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On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:05:07 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:59:47 -0500, Boating All Out
wrote:

In article ,
says...

Medicare is 15-20 % fraud. That is the flaw in having the tax payers
shoveling money at private providers The idea of government providers
will simply not fly here.

Nobody mentioned government providers except you.\

You said providers were making a lot of money. That was the other
option.

Fraud is ended by honest government with the right tools to address it.
If that isn't happening it's because the politicians are bought off by
the private medical industry, who benefit from the fraud.

See above

See who proposes funding for Medicare fraud investigations and who
votes against it.

Until you address the lawyer tax you also are not going to be cutting
medical costs any time soon.

They should do it just to shut you up.
It's mostly a red herring and adds little to the cost.
"Defensive medicine" will still prevail, because it's a professional
means of treatment - and it makes more money for the medical profession.

I keep hearing about what a small percentage of costs go to medical
malpractice judgements but that does not address the costs of
defending suits that never make it to trial because they are too
frivolous or suits that are settled before they make it to trial.

Defensive medicine is real too, no matter what you say.

You said it was the lawyers just a while ago. Now it's that nebulous
defensive medicine... right up until you want something for yourself I
suppose.

The other issue is end of life care.
Any effort to limit care to dead people is seen as rationing, another
problem those other countries don't seem to mind. If they are rich
enough they come here for the care they want.

That's the hardest nut to crack. Best that can be done is end-of-life
counseling and hope people are responsible.
If they're not, "death panels" could be real for public money.
If sensible parameters were proposed by the medical community there
wouldn't be much resistance, except from the politically inspired.
And that part of medicine getting rich from it.

I have no problem with death panels. I have a living will, as do all
of my family members and my deceased parents.

You're just playing the fear card.

Most of those countries are broke too so they are going to be making a
lot of hard decisions about their socialism.

Riiight. I'll wait for them to kill their health care and old age
pension systems.
But I won't hold my breath.

Talk to the Greeks. UK is scaling back it's social services too.

You talk to the Greeks. We're not Greece.

If we don't get a handle on this debt problem you will be worried
about food for your kids. Health care will be a distant dream.

Riiight. Fix debt by replacing Medicare with death vouchers and make it
an impossible dream.
There are plenty of approaches to fixing the debt.

I haven't seen one that makes sense yet. Maybe if you taxed like a
democrat and spent like a tea guy you would get close but you really
need to tax like an FDR democrat.

You've seen plenty but you're unwilling to listen.

Of course. My opinion is a society should provide health care to all at
an affordable cost, and that old folks should get their SS checks, which
are already low enough for the vast majority to qualify as "poverty"
income.

That was all SS was ever intended to be, a safety net, not a hammock

And that's all it is for most collecting it. I just said that.
The average SS check is about $1150 a month.
Here's a solution for cutting benefits.
Cap benefits at $1400 a month.
For a single that's enough above poverty level so you don't qualify for
unpaid government handouts.
I'll take a good hit.

I suspect it will be more like using the current work sheet but
instead of taking that part above $32-44k as regular income at your
tax rate they would just start taking it back in big chunks as your
income rises, up to 100%

The WWII generation had the foresight to have lots of kids so there
were plenty of workers to fund their retirement. (roughly 16:1)

Now those kids are coming for theirs and the money is all gone.
There are only 3 workers per boomer today. SS worked because it was
pay as you go and there were plenty of payers.
There are simply not enough payers now.

You keep beating that drum but I don't hear it.

You must be deaf then.
Every dime in that trust fund is debt, not an asset.
We will have to borrow all of the money we "pay back" since the
government is already spending all they take in, actually 166% of what
they take in. Where does the money come from to redeem the SS bonds?

Whatever... same old nonsense over and over.