Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 469253)

Then establish a special tax on SS benefits. If a guy has income of, say $200k per year, tax his SS at 70%.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 469258)

No one does. It's a drag-the-left-to-the-middle document. No cuts in defense? How could any sensible person see it as a serious budget.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 469257)

The only way to fix HC costs is to:

1. Pare down third party payer involvement (Medicare/Ins, etc.). Make it more a real market, where people buy a thing and see and feel how much it costs. This will immediately, radically, bring down unit prices and overconsumption. [Trust me on this. The mark-up is hugely driven by provider efforts to offset low insurance and medicare reimbursements.]

2. Do not allow anyone to make the argument, "But Americans do not want to take care of their own health care directly. They want insurance and have been trained to expect that." Tough shit. Welcome to life. Be responsible for yourself or else.

3. Make HC insurance actual insurance. Right now, it's a TPA, and a shitty one at that. Imagine telling your mechanic, "Here's my payment card. Submit it to my policy provider and two months from now, they'll tell you whether they'll pay or not, and how much if they do. If they don't, send me a bill for the 1000% marked-up service charge I'll never be able to afford, and won't pay."? HC insurance should cover catastrophic and chronic illnesses. Preventative care is on the purchaser's dime.

Nothing, nothing, nothing in this world involving a third party payer can be applied across the board to a population as huge as ours. It allows the lazy, the dumb, and the opportunistic endless avenues through which to avoid responsibility on one hand, and bleed a system to death for profits on the other. These collective systems are excess credit by another name - and too much credit breeds nothing but inflation, bubbles, and inevitable collapse. See also: Student loans, Subprime mortgages, Credit cards.

The direct purchaser model has to be slowly re-established.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 469238)

I disagree. It is always harder to cut current or short-term entitlements than it is not to raise them. If you cut long-term entitlements, then maybe a future Congress will face pressure to raise them, but that pressure will be offset by the fact that raising short-term entitlements requires tax increases, other spending cuts, or deficit spending in the short term.

It's relatively easy to grant future benefits when you can put the burden of figuring out how to pay for them on a future Congress (or state legislature, or local board of supes) than it is to grant current or near-term benefits that the current decision-makers need to pay for.

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 469249)

That's what Very Serious People keep saying. It's not really true in any sense for social security.

It is true for Medicare, but no one has a good way to fix that, given that we don't like to tell old people and their families they can't have all the health care they want.

Granted, the PPACA included attempts to bring down those costs, but the good old GOP would rather complain about how Obama "cut Medicare" than explore them further.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 469267)

If the Republicans have proved anything in the last several years, it's that it is entirely possible to enact popular spending without finding a way to pay for it. The idea that there is some constraint there is completely a thing of the past.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 469267)

I was trying to make the "basic" point about Social Security benefits. It's a pretty meager living.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 469271)

Not sure what your "Very Serious People" trip is today. Possibly you think it's funny? Or less boring than another day of cocktail talk?

Anyway -- so you're saying it's not necessary to reduce the costs of SS, and not possible to reduce the costs of Medicare. So what's your thinking on how we deal with entitlements?

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 469274)

I'm still not sure you get the reference, but I found that hard to believe, but just in case.

My thinking is that we don't "deal with entitlements." My thinking is we give the PPACA a chance to work, and explore additional ways to reduce health care costs, although I don't know what those are. And we return taxes to Clinton-era levels, and constrain or eliminate our war making, and we're pretty much there.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 469273)

It is, if that is all you are living on. That's not the case for many recipients, is it?

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 469276)

Nope, didn't get the reference (stopped reading Krugman regularly when he decided his role was trying to get Hillary to win the Dem primary). I underestimated what a complete asshole you are. Comparing me to Ryan because I think that SS and Medicare have long-term problems that should be addressed sooner rather than later?

Fuck you.

My view, very simply, is that both Medicare and Social Security cannot sustain projected long-run program costs, that we need to address their problems as soon as possible, and that doing that sooner rather than later provides for more options, lets you phase in changes, and give people time to prepare.

Your view seems to be "SS is just fine, and we can't fix Medicare, and anyone who says different is a Tea Partier." Seriously -- do you actually disagree with my view as set forth above?

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 469283)

Tea Partier? Notable VSPs include the Washington Post editorial page, Friedman, Brooks and Broder, and Messrs. Simpson and Boles. Tea Partiers are not VSPs, they are crazy people.

VSPs are people like you who are well-intentioned but have bought the GOP line that we have an entitlement problem hook, line and sinker.

Last I checked, Social Security was projected to be solvent for another 30 years. Worrying about projections farther out than that is silly.

Medicare is a mess, but I'm aware of exactly zero good proposals to fix it, beyond what's already in the PPACA. If you have other suggestions, I'm 100% open to them.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 469278)

http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chart...11/chart28.gif

From this chart I would say it is the most significant source of income for most of its recipients. And it averages about $600 per month.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 469243)

You speak as if either party gives a fuck about anything beyond the next election. And don't tell me this is a false equivalence.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 469290)

Try as I might I cannot understand that chart. Apparently, for people of all ages, approximately 52% of their income is neither earned nor unearned?