60+% of our budget is devoted to the military and Medicare is the culprit?

The breakouts between defense, SS and Medicare are pretty even:

for these stats..

and much of Medicare is paid through FICA tax.

See post #32 for a more accurate data. As pointed out, during the Viet Nam war the Feds started including SS & Medicare in the Federal Budget in order to hide the cost of war.

We the people pay for these programs therefore...therefore do not contribute to the deficit

One note that I am still researching, Medicare Part D might be paid for thru the General fund.

But other that - what BS is Obama talking about...?

And your figures do not include past military obligations.

This is from 2009. If I feel like it, I'll find more up to date figures (there will be little difference.)



The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller.

The pie chart below is the government view of the budget. This is a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security), and the expenses of past military spending are not distinguished from nonmilitary spending.



http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

taxes.

combining medicare, medicaid & chip is illegitimate. a large part of the funding of medicare *also* comes from a dedicated tax on workers.

medicaid otoh is pure 'welfare,' funded through the income tax.

bullshit on your misleading breakout.

Social Security is a separate pool of money from general revenue.

the gov't. has to pay back what it's taken from it in the past. Doesn't SS fund itself?

I don't particularly care what the general fund did with the money it borrowed from the Social Security trust fund. But I expect the general fund to pay back all the money it has borrowed from the general fund, as planned for the past three decades. Payroll taxes are not supposed to be generating enough money today to pay all Social Security obligations. That is why we paid extra payroll taxes all these years to build up the trust fund.

Never any mention of that.

that was part of it. Just because he didn't enumerate every detail in a brief statement doesn't mean it's out of mind.

Why did he even need to mention that?

He's getting the jump on the inevitable upcoming fight. It needs to be made more efficient, not DESTROYED.

I'm just getting mad ahead of time at what they're trying to pull.

Obama will not let them raise the Medicare age I believe but remember -- he put that on the table.

This is a problem I have with him -- he throws these things out but and then they get a foot in the door.

minority of Billionaires, and when they have to face the facts that actually doing their destruction won't get them re-elected, they back off.

They R crazy.

What he has done and is doing and will do is to set the boundaries. It needs reform, whatever name you call it by -- for gods' sake the insurance companies and drug companies are still screwing us all blue and that part of Medicare needs reform because that part of Medicare is costing us dearly. Obama is not going to allow the GOP to destroy Medicare, but I think what Democrats need to do is get behind the cost-cutting reforms that will in fact benefit us all, rather than continually reacting to the GOP agenda as though it were the only agenda available.

this round. The GOP are losing credibility and without strong leadership they can be more easily contained.. except for the complete crazies.

The one he is just about to sign into law, 98% of them, permanently?

Just asking, because what he got was a tax increase on the wealthiest, and I think the 98% appreciate that. I also know damn well that a lot of people at DU and elsewhere would bitch like crazy if their taxes went back to pre-Bush levels -- and Obama knows it too.

Bush Junior was, as we all know, a piece of work. The little SOB made this measure last 10 years so it would land smack on the next president and would falsely look like a tax increase. He sent everyone a $300 check, too. By the time he was done, the Clinton surplus was no more, but it was not just one thing it was the total.

As it happens, I have never resented paying my taxes. (I'm retired now, so the point is moot. However my husband is still working, so he/we are still paying taxes.) I always figured that education, welfare, social security, unemployment insurance and safe roads and bridges were worth it. So I was far from thrilled when Bush started this nonsense.

Thats why we have to do something about the cost of medicine and treatment if we are ever to really tackle the problem in all seriousness.

Yes, we need to slash the hell out of defense spending. That still doesn't solve our problem with Medicare. Medicare's share of GDP is projected to nearly double over the next few decades. And healthcare costs are expected to only grow more and more rapidly. And unfortunately, people are paying less into Medicare than what its paying back out to them in terms of benefits. Thats just math.

Its certainly no argument to do anything to Medicare that would harm benefits. But you can't just sit there and ignorant the facts. Medicare IS the biggest driver of our deficit. And President Obama is 100% correct when he points that out.

there's no sign this is going to change anytime in the future.

it looks more likely that medicare will go before war will.

I'm sure we will always be involved in aggressive foreign affairs. But I'm talking about the obscenely expensive stuff like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Regardless, Medicare is still the biggest driver either way. We've got to do something to make healthcare itself, as a product, cheaper.

If we got it back to the mid 90s levels, that would save quite a bit of money.... about 350 billion a year. Thats a lot of money over the course of a decade.

No one is debating that defense has to be slashed here. That doesn't change the fact that healthcare, as a product, is too expensive and its going to eventually break Medicare if we don't do something about it. And by something, I don't mean anything that would harm benefits.

expenditures come *directly* out of workers' pockets, not from general revenues. Only 40% of medicare costs are funded from general revenues.

medicare was 16% of the combined (including SS, Medicare) federal budget in 2011 and workers paid more than half the cost *directly*, which means that the portion of medicare funded from the general budget was only 8% or less of all spending.

In contrast, Defense was 19% of all outlays.



All of social security and more than half of medicare is WORKER-FUNDED and has nothing to do with federal deficits.

Your other point was that we won't always have war (though we always have for the past 70 years), & that these aren't 'real wars,' and they're cheaper than 'real wars' (though we're spending as much in real dollars as we did on WWII.

I'm frankly getting sick of repeating this, but its the biggest driver of FUTURE DEFICIT. Meaning over the next 25 years, the cost of Medicare is going to surpass everything else. Take it up with the fucking CBO. They are the ones telling us this.

driven by military spending. That is the baseline status, and that is the deficit & interest cost that future deficit projections are founded on.

Future deficits are projections, and the projection that medicare will drive future deficits, though it hasn't driven past deficits, is based primarily on the assumption that health care costs (hospitals, medicine, personnel, technology) will continue to rise in double-digits.

