ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC!

ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC!

(FRAZER CHRONICLE)

(All the News That Nobody Else Will Print)

 

Okay let’s cut right to the chase here, I need better health care, not Social Security, not Old Age Assistance, not Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, General Assistance Cash, Assets for Independence, or Earned Income Tax Credit, (refundable portion), these programs aren’t for medical services anyways. That is not to say that I wouldn’t be interested, I think I could really dig that General Assistance Cash program…..if I didn’t have to repay whatever cash I got.

What in hell brought this on…..you might ask, well the answer is really simple, my buddy, United States Representatives, Paul Ryan, who is at it again, this time with his assurance that Medicare will be broke by 2026. I’m not sure whether “Paulie” uses a crystal ball, an Ouija, Spirit, or Talking Board, or simply rolls the dice with regards to how he arrives at his opinions.

I do know this, if people like Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan have their way…..old people will be lying in the streets, either dead or dying, kind of like the Jews and the ghettos back in World War II in Europe. I just had open heart surgery, (last October 8^th, 2013,) and the surgery and hospital care saved my life, of that I have no doubt.

However I am now saddled with hospital bills that run into the thousands, the parts that aren’t covered by my health insurance program, and Medicare. Right now the hospitals are left holding the proverbial bag with regards to my medical bills. I don’t have the money to pay my part of the responsibility for my procedure, that medical event that saved my life.

I feel bad about my financial situation, but not bad enough to sell off my personal goods to make restitution for the great services that were rendered last fall. There is some sort of assistance fund that I might be eligible for, as a way for the hospital to recover some of their financial outlay for my care. I’m not looking for a free ride, it PO’s me that I can’t meet my responsibility…..but it’s what it is.

So when I read an article penned by Tom Kertcher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Representative Paul Ryan, and his assertion that “Medicare is going broke, and in Ryan’s estimation, the fund will be bankrupt sometime in 2026, I get a large case of the preverbal red-ass when I read further in the article, and find out that not everybody aggress with Ryan.

If what Ryan says is true, and I’m still around in 2026, I’ll be 81 years old, and in less shape to care for myself then I am today. I’ll be moving in with my kids…..and living completely on the public dole. I don’t mind public hand-outs, sometimes, but not all of the time. It has to do with my pride and my feeling that I can take care of myself…..even when and if I can’t.

WHAT A COCKROACH

When a government official starts nay-saying about governmental programs…..he’d better have all of his ducklings in a row…..no politicking allowed. Some people are swayed by things that political figures say, so it behooves these people to research a subject before he makes any kind of bold statements. Everybody who’s anybody understands that governmental programs aren’t free, government programs and the money to pay for them come from…..well, us. Ya that’s right, the billions of dollars that are appropriated, and then spent for social programs come from the United States taxpayer.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, “the federal government is not a person, therefore the federal government does not earn money from some sort of a job.”  How it works is simple, very simple, we elect people to represent us, these people in turn listen to our requests, wants, needs and requirements, and then these people that are elected set at big tables in Washington D.C. map out a tax program to pay for our desires…..and then tax us. We pay our imposed taxes all sorts of ways…..and some don’t pay at all.

At the end of the year, our taxes are divvied up to the different departments that have been formed by the people that we elected to represent us. If there’s not enough money for one program, but an excess in another, the funds are transferred…..kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So when an elected official states that some program is going to go broke in little more than a decade…..that opinion does resonate with the public. However today, in the world of politics, everything isn’t like it is said to be, the truth gets stretched, numbers are altered to fit an agenda, and air-time is used to hammer home special interest’s points of view.

Total Social Security and Medicare expenditures in 2013 were $1.3 trillion, 8.4% of the $16.3 trillion Gross National Product, (GNP) (2013) and 37% of the total Federal expenditure budget of $3.684 trillion. In addition to government expenditures private welfare in the United States is thought to be about 10% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, (GDP) or another $1.6 trillion.

IMPACT OF SOCIAL PROGRAMS

Republicans and the Tea Party seem to decry the problems with entitlements or social programs, and they have a solid point, an opinion that really can’t be argued. According to the Congressional Budget Office, social programs significantly raise the standard of living for low-income Americans, particularly the elderly…..like me. The poorest 20% of American households earn a before-tax average of only $7,600, less than half of the federal poverty line. Social programs increase these household’s before-tax income to around $30,500. Social Security and Medicare are responsible for two thirds of the increase.

Now I cannot think of a single person who thinks that a working aged person in the United States can live on $7,600 a year. And I can’t think of a single person that I know who figures that a family of three can survive on $15,200 a year. So the root of the problem here is twofold, developing jobs that can pay and sustain a living wage, and employers who are willing to bite the bullet when necessary, and take a financial hit for the benefit of their employees.

Priorities need to be altered…..by everybody so that low paid American workers can access medical care just like those folks who have enough money to purchase their own medical care plans, or have employers either assume the burden of health care insurance, and share the financial burden of their employee medical care.

The United States cannot continue to deficit spend on either social or entitlement programs, Medicare right now is spending at a 3 to 1 rate (every dollar that a recipient pays in, is rewarded with $3 of care). Figures like these exist throughout social and entitlement programs in the U.S. and if we’re not careful, a major number of these programs will go extinct in my lifetime!

HERE’S THE SKINNY ON THESE PROGRAMS

I don’t like Paul Ryan, he speaks out of both sides of his mouth, but his analogy about Medicare is spot on, Medicare will go broke. What he has wrong is the date that the program will go belly-up; it’s gonna happen, sooner or later.

Another point that Ryan has that I completely disagree with is his posturing with regards to cutting parts of Medicare. You might as well send out a bunch of death notices to all sorts of low income people, and older folks living on a fixed income.

Prioritize…..a key word, a word that should be observed whenever anybody in any position in the government starts talking about ways to fix both Social Security and Medicare. For and foremost there has to be a mindset that acknowledges that both Social Security and Medicare are two programs that the United States cannot go without…..in fact additional benefits should be added.

It’s funny how the old and the young come together and don’t even realize that their traveling down the same road. Education is paramount to the future of our existence as a nation, and caring for the elderly, and those older folks on fixed incomes are as important as those young people who are being educated.

Older people are an almost untapped resource that is not being taken advantage of…..and its time that the resource was tapped into. A department of the aged, a department that seeks to blend the old and the young for the purpose of education…..now isn’t that a novel idea.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!