What becomes of Medicare?
My plan for health care is Medicare for all (a.k.a.,
Single Payer Health Care) because it eliminates the for profit insurance
companies from the health care loop. This is important because the primary
concern of a profitable insurance company is growing profitability, not caring
for the customers. Medicare has been very efficient at providing for services
to seniors, because service is its primary reason to exist. I will propose
extending that kind of service to everybody.
Keeping Medicare a program for seniors only, and
privatizing it, is bad policy because seniors are prone to becoming
increasingly expensive customers; not the people a profitable company can
afford to serve. My wife and I both have, “pre-existing conditions,” so we peg
the expense meter on insurance companies' actuarial charts. We are far from
alone. Many folks (young, old and in between)
have one condition or another making them all expensive to insure, so
privatizing (giving Medicare to for profit insurance companies) does not
register as a good idea with my campaign.
What about Social Security?
Social security will come under tremendous fiscal
pressure as my generation (74 million Baby Boomers) retire. That was actually
anticipated in the Reagan administration; payroll tax rates were increased and
more money than needed was collected. The excess money was not put into a safe
place and was instead borrowed by the legislature, special treasury notes (the
Congressional Budget Office refers to them as, "permission to
spend money") were issued.
Some have said that the solution is to privatize
(give to for profit companies) the entire Social Security program; how much of
the, "permission to spend," would be paid out is never mentioned.
Private companies would supposedly invest the money in the market and pay out
from the returns on said investments. Individual savings and 401k monies are
already invested in said markets, and o'er the last 30 years have grown and
shrunk in a recurring series of economic cycles that cause a roller coaster to
pale by comparison. I don't think putting Social Security funds on that same
private ride is anything but a really bad idea.
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