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We “spend too much“ on the elderly.
Below find a graphic demonstration of poverty among seniors in different countries in addition to a side-by-side comparison of amounts spent on seniors in different countries within the OECD. (courtesy of IPS).
The U.S. is closest to Mexico on the elder poverty level scale. (We spend a whopping 6% compared to 12% in France and 10.7% in Germany.) Given that so many seniors live in and near to poverty, should we really consider cutting their Social Security benefits with a chained CPI?
The “extra cost” of the retiring elderly is the reason medical costs will“bankrupt” us.
Below find a graphic demonstration of the minimal influence of more people retiring when compared to the influence of increases in the other costs and prices of medical care. (From the President’s Economic Plan.)
The green line represents the impact of the aging population. The orange band represents population growth. The blue area represents the “other reasons” for the cost of healthcare. The trend is toward lower expenditures in recent history, but since year 2000, it looks like the blue area has increased by 200+billion dollars. Could that increase just be CEOs’ salaries, shareholder dividends and excessive profit?
Below find a graph showing the expected growth in Medicare spending with two possible trajectories:
If Medicare spending follows the ‘red’ bottom line, instead of following the blue line with its automatic link to GDP growth, the situation does not appear to be a ‘crisis’.
Obama is talking about more means-testing for Medicare. Medicare is already means-tested. Should we start means-testing folks at a lower, small family, poverty-line income level? The Obama plan talks about increasing cost-sharing from patients. Why? How cheap can you get?
The President’s Economic Report (Chapter 5) does not mention instituting price controls (so that the MRI which only costs 99.00 to operate does not cost the patient 995.00). Medical price controls would be a better place to start rather than cutting Social Security and asking people to pay more for Medicare insurance and medical services.
Notes for an imaginary margin: A friend reports that on a recent visit his small city hospital was empty, “like a tomb”…. My local hospital doctor told me that they had ‘a great year’. Really? ….. An uninsured man who injured himself while fixing his car went to the discount store and bought antibiotic cream and gauze and sterile tape. It is 600.00 flat to show up at the local ER and to request crisis care. ……In a nearby city, an auto repair garage is charging 108.00 an hour for mechanic work: its repair bays are empty and its parking lot is empty, and the guys are sitting around like crows on a wire….. I know many unemployed people including my own person. There are many my age who are sheltering and supporting their adult children…….. I don’t have any graphs for the realities in my imaginary margin. There is a yawning, seemingly insurmountable, big gap between my world and the Beltway mythologies. End of parallel reality statement.
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My parallel reality is: I stay the hell away from doctors and hospitals, TomThumb. Ain’t got insurance no mo’, won’t buy Obomba’s Care, no way.
Now who wants to Kill Granny? Our Democratic Prez.
I reckon you’ll love this ‘grassroots’ organizing plan. ;`) Maybe they’ll help us, eh wot?
Ugh !
This must be the consolidation phase for the plutocracy! OFA=Non-profit organization specifically designed to serve the needs of financier Rumpelstilskins oops I meant lloyd B. who said some one should tell us seniors that we are not going to get our earned benefits..
All of the polls say Create Jobs Now! but the bloodsuckers are too busy figuring out how to get the last nickle out of grandma and grandpa’s bank accounts. They have all of the money, the levers on the Fed, and all of the political influence money can buy. We bailed them out in trillions of dollars and now they want us to pay their loans off for them!!
The rich want to keep their ill gotten gains. President Platitudes is standing firmly on THEIR side. Even if that means the middle class or what is left of it has to disappear.
For further verification see
Economic Graphs – http://newprogs.org/blog/2012/03/02/economic-graphs
According to the current version of the Progressive Caucus’s budget (PDF p. 9) negotiating Medicare prescription drug prices alone would save $157B. As with removing the cap on SS, Obama never hasn’t put this “on the table.”
