Medicare In As Much Trouble As GOP Says ?

I think all of us can agree that Medicare is in need of some help. The program works as well as any government program in that it gives all of America's elderly citizens health care coverage. This is what the program was designed to do, and it does it very well. The problem is that we have not yet adequately funded the program. But is it in as serious a trouble as the Republicans would like for Americans to think it is?

The Republicans want us to think the program is in such bad trouble that it cannot be fixed, and if we don't make substantial changes it will soon be bankrupt and won't be able to cover any elderly citizens. And by substantial changes they mean the program must be abolished for everyone now under 55 years of age.

Those people, instead of receiving Medicare when they turn 65, will be given a government voucher and told to buy their own health insurance. This voucher would not be enough to guarantee that all elderly Americans could buy insurance, and even those who could afford private insurance would wind up paying more out of their own pockets for health care than Medicare patients currently do.

This Republican Plan (the Ryan Plan) to abolish Medicare and replace it with insufficient government vouchers was wildly unpopular with the public when they heard about it. Now the Republicans are trying to cover their butts by claiming that the only way to "save" Medicare is to abolish it -- nothing else will work, and if we don't do that soon no one will have any health coverage.

Let me put this as gently as I can -- what an outrageous load of horse manure! Does Medicare need more funding? Yes. Is it about to implode? No, not at all -- at least not unless the Congress fails to do its duty and adequately fund it. The truth is that the Republicans have never liked Medicare. They believe health care is not a right, but a commodity which should only go to the people who have the money to pay for it. And they, with the cooperation of too many Democrats, have been underfunding the program for many years now.

According to the Center for Economic Policy and Research, the Medicare system could be fixed for at least the next 75 years with a cash infusion amounting to less than 0.4% of GDP. And how much is that? About one quarter of the money we have spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

Isn't it amazing that the Republicans can't find the money to fix Medicare to protect ALL of America's elderly citizens, but they have no trouble coming up with the money to fight two unending wars that have accomplished nothing (wars that were attempts at nation-building and never had anything to do with the defense of this nation)?

This may be a novel approach to government spending, but shouldn't the number one priority of government spending be the welfare of American citizens? Isn't funding Medicare (and other social programs that help Americans) more important than fighting stupid foreign wars?

I have a great idea. Why don't we declare victory in both Iraq and Afghanistan and bring ALL of our troops back home. Then we should spend the money we would save by not being in those wars for another three years (the end of 2014) to fully fund the Medicare program. The only problem I can see with this is that the Republicans would never agree to it. They love foreign wars, but they hate Medicare.

The most sensible thing we can do right now is to stop listening to the Republican lies. We can fix the funding problems of Medicare (and Social Security, too), and we can do it without cutting benefits or raising the age of eligibility. Anyone who says we can't is a Republican or a liar (sorry, I guess that is more than a bit redundant).