On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 3:35 PM, MarkI-ZeroPoint <zeropo...@charter.net>wrote:
Care to explain how government entitlements are ‘self-funding’… > > And how do they ‘help to bring down costs’… > No problem. Medicare is believed to bring down costs through its bargaining power and ability to control costs [1]. If you broke up the system into agencies that operate at the level of US states, it is likely that health care inflation would increase. Social security is self-funding, through the payroll tax. It is not a strain on the current deficit. See, for example, [2]. Its self-funding arrangement is part of a longer term problem, because this arrangement creates the illusion that it can just run on its own indefinitely. But social security is not a problem at the present moment. Beyond its budget neutrality, I would guess that, if anything, it is sustaining a lot of older people who would be on the streets and placing additional strain on public services and private entities such as hospitals. Eric [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/opinion/Krugman.html?_r=0 [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/budget-baloney-why-social_b_824331.html