Maybe the re-organized “grassroots” OFA will hold his feet to the fire on this one./s
Grammar edit:
According to the current version of the Progressive Caucus’s budget (PDF p. 9) negotiating Medicare prescription drug prices alone would save $157B. As with removing the cap on SS, Obama never hasn’t put this “on the table.”
Maybe the re-organized “grassroots” OFA will hold his feet to the fire on this one./s
On the chart showing people 65 and over living in poverty, it is striking how much closer the United States is to Mexico (still a “developing” nation) than to the other “developed” countries on the chart. This is typical of most demographic statistics. The United States has slipped into Second World status.
Oh, I did it again. “never hasn’t” should be “hasn’t” Sorry.
A 75 year projection is meaningless. All depends on productivity growth, employment, innovation and invention, inflation,,population and resources— and some I forgot like war. Maybe Nostradamus could help. The fools who make these projections should be locked away. They do more harm than good.
If we change just a few assumptions we can make the cost seem to disappear. By far the most important things we can do today is to get full employment, improved education and research. But that is hard to do, so better to project 75 years and wave our hands and scare the shit out of everyone about debt and deficits. Sarah Palin is really good at that sort of thing.
Surely you jest.
By now anyone with half a brain knows our health care system is loaded with unneeded costs, including unjustified profits, executive pay and federal taxes, not to mention cronyism and admin costs on the moon. No wonder we are the highest cost in the developed world. And this is the best our society has to offer–or rather our politics can deliver.
Yup, sorry if the jest wasn’t clear enough.
Sall right. :-)
We understand what you meant!
The Back to Work Budget has many good features. Thanks for posting a link to it here.
Obama’s aversion to raising the FICA cap and his adherence to a punitive chained cpi cut for Social Security should tell us something. He protects those affluent people with income above 113K which would be subject to a FICA tax (scrap the cap) solution. A chained cpi hurts everyone, current beneficiaries and those to come in the future.
What is happening tonight in Cyprus should also be instructive in case of a severe crisis. Banks are made whole first, and depositors come last.
If by “our politics” you mean the two parties in Congress, the guy in the WH, and their enablers, yes, I agree with you.
What’s happening in Cyprus is horrifying. If something like that doesn’t make middle class people realize how vulnerable they are, I don’t know what will.
I actually agree with Obama on the fica tax. If it were me, I’d do away with it, at least until we got to full employment, and maybe not then.
And I’m going to say it yet again, part of our problem stems from wages. We’re told over and over again to save money because Social Security is not meant to pay completely for retirement. How does one save when they make less than $20,000 a year and are responsible for secondary education, housing, food, transportation, medical/dental, utilities, and food, let alone recreation. A kid starting out in a household that experiences poverty pretty much has to win the lottery to escape poverty.
You sure as hell don’t have to convince me of that.
And yet another take down of these….self professed “progressive” groups.
I don’t know what is going on in Cyprus but I am surprised there has not been armed rebellion in some places in the eurozone.
Rich people who earn above 113K get off paying proportionally less FICA tax than do janitors and secretaries, because any income above 113K is not subject to the FICA tax. This is unfair unless you think it is fair to take from the low income folks and give their money to the affluent and the rich. What happened to the Obama who asked that the FiCA cap be scrapped so that everyone pays their fair share?
Then what?
What are you agreeing with? He’s not holding back on lifting the FICA cap as part of a strategy for full employment. He’s holding back because he thinks starving Granny is preferable to taxing higher earners.
A very regressive tax IMO. Do away with it.
That was Candidate Obama. This is his evil twin, President Obama. This is a sequel. Did you miss the original production?
Here’s a link to what happened in Cyprus.
That statement.
Good question…Then What ?
And what pray tell does he say he intends to do with the 2+ trillion in bonds that Social Security already collected in excess from the generation that was told they’d need to pay a little more to secure their futures?
As usual, with Obama,the devil is in the details.
He could also be suggesting that minimum wage be raised to at least $10 an hour in 3 years and that it be indexed to inflation and that ANY income be subject to FICA as well create a financial transaction tax that creates some parity for those that earn their “income” through “investing in other people’s labor.”
