June 15, 2011

Bankrupting Medicare

Sometimes I find myself tempted to say, “Let Medicare go bankrupt in 12 years.”  Like I and others, said with CaliforniaIf Democrats are so eager to stick their heads in the sand and say there’s no problem, or that the problems are merely waste and fraud that need more policing, then let’s let the chips fall where they may and hold them accountable in 12 years when it goes broke and the baby boomers, so eager to ignore reality get a really big dose of “there’s nothing left, you’re on your own now.”

In a way that would be a really sweet I told you so moment.  But that’s not who we are as conservatives. We see a problem and we want to address it, in this case, find a way to keep Medicare solvent.  At least that’s true in my case.  Medicare is the leading edge of an unfunded liability crisis that also includes Medicaid, Social Security, and I expect eventually Obamacare.

Beyond being an I told you so moment for Paul Ryan and other conservatives who have sounded the alarm and/or proposed solutions, perhaps the crisis hitting at the point of no way out is a way of killing the ever-growing beast that no one seems to be able to curtail.  Maybe President Bush’s Medicare Part D was a way of doing just that – accelerating the death of an unsustainable system. Wow, wouldn’t that have been too clever?  In that fantasy scenario however, we’d have to give President Obama the same benefit of insight.  We all know both men were buying votes with socialism.  That’s truly a sad state of affairs, especially when a Republican was stooping to the tactics of the left.

Would hitting that brick wall force the country to act?  It would have to act. By 2024 there will be no more borrowing room.  There will be no more off-off-balance-sheeting of a crooked book-keeping in order to keep it afloat.  It will mean that changes will have to be made and there will be little time for debate or compromise.  It would present a golden opportunity to force real change.  But honestly there’s no way we can allow things to reach that point.  We have to continue to at least try to affect a positive change sooner rather than later.  There’s no reason to succumb to decline and bankruptcy if you can avoid it ahead of time.  That’s why we fight to reveal the truth behind the coming crisis.

2 comments:

  1. We hit the brick wall a long time ago. Unfortunately, our elected officials are like the proverbial ostrich trying to bury it's head in a concrete road. Absolutely no kahoonies to act as they are only worried about their own phony baloney power.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm talking about the real brick wall - when Medicare payments stop going out entirely. We're not quite there yet, but it's coming. As for the ostrich routine, you're absolutely right on that one. Check my post yesterday for that very metaphor.

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