Medicare Debate
The U.S. government have denied that Medicare
has been going bankrupt. Although
the government may say that Medicare has
plenty of money it is untrue because it
is a fact that Medicare will go
bankrupt by the year 2001 as stated by
preliminary sources. Medicare is one
of the main sources of funding for those
people that have no money or very
small amount of money. The community service
that was done for this research
paper is hospital volunteering at John Muir
Medical Center. The community
service included various jobs that was needed to
be done were, Putting items
away for nurses, discharging patients, doing paper
work, feeding patients,
answering phones, and helping patients when they ask for
assistance. The
floor I worked on was Oncology (The branch of medicine that
deals with
tumors, including study of their development, diagnosis, treatment,
and
prevention). This community service has help me gain insight on the
Medicare
situation because I have asked multiple amount of people that work
at John Muir
Medical Center. There is a side to be considered about
Medicare and Social
Security in the government. The vice president of the
United States, Al Gore,
wrote in a letter stating that social security funds
are not being depleted.
Gore said that, "the allegations to the contrary
have been circulated by
certain organizations as a money-making scheme for
some time." (Gore
Letter). Vice President Gore tries to show theses
allegations are untrue by
explaining how social security works. In this
letter, Vice President Gore
cleared up the allegations by writing that, "When
Social Security taxes are
collected, they are credited to the Social Security
trust funds with government
security, perhaps the safest investment in the
United States. In history
Medicare has experience a few problem regarding
it's funding. Problems have
occurred over the history of Medicare. The major
problem and most recent of
Medicare is that it is going bankrupt.
Medicare is another legacy of Lyndon
Baines Johnson Great Society.
Spending is obviously out of control. On June 5th
the government announced
that the Medicare Trust Fund would go broke by the
year
2001(nationaldebt). In 1965 when LBJ started Health and Medicare,
the Total
Federal Spending for the year was $101 Billion. By the year
2000 we will spend
over 4 times than amount on Health and Medicare alone, and
Medicare will equal
the annual spending for Defense(CNN). Under our
Constitution, Defense is a
specific responsibility of the Federal Government.
Medicare is a step-child of
our Liberal/Socialists. You might keep this in
mind when we get to the point
where we have to chose what we CAN do versus
what we would LIKE to do. By the
year 2002 Medicare will have exceeded
defense spending Healthcare has been a
problem for the government as well for
it has added to the enormous debt the
country already has. Another major
problem of Medicare is that the government
does not regulate Medicare
enough(Medicare). Medicare affects all different
aspects of different
programs. For instance Medicare affects Social Security
(national debt).
Social Security has already exceeded Defense spending by almost
double. Just
like Medicare, Social Security is being abused. Abused meaning that
people
take advantage of it. It is different from Medicare because less people
can
use Social Security because it is set aside for the tax payers of
this
country. The mechanism is similar to depositing money in a bank. As you
know,
when a bank accepts a deposit. It takes that money and uses it for
loans and
investments in order to provide a positive return to share holders
and
interest-bearing accounts. The deposit is credited to an account, and as
long as
the account has a positive balance, the bank is obligated to honor
debits to it.
In the same way, the trust funds' balances represent and
have swerved as
financial claims against the government-claims on which the
Department of the
Treasury has never defaulted...." (Gore Letter). This
letter written by Al
Gore shows the government side of the issue on
Social Security. The government
does make it's point in describing that
Social Security is not endanger of
losing money or even going bankrupt.
According to Al Gore he mentioned that,
"Social Security represents an
important commitment to the elderly which
must not and will not be abandoned.
I assure you that Social Security has ample
funds to continue supporting the
programs upon which many older Americans
depend." (Gore Letter). Vice
President Gore has given a very good
explanation of why Social Security will
not run out of funds. The following
shows the explanation that is given to
the public. The dilemma is that most of
the public do not want to listen to
what the government has to say about an
issue so they take matters into their
own hands. The federal healthcare program
for the elderly is a system of
checks and balances where change is expected. The
fact that we have something
within the next year or so to ensure that nothing
goes bad in the year 2001
or 2002 is expected(CNN1). But the government is not
going to do that by
slashing benefits. The reason for the projected bankruptcy
is because
Medicare is serving around 37 million people, and costs taxpayers an
average
of 200 billion dollars a year. Medicare and Social Security account
for
34% of the current federal budget(CNN2). The percentage is expected
to rise 5
percent in the next 5 years, partly because Americans are living
longer now a
day. Men and women are living about 6 years longer than they did
in the 1960's
(CNN2). A survey was taken by CNN on the opinions of people's
healthcare plans.
On an average people gave their health plan an average
score of a "B"
or better so people were satisfied with their health
plan(CNN). The community
service that I did tied into Medicare and Social
Security because I saw a lot of
patients using Medicare. They had a lot of
trouble with it sometimes. I did
learn that even if patients do not have
Medicare or insurance they will
generally still accept the person into the
hospital because the hospital does
not have the heart to turn them away. My
volunteering experience at John Muir
Medical Center has help me
understand Medicare a lot better because nurses were
kind enough to answer
all my questions about Medicare from filling out the form
to problems and how
they deal with them. Medicare will eventually go bankrupt
because at the rate
that people are using it and how fast that number is
increasing Medicare will
be out of funding indefinitely by the year 2001. The
only thing that can be
done is to raise taxes but that would be impossible
because it is already
costing taxpayers 200 billion dollars a year to keep
Medicare going and
that is hardly enough to even keep it going(CNN2). In fact
that is not enough
to keep it going. How to fix Medicare is the greatest
challenge. This issue
is a very important one that will eventually come under
fire as we approach
that year 2001 when Medicare is projected to go bankrupt.
This issue
might not be resolved and we could be seeing the end of Medicare. I
this
issue will get solved some how the taxpayers will pay Medicare out
of
trouble. This reminds me of an experience I had volunteering at John
Muir
Medical Center. I was working my shift and I experienced the pain of
people that
had there Medicare turned down. I remember seeing how angry
patient was as she
started to weep. This really showed the how important
Medicare is to people and
if that goes down a lot of people will be left
without health coverage. This
will cause a lot arguments on the side of the
taxpayers but if the government
does pass the bill taxpayers will have no
choice. This solution might get
Medicare out of the "drain" but will it
really make people happy? Even
if Medicare fails there will be others behind
Medicare like Medicaid, MediCal,
Social Security to help out but losing
Medicare will be a major blow to society
and U.S. may not recover from this
one for a very long time.