Maybe if Bill Clinton was actually serious about the commission he established, we would not be in the situation we are in today. Pointing the finger at today's beneficiaries does absolutely zero to address the problem. A problem decades in the making and yes facilitated by an electorate unwilling to sacrifice.
And by the way, I see lots of headlines about the great wealth transfer. To heirs, but also charitable organizations, universities and a public high school in a little town in Slovakia. Yes, let's have the WaPo editorial board dictate where that transfer goes as well.
Being an employer I see it more as a cost to the employer. Not only do I have to get that money, I have to pay to have someone pay what’s due, keep track of it, and send a form of the total payed at the end of the year. Just like unemployment tax, federal withholding tax, and state tax. It’s not free to do all of this paperwork. Also many businesses collect sales tax to the state which has there own costs.
When we make decisions in life they are all “motivated” by what we want the outcome to be. “Motives” can make people or systems do horrendous acts at times. This I believe goes to government and its medical establishments motives to not actually cure illness in people. Cures for things like cancer could be put on hold indefinitely so people are unable to live a long life. It’s pretty obvious the medical establishment pushed their COVID vaccine knowing the harms it would create. The whole covid response changed my mind to not trust what the government was doing. Harming Medicare will be another big step to reducing population.
Vaccines that harm reproductive abilities in women can stunt population growth, aside from killing people and children. Isn’t it amazing that people like Bill Gates that would love to see the population of the world drastically reduced, takes a huge role in spreading his money making vaccines all over the world.
It’s time that people must begin advocating for themselves and their loved ones. What motivates this government and the one world order may not be in you or your families best interest at all!
Well said! I also do not trust the medical establishment any longer. No more “vaccines” for me. Now everyone I know is injecting themselves with GLP 1’s. Sure, it’s great to drop those unwanted 45, 60, 85 lbs but what are they actually doing to peoples health in the long run?! Another Covid shot scenario in my book. Trust big Pharma? Nope, never again.
My financial guy wants me to wait to take SS. Get the max benefit. Well in 3 years what will remain of those benefits?! It’s anyone’s guess….. I need coffee!
This is anecdotal, but in the early nineties, my husband and I had a computer business in the Seattle area; we built PC's. We built high end, custom computers for our clients, many of them programmers for Microsoft, small business' and really smart people. One of our customers was a married couple with Phd's, they taught us what those letters meant, piled high and deep. They were cancer researchers. I will never forget what they told us, "We don't know how many times we have to find the cure to cancer before they tell the rest of you." They had quit the work, by then.
In 1977 I attended the noon meeting of the Ripon Rotary Club at which William Steiger was the guest speaker. He was a well-known and popular Republican Congressman. Ripon WI is the birthplace of the Republican Party. During the Q&A I asked the good congressman about the SS system and its viability for my generation (I was 28 at the time and starting a new business). Could the government just let us invest the money in a private program? After a quick survey of the room to be sure no press was attending, Steiger replied in so many words that I was not to worry my pretty little head, Social Security was going to be around for-e-VER. I'm now 77 and collecting SS. For me, he was right. I paid the SS tax for my entire working career. But I also saved and invested like nobody's business and am now a member of the group the WP thinks shouldn't get the stipend. Screw them. Friggin' democrats.
My son is an independent contractor. He pays SS taxes up the wazoo. My father also had his own business. He got paid less than his employees. SS has always been a scam. I often wonder if it was designed to give government more money to spend. What better way to disguise a tax than to say "you have your own private account"?
Not mentioned here is Medicaid which I assume the fed portion comes in part or all from Medicare, particularly after passage of the ACA, and it is rife with fraud. So yes if fraud was eliminated one headline I read today suggests it would double its life expectancy
This is a hot topic for me because I'm in the middle. Let me give you a bit of insider perspective.
Twenty nine years ago I read an article that predicted that SS would go bankrupt by 2015. This was based on two conditions - one - the Boomers would be in retirement age and - two - the government saw that SS money sitting in surplus and voted to be able to dip into it.
In 2017 I turned 70 and filed for SS. Every year since then my monthly allotment has diminished because the first scoop off the top is to pay Medicare. Okay so I did the right thing and bought supplemental insurance. I have the whole alphabet. But I've been healthy and didn't need to use my Medicare benefit until May of 2022 when I had to have a tribeculectomy in my left eye to save it from glaucoma.
The doctor told me the cost would be $2500. But when I got the summary from Medicare in order for him to get the $2500 he would normally bill he charged $85,000. That is not a misprint - which I thought it was.
Then, in January 2025 I fell and broke my left femur and had to take my first ambulance ride to the hospital and surgery the next day. When I got my summary bill from Medicare the hospital bill, not including all the other services rendered was $111,000. Medicare paid $14,000. I don't even know what the supplemental insurance paid.
The conclusion is what I call action/reaction. Medicare pays what it wants to so the medical services over charge to get close to what they want.
It is a mess and probably why then gov Cuomo sent covid infected patients to nursing homes to help thin the medicaid rolls.
You have unveiled a dirty little secret of Medicare charges. Physicians fees are based on a relative value system established in a 1970s and updated since that time with each higher level of Care being a multiplier of the basic physicians RVS. Medicare plays 85% of what they have established as the reasonable fee with minimal updates from time to time if the physician lowers his nominal fee to match Medicare‘s established rate, Medicare then lowers that fee even more Medicare effectively requires physicians to accept their designated fee with no balance billing possible. Many private insurers follow the Medicare schedule. Hospitals are paid on the basis of DRG’s or diagnosis related groups. The various diagnosis causing a person to enter the hospital in any complicating other diagnoses establish a global fee, regardless of how long the person is in the hospital or how many resources the Hospital uses. Obviously the DRG system can be “gamed“ just like Medicare advantage is being gamed. The excess in costs to providers is almost entirely based in Capital costs and personnel for administration and care. There was Costs of drugs, supplies, and equipment are not market controlled.
The beast to be tamed resides in the reinsurance stop-loss markets in the medical and hospitalization insurance sector. Why not use the United States Treasury to become the insuror of last resort and internalize the profits made from stop-loss reinsurance premiums paid by the servicing medical and hospitalization insurers?
That creates an opportunity to lock primary insurers into a subordinate role where we restore the primacy of the physician/patient relationship; i.e., where the patient and the attending physician of their choosing are the sole arbiters of what is medically necessary in the clinical moment. This will freeze out the tortious interference of interloping clerks, administrators, and non-attending medical professionals. Insurors will be forced under penalty of law to reimburse all medically necessary services as so determined by the primacy of the attending physician concurrence in the clinical moment. No more interference, usurpations or denials by non-attending interlopers.
The same reinsurance stabilization and reform can be extended to professional malpractice coverage and we can move the nation to a no-fault capture and transparent study of medical error and adverse outcomes.
American citizens have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of health and the medical arts are implicit and unalienable from the ability to realize the three unalienable rights of every American. By what cruel distortion of logic do we allow the suspension and usurpation of unalienable rights by fiat of contract and commerce?
By using the US Treasury as the reinsurance provider we are mutually insuring ourselves while preserving the primary insurance structure, but correcting it and imposing consumer protection that prevents non-attending medical interlopers unlawfully practicing medicine on a patient they have not attended and have no permission to lawfully attend. These are gaping structural flaws in the current regulatory scheme and legislative rubric; one that is killing patients and magnifying stresses that lead to increased physician error and years of life lost for all involved.
The monopolies that have formed around the current legislation and regulation are growing increasingly pernicious, malignant and malthusian.
The beast taking shape is coming for us all. We are the harvest.
The primacy of the attending physician/patient relationship is foundation of everything good and meaningful. We must insure this prevails.
Very interesting ideas well worth considering. However I will note that the “fiat“ of commerce and contract are in fact, the liable rights of engaging in free enterprise. They do carry the personal responsibility for practicing those rights on an individual basis. Much of that has been “delegated” to our government and now we face foreseeable consequences. Is the only answer more delegations of our personal agency to the social whole?
Unalienable means unalienable, contracts be damned. As to the rest, I concur.
We must use government to do the unilateral big things it does well. They get paid to administrate. No one there has authority to manage variance. It's a one-size-fits all system. They are great and powerful Butchers. God help us all when they get tasked with conducting surgery.
When unalienable ceases to mean unalienable and becomes provisional, this great experiment in human self-governance will be forever dead.
I live in upstate NY. I believe during covid, Cuomo thought the elites where going to get sick and die if the hospitals were not able to take them in.
I think that was his plan in clearing out the hospitals for emergency, only no elective procedures. That included sending the elderly to nursing homes so that was a double edged sword.
He misused state police to rush drugs or tests or maybe it was both across the state for his brother Chris when he got covid.
Possible. We'll never know for sure what the thinking was. But we do know that Trump sent the Navy hospital ship that was docked in the harbor and charitable organizations put up a tent hospital in Central Park - both of which went unused.
I cannot get a doctor to give me even a ballpark number as to what a specific surgery wil cost. They just tell me it differs with each insurance company. This situation goes back at least a couple of decades and probably longer.
Surgeons DO know what they will get paid for surgery- under Medicare and many private insurers they are paid best global fee that covers their pre-operative visit, the surgery and post operative care in hospital, and follow up care related to that surgical event in their offices. That is why so many use PA’s or NP’s in their offices especially for postoperative visits— actually being in the operative room is a more productive use of their time. Proceduralists, not surgeons, have a known fee for that service but may be able to charge for ongoing care afterwards as the procedure is part of their diagnostic and/or therapeutic work.
I would truly appreciate meeting a doctor who I could get a reasonable estimate from. Regarding PA's, the last time I went for medical care I saw a PA and I felt he did a very professional job. Maybe the best part was that he listened to me. I knew that for sure when I read the report in my medical file.
Sure Washington Post, let’s start with the nearly 1 in 5 members of Congress aged 70 or above. I wonder what Nancy and Bernie would say when the editorial board comes to them and wants to dip into their pockets. Actually, I don’t wonder at all.
Ironically, if we had at least partially privatized SS back when Bush proposed it, we wouldn't have any of these problems, and SS would probably be MAKING money, somehow!
But, then, the bezos post and all other liberal pubs and demoncrat politicians were screaming, "Bush wants to put us at the mercy of evil corporate America!! He wants to make us victims of the rapacious Wall Street!!"
Yaaaaaaa, and add to that the fraud, and that social security bennies were handed to illegally imported people who never paid into the system, because they were slated as voter replacement..
And
We need to face the reality that the COVID management was also to relieve pressure on the already spent social security and medicare programs, as well as pensions elsewhere in the world. That wiped out a lot of beneficiary years. And it will be done again and again, because the planners will never achieve the conditions that they want.
I pulled out my calculator back when they started loading those COVID infected patients into the nursing homes.
Any elderly person waiting until 70 to get "full" bennies needs to redo their math.
Fraud, and ridiculous pricing schemes. In this modern age of electronic inovation, why should C pap machines cost hundreds of dollars? And hearing aids many thousand dollars? The list is endless. Get government out of the way and prices will drop like a rock. Just fund essential care and remove the vast network of grifters making a fortune on government largesse
Add to this equation the fact I worked hard to put the maximum into a 401k.
At 73 I am required to do a yearly minimum withdrawal. That drives up my taxable income one way or another so the government gets more money already.
I took my SS starting at 62 at a reduced amount because of a comp injury.
I didn't get SS disability. I worked in a different field and was paying more taxes because I was earning too much by their tables to collect my SS fully as un taxable.
It is similar to what they did to unemployment insurance years ago. I collected that during the 70's as the housing industry was at a stand still about 1974. My check was half of my hourly rate times 40 up to a limit. I was single with a 3 yo son living on $65 a week.
Then they changed the law after that and made unemployment taxable.
I remember when NY started the sales tax and it was referred to as the hot dog tax for meals under a dollar. That has grown to where it it is on almost everything including utilities and of course gasoline to get to work and still they want more taxes.
That is why no politician really wants to fight inflation because it just means more sales, income, and SS taxes coming in.
I bought my homestead property in 1995 1700 sq ft single story shell. for $20,000 cash by taking out a hardship withdrawal from my 401k. I paid sales tax on every 2x4, sheet of drywall, wiring, plumbing, etc building it with cash never having a mortgage.
They have increased my assessment every year over these 31 years until it is over $225k and tax me now at a rate of about $400 per month on something I own?
Town and county taxes went up 10% last year.
I also remember when you could write off interest paid on any account and your real estate and sales taxes off on your income tax filing but that went the way of the dinosaurs too.
There is no fiscal responsibility at any level of government!
You don't own your property, Bill. That is one of the greatest misconceptions of our day. You have the right to live there and maintain it as long as you pay local government for the privilege. If you truly owned it, they couldn't take it away.
Do away with Medicare totally. Go back to a systems of private insurance companies writing health insurance just as we do with homes cars life etc. everyone chooses the level they are willing to pay for. Make it actual insurance ( look up the definition of insurance. Medicare ain’t it) break up the companies that have bought out every doctor’s practice in America. Make all health care pricing transparent. All doctors hospitals etc must post the cost of every service. Medicare is not insurance in any sense of the word. It is a welfare program with a single payor. It is socialized medicine. The cost of health care is the highest in the world because govt pays for it with no competition. I was running a nursing home when Medicare was established. I predicted at the time that was the worse possible solution. That it would bankrupt us.
