Why do you hate America?
It is based on the interest that accumulated over the years, My husband and I paid in for over 60 years until retirement. also FICA for our children until they were adults! Just like any health insurance, some people never collect or need it, some need more. Many I knew died before they were able to collect because they died in their 40’s fifties, or before sixty two. with no dependents all the money they paid in was not collected by them.
Look, the problem with telling people to save for retirement, instead of relying on social security, is that a lot of them just won’t. For various reasons. They’re dumb. They invested all their money in fur bearing trout farms. They invested their money in Microsoft, and Microsoft went broke. Their house burned down. They blew all their money on cocaine and hookers. They blew all their money on treating liver cancer. They never made above poverty level in the first place, and never saved a dime.
Any retirement system must take into account that a sizable fraction of the elderly are going to be flat broke, with no income, and no private way to pay for health care.
If we decide that if you’re broke and elderly, you’re out on the streets then we’re going to have to get used to stepping over homeless old people on our way to work every day. I’m sure everyone here on the Dope has saved and invested wisely and therefore has absolutely no risk of ending up ruined by life’s uncertainties, because that only happens to other people. But still, what are we going to do about people who are too sick and old to work, and don’t have any money of their own?
Social security is welfare for old people, let’s be upfront about that. I know, I know, you’ve been told that you get back the money you paid in. Except that was a lie. Your social security payments support old people today, and when you get old, the able bodied young people of the future will pay to support you, at least we hope so. A moment’s thought reveals that it can’t be any other way, because without able bodied young people performing work in the future, your private investments and savings will be worthless.
Social Security was founded by do gooders who found the elderly in America suffering in poverty. It is a bottom line support to keep them from starving.
It is an extremely well run organization using under 2 percent of the intake for administration.
It is the retirements that todays oldsters depended on for living a comfortable old age that are in trouble. My sister in law worked for a company that gave management of their retirement funds to Madoff. It is gone. He cleaned out charities and retirement funds happily.
Many lost everything in the bank theft. Smart people got cleaned out. Keeping the bulk of retirement funds in Social Security is right , proper and far safer.
When that shock hits the blow to consumer spending will be so devastating that if you have anything in the real estate or stock market you, sir, are going to be writing a new Country Music song.
One of the problems with Social Security is the fact that the Government used Social Security funds for other ways to fix other problems over the years ,and depleted the funds for what they are supposed to be used for, like any Insurance, there are people who pay in and never need, or do collect. We payed into Insurance to Mutual of Omaha for 30 years and then dropped it, because they wanted us to pay more even though we had never used it, and already paid in more than we could collect! Social Security was to use the interest that was added over the years(In the hundreds of thousands of dollars) to pay for ones who collected over time. Now days, Social Security alone is not enough for many seniors and they still work and pay in. Some young people who could have worked over the years can get a good lawyer and bad doctor to call them disabled so they can collect. That also uses up funds for the elderly and handicapped. Even today a regular Insurance doesn’t pay enough to cover the cost of many illinesses. I saw on TV a man who had a serious illiness and his insurance ran out and was left in such debt he could not get help. I guess some people would just say," let him die". The medicines alone cost some people thousands of dollars a year.
There is no perfect system, and even a man or woman who has saved can come up with an un seen illiness that can wipe out their savings and lose all they have.
There is also Nataline Sarskiyan who died because an insurance company denied her coverage for a liver transplant. Even after doctors said it would save her life.
Ain’t America great? :rolleyes:
Dickie Cheney got himself an electric heart that no none else on earth has gotten. How is that for fair? I bet there are plenty of folks out there from every political stripe and no one gets the kind of care that Cheney gets. Ain’t life grand? The bastard has had 5 coronaries and is still walking around. Who knows how many deaths are in his hands in Iraq? Yet, he lives on and on…
Thank you Kearsen! Gutted safety net still holds 40 million? .. dang conservatives must have been slacking off!
Marvin Olasky, Editor of World Magazine, provost of King’s College NYC, has devoted much time and thought to our welfare system. The above is a review of his book.
Firstly, the device Cheney got was only approved in 2010 for people not using it as a temporary fix while waiting for a transplant. So the fact that very few people have gotten this is a function of it not being approved in the US until right before he was hospitalized. It’s actually not that expensive compared to many such treatments.
Secondly, is it your contention that no one should avail himself of medical technology unless everyone is able to get it? Are we to provide medical care to the entire country that the richest .1% (or wherever Cheney falls) has access to?
Thirdly, that type of argument generally falls under the “appeal to emotion” logical fallacy, although there is at least one other fallacy that applies, too.
Hey, at least he has a heart now!
Well about the liver transplant?
Well it looks to me like a valid point. Someone who isn’t a mass murdering war criminal like Chaney dies from lack of health care induced liver failure while Chaney carries merrily along.
The system supports evil pieces of shit like Chaney but leaves good people to the vultures. That does not look like an ideal state to me. An ideal state would be if everyone had health care.
Just for the record, who paid for Chaney’s operation? Was it tax payers? I believe it is. So Chaney isn’t getting it because he can afford it, he’s getting it from tax payers. Assuming you’re not saying he’s better than us, and quite frankly who isn’t better than Chaney, why shouldn’t all Americans have that level of care?
Dickie Cheney got himself an electric heart to stand in place of the one he never had throughout his whole life.
That entire argument you just responded to was frighteningly out of touch with reality. Nataline Sarskiyan did not die because of a resource shortage. She died because someone didn’t fork over enough pieces of paper with dead presidents on it.
^^^ This. 100%.
What about it?
Cheney’s case is what it is. The proposal was that Cheney got some special treatment when, in fact, the treatment was not available until very recently. We don’t know anything about the relative cost of the two procedures, nor the relative effectiveness they would have on the patient’s condition. If you’d like to do some research on that and get back to us, that would be just dandy.
His health care benefits are (most likely) part of his job, tax payer funded or not. Is your argument that no one should get better job benefits than anyone else?
And you’re feeding on the Appeal to Emotion by throwing “good” and “evil” as adjectives describing people into a discussion on health care.
Just a quick question. How would you describe someone responsible in part for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and willful torture? Chaney is a monster, that’s a fact if the word has any meaning. And I defy you to say one redeeming thing about the miserable old traitor.
Moral judgments are perfectly valid. You try to whitewash it as job perks, but a man who trashed the country, who fought for policies that put 1 out of 10 Americans out of work, who has the blood of hundreds of thousands on his crippled gnarled hands is being paid for by this country’s dime, while others in this country do without, in part thanks to him, and you don’t see any injustice in that? None at all?
Again the government had enough for him, and his damn wars, why doesn’t it for other less traitorous, Americans? If your answer is the economy guess who championed the deregulation that trashed it.
I don’t evaluate the justice of a health care system based on how it treats “good” vs “bad” people.
And I don’t know anything about the details of the girl who needed a liver transplant. Anecdotal evidence like that isn’t relevant to the discussion anyway, as sad as it might be as a story. Every system has its failures, and if want to present the relative efficacy of the US’s system in getting liver transplants to people who need them relative to some other country, that would be relevant.
But still no pulse.
My contention is that Cheney should have dropped dead a long time ago, like mother nature wanted him to do. Shame that the newest medical devices are wasted on crap like him.
Thanks, I needed that.