Galen asked

"How else do you think he is paying the bill for the military?"

Actually, he's borrowed from China. That's why we have to put up with inferior and dangerous imports from them - we owe them too much.

What angers me most about social security is that many of us who are retired paid so much of income into it. Until the mid 1980's, the "cap" was, I think, $12,000. That means that people paid social security on the that amount. Those who made more ended up paying a lower percent of their income into it.

For myself, I'm 72. I paid into social security for 46 years. Except for one check in the year the cap was raised, every paycheck I ever got had social security deducted. The fund was built up by people like me.

What has it been used for? Successive administrations have left a pile of IOUs.

Right now, over half a my income is from social security. With inflation what it is, I survive better than most. Is survival the only criteria for a life? After working all of my life, I did have some plans. I don't dare try to implement them.

By the time the present crop of Baby Boomers is ready to retire and claim their pension benefits...

... there won't be any money in the bank.

The Social Security account has been stripped to pay for Bush's adventure in imperial colonialism in Iraq.

How else do you think he is paying the bill for the military?

It started under Nixon. GOP strategy - what else would you expect.

He was the first to 'borrow' Social Security monies to balance the general fund shortfalls.

And succeeding regimes ahve kept adding undeserving beneficiaries to be paid from these funds instead of endowing appropriate entitlements.

That's why it's broke!

RuthK- Time to back to 'kitchen gardening'?

Why aren't college students up in arms over the GOP health care system and the theft of social security?

Although most boomers may never be able to retire as a result of these travesties, at least many of them will have a "family wage" job with medical insurance until the end, whereas students graduating from college will find fewer "family wage" job opportunities available to them as fewer boomers are able to retire and vacate those jobs.
Perhaps the students figure they can always join the military.

Remember, the government has to juggle its priorities. Pay a dollar for health care, or twenty dollars for more arms and ammo?

In this government, you know the answer. What is providing care for the elderly, food for the starving, shelter for the homeless and medical care for the sick compared to the billions in profits to be made by invading and killing across the globe?

If we weren't prosecuting war for oil and power, rewarding the Carlysle Group, KBR, Halliburton, et al., with billion dollar no-bid contracts and no oversight, we could not only afford to help our own needy and disadvantaged, but could help feed and clothe the world, but you're never gonna see it. Not in this country anymore.

Why doesn't the government pay their IOU's that they have stolen from the Social Security surplus? Presidents including REagan, Bush, and Bush and even Clinton stole social secuirty and now want the billions that is in trust. There is bound to be more talk about closing social secuity and medicare, etc. which will give the present and new administration the right or leeway to steal the rest, the billions that will be plenty to cover all of these programs for fifty and more years. Attacking social services is one way to blot out these voters who see through the lies.

The system is broken because of waste and mismanagement. People should not have to suffer because of.
Younger people run up the cost of medical too. Not to mention illegals who never put a dime into the system.
Instead of the gov. whining about how unaffordable "socialized medicine" will be. They should be starting it right now. This would also help businesses compete.
Until the system is fixed voters should draft a bill where politicans lose some of their benefits and salary for every year the program remains messed up.
It is not the citizens problem the system is broken. We pay for it out of our taxes.

Companies which are under increasing pressure to deliver health insurance to their employees will become just as sensitized to this unsustainability. When Wal-Mart recognizes that a single payer system of health care for its employees is cheaper than providing private insurance plans to its employees there will be powerful lobbying efforts to bring about the health care reforms we need to establish a fair, and sustainable health care system, for all of us.

Some may not like what I post but I can say.
The social security in Canada just put out a report that it is safe at the present and projected rate for the next 75 years. What the hell is wrong with America????

The social security in Canada is safe because it's invested in Loonies. America's social security is 'invested' in Bushbucks.
Even so, the wonderful folks that brought us the catastrophies of Afghanistan and Iran etc haven't convince me that my lifetime's contribution to FICA has all been taken by this gang of homocidal looting liars.

Ruth K,

don't cancel any plans! I am about your age [71] and also get about half my income frome soc sec, and half from a pension. The health care costs more for less which keeps me busy complaining to Kaiser and the Insurance Commission - But, they never offer to cut fees just because services have been cut...

But not doing the things on your 'things to do before you die list' is foolish. If you don't do these things, it will make not one bit of difference to anyone but you. I can guarantee it won't cut your Medicare costs, or make them easier to pay in 10 years.

Medicare, Social Security and all the other New Deal programs are self-supporting. It's the run-away military costs and interest on the loans we've taken out that are bankrupting us. Look at the budget: I don't have the figures in front of me, but Domestic Programs get a pittance compared to the Pentagon and the War on Drugs.

Damned if I know what they are protecting us from, there's not much left for the citizenry as it is.

And how much of this bloated budget has gone into the new carrier Task Force No 4, which is defending us against the drug runners and huge navies of the Latin American Countries. These people are certifiably nuts!

Sorry this is so rambling, but these problems are not separated from each other. Allowing the military to buy every toy it wants, leads to more wars and aggression, which cost more money and steals the future from our children!

Download this short video, it says it all much better then I can [and, it's funny - kind of...]

IfIwasaterroist.wmv

There is confusion here: Social Security has nothing to do with the federal budget. Nothing at all. It has its own special tax. Brookings, et al., are confusing the issue, as has been the case from the very beginning. So the argument is specious; however, most people do not know this. Get it out on the streets!

Social security is one of the most cost effective programs in history. It uses 3% of the revenue to administer the program as opposed to health care where up to 30% of costs is private administration costs. As an entitlement is was protected from being used for other purposes and it has been attacked repeatedly by republican administrations.

McInsanes' health care card.

BEARER IS ENTITLED TO:

Screwed up previous post.

McInsanes' health care card.

BEARER IS ENTITLED TO:

1 Get sick.
2 Feel pain.
3 Spend savings
4 Croak

Brookings used to carry some credibility until they linked up with the American Enterprise Institute (which, in turn, rented space to PNAC.)

Interesting that the two organizations have recently disassociated from one another. But as far as I'm concerned, the damage to Brookings' credibility has already been done.

Sorry if I am so cynical.

Do not be surprise when we oldies but goodies are asked to lineup to be euthanized.

That is the way my doctors treat me. Medicare's private administrators are sooo sweet to you when you sign up. However, just wait until you need some help. They do not know who the frig you are!

since 1776, the united states has amassed a national debt of about $9 trillion (roughly $30,000 for every woman, child and man now living). over half of that amount was incurred while a bush was in the white house, and if you throw reagan in, about 70% of the total debt was run up under just three R presidents---all this, mind you, while cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, and tightening bankruptcy laws for everybody else.

then they turn around and say "gee, we'd really like to help the poor, but the budget's busted due to their insatiable greed."

you'd think the Ds would be able to ride this issue all the way to the white house, with comfortable majorities in both houses of congress to boot---but they're not going to mention it. why? because they're complicit up to their eyeballs in the ripoff (see bill clinton's ending of "welfare as we know it" and the pro-war performance of pelosi/reid since 2006 for just two examples. there are plenty more...)

andersdl May 6th, 2008 3:04 pm:
The age group of 40 to 50 still think they are going to be rich even those that live paycheck to paycheck. I have children in that age range and they never think or talk about SS. I have no idea what the college students are thinking-maybe they just think that the economy is just having a little glitch or maybe they are to busy listening to their iPods to think.
We moved to Mexico three years ago. When my wife was working in the States she had a group health plan. It cost $90/month for my BP medications after a co-pay, in Mexico it cost me about $9 a month for the same meds.

Anything that provides any benefit to working people in America is EVIL by definition. Anything that makes the Richfilth even fatter is GOOD by definition.

You're all Niggers now. I was going to put that word in quotes, but that isn't appropriate. Nigger is a term used by Master and his Overseers to describe the people they degraded, scorned, and laughed at while they tortured them in their daily lives, for pleasure and for profit. Like I said, you're all Niggers now. Later, the world will have another word for you:

Cannibals.

Peece.

This time when they start cutting SS benefits, they need to cut the retirement benefits for government workers too (including legislators!). My brother retired at 50 because he had over 20 years in. I've been paying into SS for 40 years and and it'll be another 3 before I can hope to get anything out. But I figure it'll be another 20 before I can hope to afford retirement.

