From what I’ve heard, people on Social Security get their payments on time, like clockwork.
Do you not get your government checks on time, every month?
Direct deposit.
But Social Security is so poorly run, you never know when it will be deposited, right? Or if it will be deposited at all, unless you call them up?
My husband’s checks/deposits were absolutely regular. The 3rd Wednesday of the month.
Private hospitals, private doctors, private labs, private insurance companies involved, where is this government takeover?
Social Security is run at a fraction of public companies. It and Medicare are very well run. Like the fire department, V.A., police department, post office and many other organizations that keep private fingers out of their pies. Now that private companies are involved in the army, it has gone to hell.
On the other hand, my grandmother has had to call about her pension checks, if they haven’t come.
By ‘pension’, do you mean Social Security payments? Or a private pension plan?
Etc. So, they aren’t doing this already? All these highly paid executive guys, whose decision-making ability is worth millions, very year, they aren’t already squeezing for efficiencies?
Efficiencies ferreted out, they might amount to…what? One percent? Three? Godawmighty, five!? You know what works better than efficiencies? Ruthlessness. Especially ruthlessness practiced upon the helpless, people who have almost no hope of beating your lawyers with theirs.
I mean, otherwise, why all these stories about actions by insurers that border on the criminal, never mind the ethical. These stories aren’t made up by lefties, they’re for real. So what are we to believe? Accident? The rare fluke of human error? Too many, far, far too many.
No, this is a decision, this is spreadsheet morality. This is a conscious and deliberate decision to victimize. These people do not deserve to be highly paid executives, they deserve to be Bubba’s wife in Cell Block D.
So even if I were a true believer in the Free Market Almighty, I’d still have to ask: how can we trust these people? We’d have to regulate them to the point that they become automatons, functionaries walking the guidelines.
Might as well go all the way.
The ones she gets from my grandfather’s company – he worked for Hagan Ice Cream.
(Although sometimes she misplaces her sosh check – but then, she’s 90 years old)
That is your definition of a super efficient social insurance system, that the money goes out on time? Not, say - oh, I don’t know - whether or not that system is able to operate efficiently, without serious waste?
I have no idea what you are talking about - this doesn’t seem to be in response to my post that you quoted.
Social Security is broke and it is anybodies guess whether it will be around next year or next decade. OTOH, I have many friends who are living on their pensions from private companies, because those companies took their payments and actually invested them in the best interests of the employees. It’s also illegal for a company to loot a pension - it isn’t illegal for the government to loot SS.
Medicare was a nightmare the whole time I was involved with it, both as a secondary payor and as a patient advocate. It is now going private. Not totally yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.
The VA is apparently not doing too well.
The post office is run by a private organization contracted by the United States Government.
The fire and police departments are a different thing since there are no private counterparts to them.
I don’t know anything about the army.
If you haven’t you’re in a small minority. 94% of the country’s insurance markets are defined as “highly concentrated.” Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.
http://healthcareforamericanow.org/site/content/new_report_private_insurers_consolidate_and_control_prices
A monopoly making monopoly-level profits is a bad thing because it makes monopoly-level profits, distorting the free market. A single-person system doesn’t make profits but brings the beneficial part of the free market to healthcare.
2. Why yes, social security. It’s proven to be the most outstanding value for your retirement dollar imaginable. An incredible success story.
- Once you accept it’s possible it opens up a whole new vista.
Except for the 631,000 retirees now being paid for by PBGC because their well run pension plans went under. Notice that, in contrast, not one person has ever failed to get Social Security from the government running out of money.
Saying that it is anybodies guess when Social Security goes under shows you don’t have a clue about how the system works or how economic forecasting is done. Child, you are stupid. You think the Social Security money gets put into a piggy bank where it can get looted?
Jesus Frog, you’d think that you could spend some of the time sitting around at my expense to actually learn something.
Yes. Yes, they are. That’s my point in responding to the made-up numbers on Dick’s biased cites. It is incredible that a competitive industry (and this one is extremely competitive, despite the facts his cites pull out of body orifices) would have virtually every firm incapable or unwilling to eliminate almost a third of their overhead, when it’s low-hanging fruit, there for the picking. The easiest of money. That’s the thesis, ISTM: health insurers are both money-grubbing profiteers AND they ignore easy profit in the form of this imaginary 31% overhead. Yeah, right.
And why are you reacting emotionally, relying on anecdotes–even if true–when statistics don’t support them as indicative of the industry as a whole? Constantly referring to the fact that the angels are on your side doesn’t hold any water if the angels refuse to engage the facts or read the studies (the credible ones, that is). Self-righteousness does not equal an argument.
This is a riot, that people keep referring to this as an example of government effectiveness and efficiency. It’s a program that is kept alive by fiat. It is not self-funding and will live in perpetuity only if it is reconstructed into a model that will actually work, not the Ponzi scheme it currently is. In the meantime, the government will continue to create money out of thin air as it’s needed. Quite efficient. God almighty.
It is a magnificently efficient program, easily the best value for your retirement dollar available.
It doesn’t need any major surgery, it may not need any. We’ll see in a decade or so.
How is it a Ponzi scheme?
Well, it pays off the first ones in using the contributions of the newly-signed-up. The difference between SS and a Ponzi scheme is that there is no risk people will decide to stop buying into Social Security.
I have no idea why you would need to actually increase the FICA tax percentage at all. Just increase the cap. Or get rid of the cap altogether.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6827519/ Social Security is in good shape. It will be around for a while. People believe scare tactics. Bush was saying it was broke when he was running for Gov. in Texas. He kept the lies up for a decade or 2.
And how is that different to any other insurance fund? Is America’s multitrillion dollar insurance market a bunch of Ponzi schemes?