originally posted by WTF in Zabrina's ridiculous post about the accident in Boston.
"I'm talking about simple math. Maybe those facts escape you. Next you will say math isn't a science....
$114,000 that 2011 retirees paid into Medicare won't cover $355,000 lifetime costs
http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2010/12/114000_that_2011_retirees_paid .html
But a newly updated financial analysis shows that what people paid into the system doesn't come close to covering the full value of the medical care they can expect to receive as retirees.
Consider an average-wage, two-earner couple together earning $89,000 a year. Upon retiring in 2011, they would have paid $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes during their careers.
But they can expect to receive medical services -- from prescriptions to hospital care -- worth $355,000, or about three times what they put in.
The estimates by economists Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane of the Urban Institute think tank illustrate the huge disconnect between widely-held perceptions and the numbers behind Medicare's shaky financing. Although Americans are worried about Medicare's long-term solvency, few realize the size of the gap.
The system has worked for 45 years, with occasional fine tuning. But the retirement of the baby boomers, the first of whom become eligible for Medicare in 2011, threatens to push it over the edge."
First of all that statement has nothing to do and is not related to the original post. However, I would say that the couple who worked all their lives for say...40 years each and paid in 114,000 deserve all the help they can get. Plus a lot of people die before they can collect anything from Medicare and a lot of people die before they use up 355,000 worth of benefits. On top of that, what about all the freeloaders, welfare entitlements, outright fraud (oh...my back hurts and i can't work so pay me disability from age 30 to forever) I thought ObamaCare was supposed to help make medical care affordable to all but so far all I have seen is a doubling of my insurance premimums with projections for major increases in those premimums after January 2014. I think the priorities of this country are fu*ked up when there is more consideration for "entitlements" for people who have not contributed to the country, than there is for those who worked and contributed for 40 years or more.