Oh, but didn't you know? You were supposed to invest, invest, invest, and thus reap the reward$ in retirement (and not need any goverment money). (My question was always: invest with what?) If you don't, then you are making the wrong decisions and the goverment will not help you. Just like shrubshit threatening to veto a bill that would provide direct help to victims of the subprime loan con, because the taxpayers would be supporting the victims' "mistakes in judgement." His, and the Rethugs', hypocrisy knows no bounds. I'm granny age now, but I don't think any short-sighted free capitalist will be bashing me anytime soon--at least not without some very bad nightmares ...

Hey! We're 70 something! We're on the computer! We're reading "Common Dreams!"
We're putting out our reactions!

And, we're supposed to have 6 degrees of separation from "power &/or influence."

What say we check that out and try for a little 'people' influence peddling.

What have we got to lose?

thedivineimpulse@gmail.com

The pro-business gang (which includes Mr Green****) are always assailing S.S. and Medicare because they see these as competition . The facts are , S.S. is an annuity program which the rich employers look upon as a tax . The financial corporations all offer annuities from which they make a profit . S.S. to them is a government run competitor which they would like to kill as they would any other competitor . MEDICARE is a health insurance program which the health care corporations look upon as competition . These think tanks are all stacked with friends of the corporations and are not going to tell the truth about why they are claiming these programs have problems . Both of these programs depend on PEOPLE HAVING JOBS (PEROID) . Our population is and has been increasing which means that payments in to S.S. and Medicare should be increasing . We should ask ourselves "do people that receive income from stock investments pay into either of these programs" ? (Are payments in to these programs based on income or employment) . How many jobs have been out sourced in the past 35 years ? As a result of the out sourcing incomes have dropped which results in less money going in these programs . Many of the well-to-do have incomes from stock investments and do not pay in to S.S. or Medicare yet their friends are making announcements that these programs are in trouble and should be handed over to some corporations so their greedy friends can get their hands on government money . S.S. alone takes in almost as much money as all of Wall Street . NONE of them will even hint that if every body paid in to these programs on an income basis that with an increasing population neither program would ever be in trouble . Those were the original intentions of these programs but corporate influence of our government has let things develop in to the present situation .

The original Social Security payments -- FICA -- were based on 2/3rds paid by the employer and 1/3rd by the employee.
During the Carter administration FICA went 50/50.

Later, as the borrowing from the funds increased . . .
Greenspan pushed for upping FICA payments as a way to increase the pool of SURPLUS funds available for borrowing by Poppy Bush.

In other words, the FICA burden on the poor and the middle class was INCREASED not because of need but because Poppy Bush needed more ready cash!!!!