Not medicare spending per se, but spending to the medical-industrial complex, for things like jacking up the price of a 200-year-old pre-FDA medicine 500%, and forcing all stroke patients to take prophylactic SSRIs.

The graph does not illustrate anything about the actual topic... which is future deficit projections. Future projections indicate that over the next few decades, Medicare is the biggest driver of the deficit. Period. This is coming from the CBO, its not just something I've made up.

Not one cent of the $16.4 Trillion debt is from Medicare.


Not One Cent!





Yes, maybe... after 2024 ... Then, and only then, Medicare may start to spend more than it has if some changes are not made by then. That is a true statement.


But none of our current debt is from Medicare.

Medicare part B and D is paid for with a premium equal to about 25% of costs and the rest is paid by the general fund which is funded with income taxes. There is no trust fund for B or D.

It is a direct contributor to our current deficit and drives future growth in the deficit.

The fund you have paid into is part A which pays for hospitals excluding doctors.

It's Dumbya's unfunded drug program that doesn't allow the government to negotiate drug prices with drug companies. And, as I understand it, Medicare Part D HAS contributed to the deficit.

Only hospitals part A has a payroll tax trust fund.

Hospital insurance has been running at a deficit since 2008, meaning that the general fund is paying for chunks of it.

The general fund is designed to pay for big chunks of traditional Medicare, though - it always has.

HOW IS MEDICARE FINANCED?
Medicare is funded primarily from three sources: general revenues (40%), payroll tax contributions (38%), and beneficiary premiums (13%)

http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/7305-07.pdf

We're paying often hundreds of times more than the rest of the world for our seniors' prescription medications thanks to this abomination. It's costing us billions, and it needs to be rectified NOW.

Time to fix it. And, since we still have insufficient revenues, it is still adding to the deficit, regardless of whether or not Obamacare is paying for it.

to medicare for no one?

Trillions go in. Profits come out. Nothing is accounted. No one in authority notices.

He puts together some great analysis.

When the ACA was being worked on, the cost controls built into it were considered to be part of the solution to the overall problem. If done well, health care costs will be lowered, which should be doable because we pay about double the % of GDP on health care that the rest of the industrialized world does.

good summary

This sums up the issue at hand.

The statement that I heard was that as more people age, Medicare will become more expensive and reforms that solve solvency concerns but which protects Seniors will be needed.

But we need to watch like hawks.

why it is a big driver of the deficit.

I don't know why progressives don't start here. It would free up so much money and maybe we could redirect it towards research which has the possibility of CURING people.

On edit: fix to the Part B ---- Sorry... Ok one more time...

First the link: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2012.pdf

From the Medicare Trust Fund:

Part A :

In 2011, Medicare covered 48.7 million people: 40.4 million aged 65 and older, and 8.3 million disabled. About 25 percent of these beneficiaries have chosen to enroll in Part C private health plans that contract with Medicare to provide Part A and Part B health services. Total expenditures in 2011 were $549.1 billion. Total income was $530.0billion, which consisted of $514.8 billion in non-interest income and $15.2 billion in interest earnings. Assets held in special issue U.S. Treasury securities decreased to $324.9 billion.

The total assets of the account amounted to $0.7 billion on December 31, 2010. During calendar year 2011, total Part D expenditures were approximately $67.1 billion. General revenue was provided on an as-needed basis to cover the portion of these expenditures supported through Medicare subsidies. Total Part D receipts were $67.4 billion. As a result, total assets in the Part D account increased to $1.0 billion as of December 31, 2011.

Table III.D1 presents a statement of the revenue and expenditures of the Part D account of the SMI trust fund in calendar year 2011, and of its assets at the beginning and end of the calendar year.

From your link.

"The SMI trust fund is adequately financed over the next 10 years and beyond because premium and general revenue income for Parts B and D are reset each year to match expected costs. Part B and Part D costs, however, have been increasing rapidly, having averaged 5.9percent and 7.2percent annual growth over the last 5years, respectively."

http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/7305-07.pdf

HOW IS MEDICARE FINANCED?
Medicare is funded primarily from three sources: general revenues (40%), payroll tax contributions (38%), and beneficiary premiums (13%) (Figure 3):

 Part A is financed primarily through a 2.9% tax on earnings paid by employers and employees (1.45% each) (accounting for 86% of Part A revenue). For higher-income taxpayers (more than $200,000/individual and $250,000/couple), the payroll tax on earnings increases by 0.9 percentage points, from 1.45% to 2.35%, in 2013.

 Part B is financed through general revenues (72%), beneficiary premiums (25%), and interest and other sources (3%). Beneficiaries with annual incomes over $85,000/individual or $170,000/couple pay a higher, income-related Part B premium reflecting a larger share of total Part B spending, ranging from 35% to 80%; the ACA froze the income thresholds through 2019, which is expected to increase the share of beneficiaries paying the higher Part B premium.

 Part D is financed through general revenues (74%), beneficiary premiums (13%), and state payments for dual eligibles (13%). Similar to Part B, enrollees with higher incomes pay a larger share of the cost of Part D coverage.

Thanks DFK - I just had to look at the last page in the Trustee Report to get the total info.

My apologies to all for not getting it right the first time...

Sorry to disappoint you.

...starting your own message board where you and the other "haters" could expound at length as to how much you hate the President.

Gee, doesn't that sound like your kind of fun?

Are Medicare expenditures part of the general budget?

Though the states kick in some of the Medicaid/SCHIP, though that doesn't really get around the problem in the larger sense.

Seriously, the GOP exaggerates all the time, let Obama do it to increase resources to stop the fraud.

And very little of it steers the public discourse in a leftward direction. I'm still glad he's President instead of Romney.