No instead he’s suggesting the “you’re on your own” mentality is what is needed and that if we continue this system that we are essentially giving our government the liscense to rob the next generation of seniors.
I said a bit ago that I am surprised there is not armed rebellion in cyprus since they “seem” to be confiscating between 6% and 10% of all bank deposits to pay for their own bail out. Sort of like a tax without representation. ( somewhere I heard about how things like that end.) That is where all this stuff will end. The lies being told here, like all the crap about the sequester and debt, will one day come home to roost.
If it were used as intended it’s reasonably progressive. The tax is a flat tax on, currently, $113k of earned income. Two factors make it relatively progressive.
1. The calculation that of benefits is progressive. A person averaging $20K per year and a person averaging $100K per year will pay the same percentage of income into social security. But the way the formula works, social security will replace a much higher % of the lower wage earner’s income.
2. Social security income receives special tax treatment that is more valuable to low income seniors.
The problem is the government doesn’t want to meet its obligations. Obama and most elected officials would rather change the deal and create what amounts to a soft default on the money the Social Security Administration loaned the government than pay up.
I really don’t know his plan. I think he believes if he changes the way inflation is calculated then all will be well. Given that we “own” our currency, nothing needs to be done (except maybe to increase benefits). But they will never let that truth out. It is all about lies.
I think that is likely true. But to do that they must of necessity tell us a lie, like the fund must be “reformed” or we are “running out of money” or the “debt is unsustainable”. All of those are lies. We own the currency and can pay any debt, any time (including SS) so long as it is in dollars. Sometimes I think lies are taking over the world.
It was a bit of humor, cmaukonen; that’s where I’d grabbed the link. ;o)
I don’t get the numbers. 6% of what?
Spending on social security and medicare are close to $1.5-trillion. Our federal budget is $3.8-trillion. So those programs are about 38% or 39% of federal spending. Our GDP was $15.1-trillion in 2011. Allowing for growth, it may be $15.5-trillion now. So we are spending between 9% and 10% of GDP on those two programs.
I’m not saying we are spending too much on those programs. I am saying that I don’t understand the numbers presented.
I thought they were higher than that, but it is a lot of money. We have the most expensive health care system known to mankind.
There are a number of lies involved. But the notion that the government can create all the money it wants without decreasing the purchasing power of the dollar is a myth. In the present economy the problem is too little gov’t spending to make up for lost private sector demand.
When Reagan and O’Neal cut their deal, the social security tax covered about 90% of earned income. Because of the concentration of wage gains at the upper end, the inflator they picked didn’t keep up. The tax now covers between 83 and 84% of earned income. Just raising the cap to the 90% Reagan agreed to would buy a number of years. The 75 year projection was always a joke.
WOT…An article in the WAPO questioning Obama and his minions ??? The world as we know it has just ended.
Not. A. Chance. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/15/the-progressive-movement-is-a-pr-front-for-rich-democrats/
Yes, I meant it as snark. Saw a previous link to the counterpunch article, haven’t read it in detail yet, but it looks like an accurate description of the situation.
Wow, the first graphic shows Canada with the lowest poverty levels AND low public expenditures for the elderly.
It can be done.
IMO, John Stauber’s article is one of the must-read pieces on The Progressive Movement (what his colleague, Patrick Barrett, calls the “Democratic Party cum non-profit industrial complex”). The column is entitled “The Progressive Movement is a PR Front for Rich Democrats.” He wrote that media propaganda outfits like The Nation, Alternet, and Media Matters all work in concert with the Democratic 1%.
It gets worse:
I urge everyone to read Stauber’s article. It is eye-opening.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/15/the-progressive-movement-is-a-pr-front-for-rich-democrats/
Austerity in a banking crisis appears to be where government colludes with banks and bondholders to make depositors pay for their losses.
If you are one of the rich elite, less government means lower taxes and preservation of your wealth and prestige (aggrandizement is false but don’t tell them). Hopefully people will eventually see the overreach in cuts to social programs, especially Social Security and Medicare. Perhaps watching the theft of depositors money in Cyprus will show who is really in power and how the plutocracy of money is totally undemocratic.
