Medicare and Social Security

Since it was a Krugzilla column about the Republican plan to drastically cut Medicare and Social Security benefits, I ' ll let the Krug answer the people who say " But we have to cut these programs, we can ' t afford them, what are the Democrats going to do about it? "Here ' s your gift link. By all means do read, but let me summarize the main points. First, regarding Social Security, the rise in cost resulting from the Baby Boomers retiring and the general aging of the population will actually be pretty modest, from about 4.9% of GDP today to 6.4% in 2052, according to CBO projections. And that ' s assuming that life expectancyafter retirement will continue to rise, which is not necessarily going to be the case. (In fact thanks to Covid, it recently fell.) In any case, people are tending to work longer, and either delay taking Social Security or paying into the system for longer, even without any policy changes. And the additional money can easily be found just by lifting the cap on income subject to the FICA tax. So that really is not a problem, unless you make $400,000 a year and don ' t want to pay taxes. Tough shit for you.Medicare expenditures are expected to grow by more, but that ' s because of projected increases in health care costs, not the aging of the population. But the decades long trend of rising health care costs actually leveled off around 2010, and that has made all the doomsday predictions ring hollow. We do spend more than other wealthy countries on ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs