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Social Security Crash coming Faster

MsSage

Well-known member
Social Security and Medicare are fading even faster under the weight of the recession, heading for insolvency years sooner than previously expected, the government warned Tuesday. Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, a year sooner than projected last year, and the giant trust fund will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner, trustees reported.
Medicare is in even worse shape. The trustees said the program for hospital expenses will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year, just as it did for the first time in 2008. The trustees project that the Medicare fund will be depleted by 2017, two years earlier than the date projected in last year’s report.
The trust funds — which exist in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va. — are bonds that are backed by the government’s “full faith and credit” but not by any actual assets. That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government. To redeem the trust fund bonds, the government would have to borrow in public debt markets or raise taxes.


Cant be Bush's Fault.........

George Bush tried in 2005 to warn about the looming crisis in entitlements. What kind of response did that get? Democrats like Harry Reid accused Bush of fearmongering and panic, and assured Americans that “the so-called Social Security crisis exists in only one place — the minds of Republicans. In reality, the program is on solid ground for decades to come.”
 

MoGal

Well-known member
It was on CSPAN several months ago when they met about this... Geithner spoke then and you are finally seeing excerpts from it on MSM. He was questioned by a State Senator and the senator said at that time that Social Security was solvent and supported itself (except they keep borrowing from it because it was never meant to be a social program for the elderly and disabled because it requires the working to support those that draw) until 2032.

Medicare is the albatross and probably one of the reasons universal healthcare is being pushed so heavily. I read somewhere that the average person draws $1000 month SS benefits and in today's world that isn't much. (comparatively, $250 week is barely over $6 an hour), yet these people are ineligible for Medicaid and where else can you hammer the old folks or those on monthly benefits but in food, utilities and medicine.

I know people say, well you should have a life savings, all I can say is that I don't see it as the majority of people I know do not have a savings and if they do its less than $5,000. Its no secret that wages have not kept up with the cost of living for the past 30 years and for anyone to think $12,000 a year is a livable income needs their head examined. That was one of the reasons Clinton changed the way they figure COLA's on Social security was to screw the old folks out of actual cost of living increases.
Now if you can trust the stats the government puts out, more and more elderly people do not have their homes paid for so they are making a house/rent payment from this as well.

So yes, they will have to do something about Medicare (either subsidize the states through Medicaid and get more of these people on Medicaid or bring about universal healthcare and taxpayers are gonna pay for it one way or the other).
 
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