Part of the excessive costs of even private insurance are the time value of money and personnel. When I was in practice, it took an average of 45 to 120 days to collect fees from an insurer. Every new insurance contract cost us 1/4 full-time equivalent person.
It's unconscionable; arguably a criminally insane monopolistic scheme to sabotage a process in a manner that attenuates the ability of medical professionals to save lives, preserve timeliness, reduce years of life lost, and to accelerate the actuary fate in a cryptic manner that lowers overall costs at scale to benefit competing interests.
It's not become this way by accident, but instead by deliberate actions serving other interests. Otherwise it would not be what we see today.
Maybe(?), if US Representatives and Senators (as well as their staff) were required to live with the same benefits as us deplorables, we’d have a more realistic and workable retirement system. Is it too late to ask for my contribution back (with reasonable interest included of course) and let me manage my own affairs?
It will not be fixed until all federal employees are treated like plain ‘ol ordinary citizens. There has never been any mention of the retirement fund for government employees running out of money.
Money is fungible. Perhaps, in a very real sense, so is American Citizenship. The benefits belong to Americans. If there are inequities, they are rooted in misapprehension, or, the individual differences in the biology of the citizen and the income tax code designed to discriminate against the human person unevenly, punitively, and capriciously by fiat of the greed and envy driving legislative politics.
This, I suspect, is why the founders saw the excise tax as the only just and rational means of taxation to fund the government of a republic and preserve individual liberty from the predations of the stereotypical personalities that crave power over others.
I did a deep dive with GROK in re the state of Colorado, asking the total value of interstate and international commerce outbound (in USD) from the state for FY2024: >$20 Trillion. Then I asked for the total tax revenue generated for FY2024 assessed retail sales, property tax and state income tax: >$33 Billion. If a 10% excise tax were to be used instead on outbound commerce, that's a differential increase of ~$1.67 Trillion in revenue with a massive liberation of productivity and productivity quality for the residents of Colorado, who get major swathes of their private life back and a general decriminalization of their relationship to their state government.
I think the dynamic in play illuminates why Trump contemplates a similar thing on the national and federal level. The numbers stated are too fluid and complex to hold true in reality, but the differential is immutably on display. How we fund our nation's governments today is brutish, schizoid and sadistically unproductive.
A Big Rethink is happening in the streets. If we can't break the grip of the corrupt political orthodoxy that has institutionalized the spectacular normalization of fraud on display in Minnesota, California and other Machine Democrat (and crony RINO) strongholds, the DSA kids will bury us with distemper and rampage while they dance in the flames of mendacity and mutual self-immolation.
Our founder's Constitution is just fine. It's the conceits and stupidities of the Victorian, Edwardian and Elizabethan Eras that need flushing down the commode of history.
Engineering still lights the way. The engineering culture of America influences all aspects of our economy to better inform and liberate our best professional practices.
Liberating our best professional practices has a way of liberating our best personal practices, and the latter is an area of societal gain desperately needed for the benefit of all.
Gates, Fauci and Collins are but three of many pernicious examples of the archetypical malignancy that infests our era and threatens our mutual future.
I am so sick of being robbed. I am equally sick of being treated like a moron.
The government is wasting the money, not me.
Absolutely!
Not only did Social Security recipients pay into the fund, but so did their employers. The employers share should be seen as wages deferred.
Extracting $3 for every $1 put into the system is not sustainable!
If I had got to keep the money withheld, I would have made a lot more than $3 for every dollar that was withheld.
I don't know anyone who said it was sustainable. In 1994, Senators Kerrey and Danforth, as co-chairmen, set forth their proposals how to deal with entitlements. "Chart I: THE PRESENT TREND IS NOT SUSTAINABLE" https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/KerreyDanforth/KerreyDanforthProposal.pdf
Maybe if Bill Clinton was actually serious about the commission he established, we would not be in the situation we are in today. Pointing the finger at today's beneficiaries does absolutely zero to address the problem. A problem decades in the making and yes facilitated by an electorate unwilling to sacrifice.
And by the way, I see lots of headlines about the great wealth transfer. To heirs, but also charitable organizations, universities and a public high school in a little town in Slovakia. Yes, let's have the WaPo editorial board dictate where that transfer goes as well.
Being an employer I see it more as a cost to the employer. Not only do I have to get that money, I have to pay to have someone pay what’s due, keep track of it, and send a form of the total payed at the end of the year. Just like unemployment tax, federal withholding tax, and state tax. It’s not free to do all of this paperwork. Also many businesses collect sales tax to the state which has there own costs.
