Medicare: A victim of its own success?

[jaysunb]

A victim of its own success? Seniors who want the government out of health care get 'fabulous' government help
By Stephen Koff, The Plain Dealer
December 09, 2009, 9:00PM

WASHINGTON — At age 74, Joanne Germano of Bedford Heights knows all about the benefits of retirement -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid for nursing home patients whose savings run out. A former nursing home employee, she's glad Medicaid keeps seniors from being dumped on the street.

And yet Germano says, "I don't think the government belongs in health care."

Call it a contradiction or a widespread dichotomy. The government is already involved in the care of seniors, be they supporters of President Barack Obama or, like Germano, voters who would have preferred to see Sen. John McCain in the White House.

"A lot of older people feel they are owed this kind of help because they worked for it," Weiss said. "I think that's almost a natural reaction among Americans -- that all these other people don't deserve it but that 'I deserve it because I worked hard.'"

There is a logic to this, because many older Americans paid taxes to the government for decades. But they might not realize they get more out of the system than they paid in.

Someone retiring in 2008 would have paid, on average, $30,650 in Medicare taxes while working. Yet that retiree will get an average of $85,360 in hospitalization benefits, if male, or $81,570 if female, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

"The vast majority of the public doesn't understand how the health care system works," said A. Kimberly Dayton, director of the Center for Elder Justice and Policy at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2009/12/a_victim_of_its_own_success_se.html


At first read, it appears to be willful ignorance on some peoples part, but when you realize how much bad information is represented as fact in our society today, it gets truly scary. :shrug: