Price controls will put private insurers out of business in a year

:redscare:

Technically the first three are insolvent, insolvent, and less bankrupt than it used to be, respectively. SS and Medicare won't be actually bankrupt for a few more years yet... I think SS is up first in 2017.

Thank goodness, then, that the Democrats are in control. All will be well once taxes are high enough and 51% of the population are gubbermint employees.

It was a nice country, once.

Isn't Social Security turning a surplus, and isn't it the case that minor tax reforms are planned which will keep it that way?

I didn't realize that you were a comedian!

Sure, Chaos, if the SS fund was never required to pay back to you and me and 200 million other workers all the money we've put into SS fund during our entire working lives, then technically it has a "surplus" (it takes in more than it pays out). You just have to ignore the repayment of our retirement savings - a very liberal 'free lunch' way to look at the world.

High comedy. Low ponzi.

If it isn't, it was doing so until very recently. The crisis is essentially a manufactured one by those who aim to do away with the program.

You are a fucking idiot.

Please open dictionary to the word "unsustainable."

That is the end of this public service announcement, you can now resume your stupid comments.

Yep, upon checking the facts, it appears that Social Security in America is currently running a large surplus. It will continue to turn a surplus until 2016, and the program won't be in the red until 2036. Relatively minor reforms in taxation will avoid this situation altogether.

It is unfortunate that the government has decided to borrow against the programs funds but that isn't the fault of Social Security itself and is merely evidence of the manufactured crisis I pointed to.

But, don't bother with the facts if haughty invective suits you better.

I think you are torturing the word "surplus" in ways that would make the Marquis de Sade uncomfortable.

Fixed.

You understand how this analogy works, right: Deficit is to debt as surplus is to savings?

Well, guess what. Savings is 0, because other parts of the government have plundered the surpluses every single year. No savings means the surpluses are all that are keeping it from bankruptcy now. That ends in 2016. So in 2017, it's bankrupt absent a cash infusion from other taxation sources:

That is, the Trust fund is filled with worthless IOU's. It can be maintained more indefinitely through taxation, but then people start to wonder what the point is of the payroll tax if their income taxes are going straight into Social Security.

We can't separate SS from the rest of the government in 2016 since we aren't now. The money to pay off the bonds is going to have to come from the general fund.

Now, this wouldn't be an issue (any more than the face value of it, anyway), except the pols have been telling us for decades that this couldn't happen, that SS was enforced savings, not a wealth transfer or Ponzi scheme. 2017 will put the lies to rest and people are going to be angry.

We can save Social Security, but it means we'll have to start killing some old people.

Let's round up the Obama voters first.

There are no price controls in the bill.

So in a section partially entitled "Ensuring Low Premiums" where it's spelled out exactly how much more in premiums companies can take in than spend on medical care, and without any price controls on the goods and services they have to pay claims on... what would you call it?

[action=BearTM]waves his hand...[/action]
"These aren't the price controls you're looking for... You can move along..."

Naive idiot. It's laughable.

Seriously you're a fucking moron.

:fellforit:

What a strange way of putting in price controls.
Here in Australia private health insurance companies have yearly limits on how much the fees can go up. If you want to try and limit the rising cost of health care it seems that would do more to encourage efficiency than trying to micromanage funds finances for them.

^^ Our system of "UHC" will be mothing like other systems -- Australia, Germany, doesn't matter.

If I ever get around to it, I will summarize the differences, but the idea that we're getting what our friends abroad already enjoy is a sham, false advertising meant to sell the idea to the Hopium addicted fools.

I did refer to that myself, you know. Like I said, the problems faced are not the fault of the Social Security program, but of deliberate mismanagement. If government has to pay back the money into the fund, it should do that, rather than punishing the elderly and pretending that the fundamentals of the program are at fault in order to justify an ideological aim to destroy it.