When we make decisions in life they are all “motivated” by what we want the outcome to be. “Motives” can make people or systems do horrendous acts at times. This I believe goes to government and its medical establishments motives to not actually cure illness in people. Cures for things like cancer could be put on hold indefinitely so people are unable to live a long life. It’s pretty obvious the medical establishment pushed their COVID vaccine knowing the harms it would create. The whole covid response changed my mind to not trust what the government was doing. Harming Medicare will be another big step to reducing population.
Vaccines that harm reproductive abilities in women can stunt population growth, aside from killing people and children. Isn’t it amazing that people like Bill Gates that would love to see the population of the world drastically reduced, takes a huge role in spreading his money making vaccines all over the world.
It’s time that people must begin advocating for themselves and their loved ones. What motivates this government and the one world order may not be in you or your families best interest at all!
Well said! I also do not trust the medical establishment any longer. No more “vaccines” for me. Now everyone I know is injecting themselves with GLP 1’s. Sure, it’s great to drop those unwanted 45, 60, 85 lbs but what are they actually doing to peoples health in the long run?! Another Covid shot scenario in my book. Trust big Pharma? Nope, never again.
My financial guy wants me to wait to take SS. Get the max benefit. Well in 3 years what will remain of those benefits?! It’s anyone’s guess….. I need coffee!
We should not place trust in those who regard us as livestock.
At best the bargain is to gain today's food by leaving our tomorrows under their management.
The tech titans have proven themselves not to be humane herd keepers.
It's called Eugenics James. Its always been there. Even Planned Parenthood is that; and has been from the start.
As I was saying about the mRNA vaccines that are harming everyone, we can now add Dolly Parton to that list, for it is likely what contributed to her death....https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/she-believed-in-it-with-her-whole?r=9er3b&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
This is anecdotal, but in the early nineties, my husband and I had a computer business in the Seattle area; we built PC's. We built high end, custom computers for our clients, many of them programmers for Microsoft, small business' and really smart people. One of our customers was a married couple with Phd's, they taught us what those letters meant, piled high and deep. They were cancer researchers. I will never forget what they told us, "We don't know how many times we have to find the cure to cancer before they tell the rest of you." They had quit the work, by then.
In 1977 I attended the noon meeting of the Ripon Rotary Club at which William Steiger was the guest speaker. He was a well-known and popular Republican Congressman. Ripon WI is the birthplace of the Republican Party. During the Q&A I asked the good congressman about the SS system and its viability for my generation (I was 28 at the time and starting a new business). Could the government just let us invest the money in a private program? After a quick survey of the room to be sure no press was attending, Steiger replied in so many words that I was not to worry my pretty little head, Social Security was going to be around for-e-VER. I'm now 77 and collecting SS. For me, he was right. I paid the SS tax for my entire working career. But I also saved and invested like nobody's business and am now a member of the group the WP thinks shouldn't get the stipend. Screw them. Friggin' democrats.
A business. Another thing not mentioned here is that the small business man pays double, for himself as owner and for himself as employee.
My son is an independent contractor. He pays SS taxes up the wazoo. My father also had his own business. He got paid less than his employees. SS has always been a scam. I often wonder if it was designed to give government more money to spend. What better way to disguise a tax than to say "you have your own private account"?
We maybe do not mind sharing wealth once in a while....
We get very upset when it becomes "WASTED" needlessly.
Actually, the employee pays it all. The employee trades his time for pay; he gets part of his paycheck, the rest goes to the government.
Indeed! Been there done this too!
You think Republicans haven't been complicit? Wake up and smell the toast burning!
Wondering—How many Republicans work at the Washington Post?
I read a piece that of the 87 editors at NPR, there were NO republicans. Probably a similar makeup at WaPo.
Us too.
Yep, Been there done that as well.
Sucks to be us!
But let's be honest... With the gov't we have now, should any of us be surprised?
Not mentioned here is Medicaid which I assume the fed portion comes in part or all from Medicare, particularly after passage of the ACA, and it is rife with fraud. So yes if fraud was eliminated one headline I read today suggests it would double its life expectancy
That is what Dr. Oz has been saying.
This is a hot topic for me because I'm in the middle. Let me give you a bit of insider perspective.
Twenty nine years ago I read an article that predicted that SS would go bankrupt by 2015. This was based on two conditions - one - the Boomers would be in retirement age and - two - the government saw that SS money sitting in surplus and voted to be able to dip into it.
