Medicare's Accelerating Insolvency Date

Lawrence O'Donnell, the MSNBC primetime news anchor, defended socialism on C-SPAN during an interview on Tuesday.  He cited the well-managed socialist Medicare program as a justification for our having a high regard for much of socialism.

He did not point out that a June 2018 report by the the Medicare trustees projects that the Part A Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund will be depleted (wiped out) by 2026.  He also did not point out that the Medicare trustees had projected that fund to be wiped out in 2029 only one year earlier.  So much for the projections of socialists.  A rational evaluator has to wonder if the 2019 projection by the Medicare trustees will be a zeroing of the fund in 2023 and the 2020 projection will be that the fund is empty in 2020.  I am just projecting here based on my poor opinion of government programs in general and two data points, but rational people should always be realistic and pessimistic about such programs.

It is a good thing for Medicare that Anna and I are still working well past normal retirement ages and paying into Medicare (and Social Security) and I am still operating my laboratory and paying half of the Medicare payments for each of my employees.  Of course I am also paying half of their Social Security payments as well.  These wonderful examples of socialism in the minds of many are largely paid for by transferring the costs to employers.  That makes the programs more popular with most of the voters, who are of course not employers.

It is going to be very interesting indeed as more and more Baby Boomers retire and their medical expenses increase and increase.  The medical care provided by Medicare will have to further deteriorate and the taxes on those working will have to go up.  The aged will be very grumpy and the geese being plucked of their feathers are going to put up quite a ruckus.  Will the young American impostors who so often think highly of socialism think as highly when they are paying much more for it before they get their take-home pay, even as those on Medicare and Social Security grumble more and more about how disappointed they are in the programs that are breaking the backs of younger American workers?

Of course the die-hard socialists will not care one iota because this is just reality and their emotions should never, ever be held hostage by reality.