Good morning TomThumb. Did you see that this post is in today’s Links section at nakedcapitalism?
This book review by Pham Binh is one of my early faves, and still holds even more true than ever.
How great that your link is at NC, TomThumb!
OFA will be comprised of Obama Kool-Aid worshippers who will not even try to hold his feet to the fire about anything.
Besides, he ignores the grass roots. The lack of a meaningful public option in Obamacare proved that. Over 70% of people polled wanted it and there were phone calls, emails, marches, etc., all of which he (and Congress) ignored.
They know very well that a 75-year projection is meaningless. Ditto on changing assumptions.
“Figures lie and liars figure.”
We know it’s a myth.
We just don’t know what to do about it that is likely to be effective.
Yea!
The pressure for change is all coming from the Top ==>Down and is crushing us. An inversion of the 1930s. Like wendydavis says, we are coopted at every turn by existing political parties serving only one master.
But don’t despair, we still have our part to play in making a difference.
………..
Haakaa palee! Hack them down! Nice swing, scion of Suomi. And top o’ the mornin’ to ye.
Yes, I know. I’ve never had an attempted little joke fall so flat. My life in comedy is so over!
Not that many of us here haven’t realized for a while that OFA, MoveOn, etc. were tools of the establishment, but that counterpunch article really puts it all together in one package, doesn’t it?
Ah, here’s some more accurate analysis from the Trots at WSWS that dovetails nicely with the excellent discussion on this thread:
“In a spending proposal released last month in connection with the debate over the “sequester” budget cuts, Obama called for $400 billion in cuts to the government health care programs Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the implementation of a new measure of consumer prices that would slash Social Security benefits by $130 billion.
But in his talks with lawmakers this week, Obama appeared to go even further, saying he would be amenable to implementing means-testing for Medicare. This would end Medicare as a universal social entitlement, turning it essentially into an anti-poverty program, a major step toward its eventual elimination.”
And:
“In between his meetings with members of Congress, Obama found time to give a speech before 75 major campaign donors, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who paid $50,000 apiece to take part in a fundraiser by Organizing for Action, a non-profit committee supporting Obama’s legislative agenda.”
And the conclusion:
“The Democrats are seeking to present their agreement to slash entitlements as a response to Republican “intransigence” and a concession to the Republicans in exchange for adopting measures that would raise tax revenues from the rich. In fact, whatever revenue increases may be passed will have a negligible impact on the wealthy and will be more than offset by cuts to corporate taxes, which both parties say they support.”
I’m glad these Trotskyites are still around. Anyway, the whole article’s a good read:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/16/budg-m16.html
Man, some of the reactions on this thread are pretty sorry, imo. Do we really have to used the dreaded ‘snark tag’ every time we try to make fun of crap like ‘Obamites for Action’ now? Lord luv a duck. And in any event, ‘snark’ is a creepy word; we need to invent a new one, like we do for the tired ‘kabuki’ and ‘on steroids’, imo.
Just as a point of reference, the first time I blogged here about Dems as Elites was Jan. 2011, after having been permission to by Mattie Stoller. Er…some folks here didn’t take it too very well. That was just after my very tentative diary on ‘Time to talk about Socialism?’, lol.
Two things one must remember. One is that the Democratic Party is and always has been pro corporatist, capitalist. The supported slavery and were instrumental in the slaughter and removal on Native Americans. made sure Henry Wallace would be replaced by Harry Truman – a staunch anti-communist and anti-socialist. The cold war and the communist scare originated under his administration.
Secondly the current republican party is made up of almost entirely all the racist and segregationist elements of the Democratic Party that left over civil rights. As well as the most hawkish members. All of which left the Democratic party in the lat 1960s and early 1970s.
So what we have now is simply two wings of the same dodo bird. The merely crazy and bat shit crazy.
What kind of bargain-hunter’s paradise does your friend live in? Read Steven Brill’s recent article in Time Magazine for a reality check on medical prices in the US: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us (4 March 2013).
Personal anecdote:
My partially retired 85-year-old father recently had a slip-and-fall and broke the neck of his humerus (upper arm). He was never given an MRI, only “cheaper” x-rays in the name of cost control, and so was treated with nothing more than morphine and a sling for the first three weeks, a standard approach with elderly patients whose bone fragments are thought to be well aligned. His shoulder and arm specialist was content to continue along that course until we pointed out to him how strangely the deltoid seemed to be drooping over the break. That prompted a final additional x-ray from an unusual angle, which revealed that at least one fragment was very badly aligned and that my dad would remained badly disabled without surgery. Within days he had a plate and screws put in. Because of the three week delay, he spent nearly an extra two hours under general anesthesia while the surgeons ground down and reshaped the new bone growth to get a good fit.
My dad has Medicare as his primary insurance and non-profit employer-based PPO insurance as his secondary. He received all of his treatment at a public university medical center. His total charges so far for this rather common injury and straightforward course of treatment have been just shy — and by just shy, I really do mean just $15 shy — of $50,000. His out-of-pocket share of the medical bills (not including stuff like an adjustable reclining sofa in which to sleep for the first six weeks) have been around $1,400. Compare that total bill to a minimum-wage income. Now, calculate the out-of-pocket for someone on an Obamacare “bronze-level” policy that only covers 60% of charges. Next, consider that in Japan, where MRIs cost around an eighth of what they do here, thanks to aggressive monopsonistic bargaining by the Japanese Ministry of Health, my dad would almost certainly have had an MRI in the ER and been referred to surgery immediately, sparing my dad three weeks of needless pain, disability, sleep disruption, absence from work, and addiction-building, GI-tract-paralyzing opioid use. And finally, consider that the total bill for all of his treatment would probably have been no more than half in the most medically expensive of our peer countries, Switzerland and Canada, and considerably lower than that in many of the others.
In my view, not only are we spending less on the elderly than other countries, but the money that is being spent is being wasted on price-gouging and administrative featherbedding. Still, this was an excellent post.
Thank you for writing about your Dad’s journey through healthcare USA. Sorry that happened to him. I was hoping we would get to Brill’s report somehow and you did, unfortunately, by living the experiences you wrote about.
Thank you TomThumb for the post and excellent comments.
So right about Brill’s report in TIME. The best article in TIME for many years.
We,as a people,must fight.Or die.
There should be absolutely no profit in healthcare. Period.
Capitalistic Democracy will not allow it,though.The system as is will cause(and is causing) untold pain and suffering throughout this country and the world.
My personal plan when the time comes; as it always does for everyone; is to disappear into the wilderness rather than see the little I’ve accumulated for my family go down the rabbit hole of the healthcare industrial complex.
Let this be fair warning to those who profit from the pain and suffering of millions.
I will go,but not quietly.
PEACE
Congrats on being linked at NC. Recommended.
I have news. A 10 year projection is meaningless. Take a look at CBO’s 2000 10 year projections for example, or its 2008 10 year projections. It’s all fiction. WE established CBO to tell us deficit terrorist stories not to make projections close to reality.
The crux of Stauber’s Counterpunch article, a quote from Barrett:
Nothing new, one could say, but more clarification/confirmation that our “activist” friends might as well be working for CPAC for all the good they are accomplishing. Sigh.
The Government can create as much money as it wants to without inflation. It just can’t spend without limit and avoid inflation.
But the question then becomes: “how much can it spend without causing demand-pull inflation?” And the answer is: it can spend as much as it takes to create full employment.
On this kind of thinking, see my new Kindle e-book.
I was just in India and had an mri on my shoulder – $130. I also had a 40 min consultation with an orthopedic surgeon – $7 (that’s right, seven dollars). But remember, boys and girls, the US has the best health care system in the world.
$1400 for $50,000 worth of care. Winning.