In 2017 I turned 70 and filed for SS. Every year since then my monthly allotment has diminished because the first scoop off the top is to pay Medicare. Okay so I did the right thing and bought supplemental insurance. I have the whole alphabet. But I've been healthy and didn't need to use my Medicare benefit until May of 2022 when I had to have a tribeculectomy in my left eye to save it from glaucoma.
The doctor told me the cost would be $2500. But when I got the summary from Medicare in order for him to get the $2500 he would normally bill he charged $85,000. That is not a misprint - which I thought it was.
Then, in January 2025 I fell and broke my left femur and had to take my first ambulance ride to the hospital and surgery the next day. When I got my summary bill from Medicare the hospital bill, not including all the other services rendered was $111,000. Medicare paid $14,000. I don't even know what the supplemental insurance paid.
The conclusion is what I call action/reaction. Medicare pays what it wants to so the medical services over charge to get close to what they want.
It is a mess and probably why then gov Cuomo sent covid infected patients to nursing homes to help thin the medicaid rolls.
You have unveiled a dirty little secret of Medicare charges. Physicians fees are based on a relative value system established in a 1970s and updated since that time with each higher level of Care being a multiplier of the basic physicians RVS. Medicare plays 85% of what they have established as the reasonable fee with minimal updates from time to time if the physician lowers his nominal fee to match Medicare‘s established rate, Medicare then lowers that fee even more Medicare effectively requires physicians to accept their designated fee with no balance billing possible. Many private insurers follow the Medicare schedule. Hospitals are paid on the basis of DRG’s or diagnosis related groups. The various diagnosis causing a person to enter the hospital in any complicating other diagnoses establish a global fee, regardless of how long the person is in the hospital or how many resources the Hospital uses. Obviously the DRG system can be “gamed“ just like Medicare advantage is being gamed. The excess in costs to providers is almost entirely based in Capital costs and personnel for administration and care. There was Costs of drugs, supplies, and equipment are not market controlled.
The beast to be tamed resides in the reinsurance stop-loss markets in the medical and hospitalization insurance sector. Why not use the United States Treasury to become the insuror of last resort and internalize the profits made from stop-loss reinsurance premiums paid by the servicing medical and hospitalization insurers?
That creates an opportunity to lock primary insurers into a subordinate role where we restore the primacy of the physician/patient relationship; i.e., where the patient and the attending physician of their choosing are the sole arbiters of what is medically necessary in the clinical moment. This will freeze out the tortious interference of interloping clerks, administrators, and non-attending medical professionals. Insurors will be forced under penalty of law to reimburse all medically necessary services as so determined by the primacy of the attending physician concurrence in the clinical moment. No more interference, usurpations or denials by non-attending interlopers.
The same reinsurance stabilization and reform can be extended to professional malpractice coverage and we can move the nation to a no-fault capture and transparent study of medical error and adverse outcomes.
American citizens have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of health and the medical arts are implicit and unalienable from the ability to realize the three unalienable rights of every American. By what cruel distortion of logic do we allow the suspension and usurpation of unalienable rights by fiat of contract and commerce?
By using the US Treasury as the reinsurance provider we are mutually insuring ourselves while preserving the primary insurance structure, but correcting it and imposing consumer protection that prevents non-attending medical interlopers unlawfully practicing medicine on a patient they have not attended and have no permission to lawfully attend. These are gaping structural flaws in the current regulatory scheme and legislative rubric; one that is killing patients and magnifying stresses that lead to increased physician error and years of life lost for all involved.
The monopolies that have formed around the current legislation and regulation are growing increasingly pernicious, malignant and malthusian.
The beast taking shape is coming for us all. We are the harvest.
The primacy of the attending physician/patient relationship is foundation of everything good and meaningful. We must insure this prevails.
Very interesting ideas well worth considering. However I will note that the “fiat“ of commerce and contract are in fact, the liable rights of engaging in free enterprise. They do carry the personal responsibility for practicing those rights on an individual basis. Much of that has been “delegated” to our government and now we face foreseeable consequences. Is the only answer more delegations of our personal agency to the social whole?
Unalienable means unalienable, contracts be damned. As to the rest, I concur.
We must use government to do the unilateral big things it does well. They get paid to administrate. No one there has authority to manage variance. It's a one-size-fits all system. They are great and powerful Butchers. God help us all when they get tasked with conducting surgery.
When unalienable ceases to mean unalienable and becomes provisional, this great experiment in human self-governance will be forever dead.
Unfortunately, I think we are nearing that provisional state.
