwise is dishonest and pointless.
You need to apply the same clear thinking to fixing Social Security and Medicare as you applied to the health care debate. You did the best job of anyone of explaining the various options, why they would work, why they wouldn’t. I favored a clean jump to single payer, but that’s not going to happen here and we need to look at other options.
Fixing Social Security is not so difficult. Raise the cap on salaries from which contributions come and raise the retirement age gradually to 70. My understanding is that this would protect the program well into the future. Why aren’t the Democrats pushing this big time? Yes, it’s a tax increase, but it’s targeted and falls on those who can pay. Yes, it imposes a tax on businesses, but there are ways to mitigate this. The Europeans have come up with some ways to protect people who work physically taxing jobs (like miners) and who may need to retire earlier than 70.
Medicare is more complicated. From personal experience, it is nearly impossible now to find a gp who will take a NEW Medicare patient. They can’t kick you out, I don’t believe, if you are already their patient, but they can and do refuse to take you on. So further cuts to providers is only going to make this worse.
Some doctors are returning to the model of my childhood where everyone paid their gp for routine care at modest prices (we were poor, and yet we had an annual physical and dental care) and if they could, carried major medical insurance. Some employers provided this.
Some doctors are now offering “concierge plans” under which you pay a flat fee (some high, some lower) for all your routine care. These doctors see fewer patients, make a decent living, and even make house calls to those who can’t get out. This isn’t single payer, but maybe there’s a way to set up a private system that subsidizes such arrangements for those who can’t pay. A flat fee would eliminate the “fee for service” model, at least for gps as well as the insurance transactions that go with it and drive up costs.
This and some changes to doctor’s training to encourage more students to become gps.
We need to “think outside the box” as they say, rather than putting out the same tired arguments on both sides of the philosophical divide. Come on, Jane, you and lots of other smart people contribute to this site – why not put your minds to work to come up with something workable?