********************************************************

Health care costs rise so quickly for three or four reasons. The Institute of Medicine has outlined some of those and a visit to their web site is instructive.
1. Quality of medical care in this country is low. This is because the delivery system for health care is broken-many people cannot reach a health care provider-because there are none within many miles of their home. If health care is available it is uneven in quality with excellent providers next door to under trained and overworked providers. Facilities and systems of facilities are locked into a failed system within their own walls because there is no one with the coercive power to make groups of medical providers sit down and do a systems analysis of why their facilities are broken. Often times understaffed facilities throw their patients back out onto the system and then the patient is obligated to seek care at another facility. We need a way of identifying those providers who are equipped to handle a particular medical condition and stop the train to an "all around acute care facility." No one facility is best equipped to handle every patient who comes their way.
2. Many Americans tend to over-utilize care and burden the system with unnecessary costs and delays. This is often the result of the employer based insurance program which almost forces medical providers to give priority to those who can readily pay. Most employer groups are unwilling to openly discuss this issue.
3. Other Americans may under utilize the health care system because of a lack of understanding of what is available or because of an inability to pay; a result is not knowing what exactly their responsibility is, or ignoring their own health condition. They are then too often thrown on to the health care system at a critical junction and the Emergency system becomes over burdened as a result. We could subsidize low income folks with payments to an existing plan (like the Federal Employees group or a state employees group) and enroll them there to keep every one covered. This would ease costs for health care plans too because the medical underwriting would be in the favor of the plan with a lager membership.
4. Health care plans to often look to maintaining their own networks and don't often add a cumulative value to health care but simply man the walls to keep members locked inside. This parochial approach to maintaining network barriers keeps patients locked into a smaller pool of providers who are regionally based. It is not necessarily the case that health care quality is evenly spread around the country or evenly dispersed throughout a state or region. This out of network phobia is the ghost in the machine behind the problem outlined in item 1 above. Health care plans fund low quality care because they are chained to their own pool of care givers, those providers get paid whether or not those facilities and professionals are really the best that might be available. This fear of looking out of the network perpetrates the unwillingness to look at a systems analysis that would remove some providers from the system. The patients overall medical condition is often ignored as a result in an effort to keep members locked inside a particular plan. Health care plans need to look outside their own walls and allow members to travel where they wish if the quality of care is better out of the network. Most health care plans go through the motions of identifying quality but usually their cozy relationship with their own providers does not allow them to do this in an effective manner to remove providers who are harming patients with poor or out of date practices. Some health care plans are, in many respects, actually run for and by the providers. Health care plans need to compete on providing their members with the best providers, to do this we need quantifiable statistics on quality-something doctors and facilities have usually resisted drawing up, again by manning the walls with kettles of boiling water and more tar and pitch to protect the network. In the area of Cardiac medicine, a system of spreading knowledge by copying the methods of the best practitioners has kept that area far ahead of the learning curve in providing high quality of care to many patients.
5. A single payer system would only make monolithic the out of network phobia outlined above. Here, there would be no other resort to another plan and again, as now, low quality providers, who mistreat and misdiagnose (often unwittingly) would be rewarded for doing a bad job. This would happen because there is no way of pinpointing who the low quality providers are. This then is the key to reform: identify who the better providers are and reward them by paying them well, identify the lower quality providers and retrain them or move them off the system.

Well, didn't we sit back passively as former President Clinton took an ax to the New Deal with his welfare "reform"? To date, our collective response has been one of utter indifference toward the suffering of the poor, and oddly, not even showing a spark of self-interest! By that, I mean that it isn't hard to figure out what impact these policies have had on the general economy and population -- a sudden creation of a massive, subsidized, bottom wage workforce (sans all workers' rights and protections), essentially creating a Third World workforce right here, sparing corps the cost of moving our jobs to foreign nations. There has been no discussion about how these policies have eroded worker security, wiped out unions and suppressed wages.

Of course the next step is to dismantle (or "reform", if you prefer) more of the New Deal, giving those public funds over to those in power.
If we don't care about our desperately poor, why would we care about the elderly and/or the disabled?
The only ones who die as a result of these reforms are the non-productive, those who are of no practical use to the state.

Quick note to andrsdal: Don't underestimate today's youth. As someone over 50, I can say that they have the same passion for justice that we had "back in the day", and they are determined to restore democracy, taking it back from the few rich and powerful. They don't ask for truth -- they are demanding it! Today's youth are not as gullible as we were. As a whole, they are absolutely not self-absorbed, lost in their i-pods.

What a bunch of baloney. The past four Presidents have dipped into the Social Security reserves and have literally stolen social security. But the government still takes our money to fill the coffers of the military. What was the last amount spent for Iraq. In the billions. And just think how the investors are dying to get their hands on our social security net. There will be more hype as long as the Republicans have a majority. It's always about how the few can steal more money from the middle class and the poor. And before long the hype it will be that the elderly are taking from the youth who will be responsible for their care but will lose out in the end. It's all lies and a bunch of statistics that are meant to fool the masses who have a difficult time understanding economics anyway.

The author is right in exposing the health care system's lack. But what is not exposed is the difficulty today of obtaining medical care if one is on medicaid or medicare. Doctors no longer wish to take patients who are on one of these medical insurances. What we have now are millions of middle aged and elderly who don't receive good health care and that includes dental work and just regular preventive care. The present Administration has stolen billions of money from all Americans to fund their illegal war, to make the military complex rich. But the American health systen is a disgrace and the Grannies are the only ones who are calling this theiving government to answer.