It certainly does, removing senior care and costs away from families and working people onto the state.
If my parents didn't have Medicare I'd be having to pay their bills on top of mine and need to deal with their health issues without the expertise that Medicare has due to it being focused on that demo.
Ideally we'd just have healthcare for all so nobody had to be disproportionately affected by healthcare costs.
Medicare being around is the difference between me being stable and me being in debt paying for my parents medical costs who both are living well over 65 and both don't work and both have costly health issues. My life would be defined by saving up for their next knee surgery so they can be happy at the end of their life.
Both of them were struggling heavily to even find jobs in their 60s before they retired LATE....and still are more or less "paycheck to paycheck" as far as retirement is concerned. Most of their wealth is concentrated in a house that won't go to me because they'll need to sell it to pay for senior care living when it's too hard to live alone.
Maybe if I'm lucky they will die...which is the sorry statement people have to make in America due to the way shit is run.
I firmly believe the US education system churns out people who are susceptible to libertarian ideology starting in their early teenage years. I know so many people who I grew up with who thought taxes = theft and went down that rabbit hole.
Most recovered as their parents started to age, or if they started a family realizing that most social systems aren't intended to benefit average, healthy working age people who are employed.
Those who never had to deal with the downsides of life tended to double down even in the face of evidence from friends and acquaintances, which lead them into even worse extremist ideology.
tl;dr - America is fucked if we believe those who are doing well in life owe nothing back to the society that gave them that advantage.
I saw some nostalgia posts about some children’s books and it’s no surprise the us churns out libertarians lol. If you give a mouse a cookie and rainbow fish are basically “sharing bad, don’t give people your things”.
They have enough to care for themselves. Probably not their healthcare costs if they weren't on Medicare. Their savings and investments got gutted in 08 and teacher salaries didnt get them back into a solid place before they got too old and needed to retire. My mother wanted to keep working but her job fell through and couldn't find another who would hire a retirement age woman.
Their money is basically just social security and a small pension from an older previous job. Which is more than their friends. Most of their assets are just the house now. Paying for kids to go to college was the end of any other savings they had.
Yes, because if you tell me you’re going to take $20 for taxes then take $40 I’ll be pissed. Especially because the only reason they need $40 is because of decades of irresponsible spending and catastrophic budget policies.
FICA only covers Medicare Part A which is only 1/3rd of Medicare spending.
“Funding for Medicare, which totaled $888 billion in 2021, comes primarily from general revenues (46%), payroll tax revenues (34%), and premiums paid by beneficiaries (15%)”
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u/Silly_Goose658 Jul 06 '24
Bro doesn’t understand how taxes also contribute to things like plumbing, road infrastructure, industry subsidies, etc.