My sister used to work in billing at a major Maine hospital. She would confirm all you said about what was charged in order to get paid.
I live in upstate NY. I believe during covid, Cuomo thought the elites where going to get sick and die if the hospitals were not able to take them in.
I think that was his plan in clearing out the hospitals for emergency, only no elective procedures. That included sending the elderly to nursing homes so that was a double edged sword.
He misused state police to rush drugs or tests or maybe it was both across the state for his brother Chris when he got covid.
Possible. We'll never know for sure what the thinking was. But we do know that Trump sent the Navy hospital ship that was docked in the harbor and charitable organizations put up a tent hospital in Central Park - both of which went unused.
I cannot get a doctor to give me even a ballpark number as to what a specific surgery wil cost. They just tell me it differs with each insurance company. This situation goes back at least a couple of decades and probably longer.
Surgeons DO know what they will get paid for surgery- under Medicare and many private insurers they are paid best global fee that covers their pre-operative visit, the surgery and post operative care in hospital, and follow up care related to that surgical event in their offices. That is why so many use PA’s or NP’s in their offices especially for postoperative visits— actually being in the operative room is a more productive use of their time. Proceduralists, not surgeons, have a known fee for that service but may be able to charge for ongoing care afterwards as the procedure is part of their diagnostic and/or therapeutic work.
I would truly appreciate meeting a doctor who I could get a reasonable estimate from. Regarding PA's, the last time I went for medical care I saw a PA and I felt he did a very professional job. Maybe the best part was that he listened to me. I knew that for sure when I read the report in my medical file.
Just curious, if you don't mind my asking. What did you end up paying out of pocket?
My out of pocket was taken before I had my surgeries - 1/3 of my SS off the top every month for five years and 2k per year for supplemental insurance.
Sure Washington Post, let’s start with the nearly 1 in 5 members of Congress aged 70 or above. I wonder what Nancy and Bernie would say when the editorial board comes to them and wants to dip into their pockets. Actually, I don’t wonder at all.
Senator Markey D MA is running for re-election at age 80.
Ironically, if we had at least partially privatized SS back when Bush proposed it, we wouldn't have any of these problems, and SS would probably be MAKING money, somehow!
But, then, the bezos post and all other liberal pubs and demoncrat politicians were screaming, "Bush wants to put us at the mercy of evil corporate America!! He wants to make us victims of the rapacious Wall Street!!"
To be fair, Bezos had nothing to do with WaPo during the Bush-43 administration. He bought it in 2013.
Of course. But its political bent was at least as left.
bezos acts like he's trying to make it more centrist, but he's failing.
Yaaaaaaa, and add to that the fraud, and that social security bennies were handed to illegally imported people who never paid into the system, because they were slated as voter replacement..
And
We need to face the reality that the COVID management was also to relieve pressure on the already spent social security and medicare programs, as well as pensions elsewhere in the world. That wiped out a lot of beneficiary years. And it will be done again and again, because the planners will never achieve the conditions that they want.
I pulled out my calculator back when they started loading those COVID infected patients into the nursing homes.
Any elderly person waiting until 70 to get "full" bennies needs to redo their math.
I’m pretty sure the real reason is fraud and illegals
Dr. Oz indicates this too.
Fraud, and ridiculous pricing schemes. In this modern age of electronic inovation, why should C pap machines cost hundreds of dollars? And hearing aids many thousand dollars? The list is endless. Get government out of the way and prices will drop like a rock. Just fund essential care and remove the vast network of grifters making a fortune on government largesse
Add to this equation the fact I worked hard to put the maximum into a 401k.
At 73 I am required to do a yearly minimum withdrawal. That drives up my taxable income one way or another so the government gets more money already.
I took my SS starting at 62 at a reduced amount because of a comp injury.
I didn't get SS disability. I worked in a different field and was paying more taxes because I was earning too much by their tables to collect my SS fully as un taxable.
It is similar to what they did to unemployment insurance years ago. I collected that during the 70's as the housing industry was at a stand still about 1974. My check was half of my hourly rate times 40 up to a limit. I was single with a 3 yo son living on $65 a week.
Then they changed the law after that and made unemployment taxable.
I remember when NY started the sales tax and it was referred to as the hot dog tax for meals under a dollar. That has grown to where it it is on almost everything including utilities and of course gasoline to get to work and still they want more taxes.
That is why no politician really wants to fight inflation because it just means more sales, income, and SS taxes coming in.
I bought my homestead property in 1995 1700 sq ft single story shell. for $20,000 cash by taking out a hardship withdrawal from my 401k. I paid sales tax on every 2x4, sheet of drywall, wiring, plumbing, etc building it with cash never having a mortgage.
