I am Pitting the stupid question: Do you want to cancel Medicare?

This completely disingenuous question is so full of assumptions and general crap that liberals would use it.

Let’s finish the question: “If not, do you want your money (taken at a point of a gun) back?”

If I got back the money I put into Medicare for my working life I could invest it into a conservative set of investments and pay for high quality medical insurance for the rest of my life and have money left – no government needed.

(my first Pit – I welcome the inevitable fallacious lefty “arguments” but if I did this wrong place or thread type for this board/category I really want to know. I would appreciate it if the two were not conflated).

Show us the figures.

The average household income in the US in 2008 was $50,233 (US Census)

The payroll tax for Medicare (including the employer and employee portion) was 2.9% (SSA)

The average American household thus pays about $1,450/year in Medicare taxes.

The average employer-sponsored private insurance premium for a family of 4 is $13,000/year (NCHC)

If you can turn $1,400 into $13,000, I salute your mad investing skillz.

Easy, you invest it in health insurance stocks.

I honestly can’t figure out what the OP is pitting. That liberals “would” use this question? Er, do they? What’s the rage, and who’s the target?

I think what he’s getting at, is that when the birthers/deathers/hitlerers claim that government-run healthcare = holocaust, the common rebuttal is to point to Medicare.

Crazy person: “Government should stay out of healthcare!”
Not crazy person: “So we should get rid of Medicare then?”
Crazy person: mind exploding

[Milo Minderbinder]And everybody gets a share![/MM]

Ah.

And rather than “mind exploding”, it appears the actual CP rebuttal is “Yes! I can do better than the government, through the magic of capitalism!”

[quote=“samclem, post:2, topic:508079”]

[quote=“freedumb2003, post:1, topic:508079”]

If I got back the money I put into Medicare for my working life I could invest it into a conservative set of investments and pay for high quality medical insurance for the rest of my life and have money left – no government needed.

Well, I have contributed around $200,000 over the last 30 years (that goes up a lot over the next 10 years), so, using round figures, if I could have invested that money (lets say it totals 50K and including the Employer % (which would have gone to me if not Uncle Sam), a 40 year 50K investment for 40 years us about a million – more than enough to pay for medical insurance.

But it doesn’t answer the underlying question: Mr./Ms. Politician? If you want to posit removing Medicare then you damn well better posit reimbursing the money you stole for it.

They do use it – don’t you watch TV? It is the standard talking point for the left in almost every town hall meeting.

Time and time again has show that the private sector can do almost everything (except for military and even the the government subcontracts parts of THAT to the private sector) better than government.

That isn’t crazy – that is history.

Not only that, but that rate is supposed to stay stable once every single person on Medicare starts investing.

Thanks for getting it.

And it’s adorable. tickletickletickle!!!

freedumb2003, I really can’t figure you out. You’ve been here 2 days and every post you’ve made is such overblown, cliche conservative vitriol you seem like some lefter trying to parody a righter.

:dubious:

You’re welcome. It’s a lame pitting. You’re being outraged over being asked a question you apparently believe to be a reasonable one, since you answered it.
And on an unrelated note, I don’t watch TV.

You don’t account for time nor do you account for employer contribution (6%). The idea is to hold these until after you are 65 (same rules as Medicare) – run the numbers for 45 years and try again.

A 1400 base invested with a 8% ROR and only $1000 a year for 45 years is over $500,000.

That is withOUT the employer contribution (which should go to you as opposed to the gummit, which has to give it back to someone and I can make a strong argument it would have been a benefit) – lets do the numbers at $4,500 and $4,500 a year for 45 years: that is over 2 MILLION!

And that assumes no increase in pay over the years.

You need to work a bit on your math skills.

You have contributed $200K to medicare over 30 years?

200,000 / .029 ~ 6,896,500

You’ve averaged $230K in salary over the past 30 years? Not impossible, I know. Just curious.

You have an answer? I would love to hear it. If the politicians and lefties can’t answer my question, they shouldn’t ask theirs.

Crazy history.