MartyLeeB

Which government version are your referring to? Currently, Medicare spends... more »

Which government version are your referring to? Currently, Medicare spends about 4% of administration. Private health insurance companies spend an average of 5 time that.

Projected health spending will chew up 40 percent or more of the nation’s... more »

Projected health spending will chew up 40 percent or more of the nation’s economy by 2050, American governments at all levels will go broke, American companies will be uncompetitive in the global marketplace or fold, millions of Americans will go bankrupt owing to medical bills, and hundreds of thousands will die for lack of care.

So to answer your question, yes, I want the same people who run Medicare to run a program called Medicare for all otherwise known as Single Payer..

btw.. While I tend toward libertarian views I am also a pragmatist.. Sometimes the market fails. Unfortunately, there are situations in which instead of an invisible hand there is an invisible boot, ensuring that the same agents do worse than they would under a more generous regimen of concern for each other.

In the United States, the ratio of total executive compensation (including... more »

In the United States, the ratio of total executive compensation (including bonuses and deferred compensation, pensions and perks) to the comparable figure earned by non-management employees rose from 50 in 1980 to 301 by 2003 for the 400 largest corporations. The compensation of Health Insurance executives put them in the top of their class adding new meaning to the saying, "Capitalism is theft."

Hi bushido70,

I checked and could not find any info to verify your claims..... more »

Hi bushido70,

I checked and could not find any info to verify your claims..

Current G.D.P. per capita in the United States is about $46,500, of which Medicare absorbs slightly over 3 percent, leaving about $45,000 of G.D.P. per capita for other things.

Suppose between now and, say, 2050, inflation-adjusted G.D.P. per capita in the United States grows at an annual compound rate of only 1.5 percent per year, which is conservatively below the roughly 2 percent long-run annual growth rate of real G.D.P. per capita over the past several decades. Even at this low growth rate, inflation-adjusted G.D.P. per capita would grow from $46,500 now to about $87,000 by 2050.

According to the Social Security Trustees’ 2008 Report on the Status of the Social Security and Medicare Programs, Medicare will absorb about 8.4 percent of G.D.P. by 2050 if it is not restructured.

But even after that 8.4 percent haircut for Medicare in 2050, there would still be close to $80,000 inflation-adjusted G.D.P. per capita left over for other things in that year, which is still 78 percent more than the non-Medicare G.D.P. per capita that we have today.

Don't you qualify for medicaid? Very sorry for your situation. My... more »

Don't you qualify for medicaid? Very sorry for your situation. My Grandmother died of Leukemia 40 years ago. No cure and no hope back then. Wishing you the best..

Marty