They have increased my assessment every year over these 31 years until it is over $225k and tax me now at a rate of about $400 per month on something I own?
Town and county taxes went up 10% last year.
I also remember when you could write off interest paid on any account and your real estate and sales taxes off on your income tax filing but that went the way of the dinosaurs too.
There is no fiscal responsibility at any level of government!
Bill
You don't own your property, Bill. That is one of the greatest misconceptions of our day. You have the right to live there and maintain it as long as you pay local government for the privilege. If you truly owned it, they couldn't take it away.
Do away with Medicare totally. Go back to a systems of private insurance companies writing health insurance just as we do with homes cars life etc. everyone chooses the level they are willing to pay for. Make it actual insurance ( look up the definition of insurance. Medicare ain’t it) break up the companies that have bought out every doctor’s practice in America. Make all health care pricing transparent. All doctors hospitals etc must post the cost of every service. Medicare is not insurance in any sense of the word. It is a welfare program with a single payor. It is socialized medicine. The cost of health care is the highest in the world because govt pays for it with no competition. I was running a nursing home when Medicare was established. I predicted at the time that was the worse possible solution. That it would bankrupt us.
Part of the excessive costs of even private insurance are the time value of money and personnel. When I was in practice, it took an average of 45 to 120 days to collect fees from an insurer. Every new insurance contract cost us 1/4 full-time equivalent person.
It's unconscionable; arguably a criminally insane monopolistic scheme to sabotage a process in a manner that attenuates the ability of medical professionals to save lives, preserve timeliness, reduce years of life lost, and to accelerate the actuary fate in a cryptic manner that lowers overall costs at scale to benefit competing interests.
It's not become this way by accident, but instead by deliberate actions serving other interests. Otherwise it would not be what we see today.
As I posted earlier,we did not need health insjrance until Medicare was passed. Until then it was a union based perk most did not require
I was running a small business. We bought private insurance. The expense was minor
💯
Maybe(?), if US Representatives and Senators (as well as their staff) were required to live with the same benefits as us deplorables, we’d have a more realistic and workable retirement system. Is it too late to ask for my contribution back (with reasonable interest included of course) and let me manage my own affairs?
It will not be fixed until all federal employees are treated like plain ‘ol ordinary citizens. There has never been any mention of the retirement fund for government employees running out of money.
Money is fungible. Perhaps, in a very real sense, so is American Citizenship. The benefits belong to Americans. If there are inequities, they are rooted in misapprehension, or, the individual differences in the biology of the citizen and the income tax code designed to discriminate against the human person unevenly, punitively, and capriciously by fiat of the greed and envy driving legislative politics.
This, I suspect, is why the founders saw the excise tax as the only just and rational means of taxation to fund the government of a republic and preserve individual liberty from the predations of the stereotypical personalities that crave power over others.
I did a deep dive with GROK in re the state of Colorado, asking the total value of interstate and international commerce outbound (in USD) from the state for FY2024: >$20 Trillion. Then I asked for the total tax revenue generated for FY2024 assessed retail sales, property tax and state income tax: >$33 Billion. If a 10% excise tax were to be used instead on outbound commerce, that's a differential increase of ~$1.67 Trillion in revenue with a massive liberation of productivity and productivity quality for the residents of Colorado, who get major swathes of their private life back and a general decriminalization of their relationship to their state government.
I think the dynamic in play illuminates why Trump contemplates a similar thing on the national and federal level. The numbers stated are too fluid and complex to hold true in reality, but the differential is immutably on display. How we fund our nation's governments today is brutish, schizoid and sadistically unproductive.
A Big Rethink is happening in the streets. If we can't break the grip of the corrupt political orthodoxy that has institutionalized the spectacular normalization of fraud on display in Minnesota, California and other Machine Democrat (and crony RINO) strongholds, the DSA kids will bury us with distemper and rampage while they dance in the flames of mendacity and mutual self-immolation.
Our founder's Constitution is just fine. It's the conceits and stupidities of the Victorian, Edwardian and Elizabethan Eras that need flushing down the commode of history.
Engineering still lights the way. The engineering culture of America influences all aspects of our economy to better inform and liberate our best professional practices.
Liberating our best professional practices has a way of liberating our best personal practices, and the latter is an area of societal gain desperately needed for the benefit of all.
Gates, Fauci and Collins are but three of many pernicious examples of the archetypical malignancy that infests our era and threatens our mutual future.