Personal notes from Dennis Bukantis
An Rx for Our Health Care - Part One
Wed, Apr 15 2009 03:52
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I had the occasion to visit the Social Security Administration website...you may be familiar with it. On the SSA site, there is a button where they tell you that the SSA is very healthy. If that were true, then all of us should be relieved, particularly those who are depending upon SS Benefits in retirement. But what if that's not necessarily true?
Well, the bad news is that getting through the current economic fandango will not be easy, and some say, that we're really confronted with a far bigger problem. To wit;
The first of the Baby Boomers signed up for early Social Security benefits last year and these same early beneficiaries will also enroll in Medicare in about two years. The PROBLEM is that neither Social Security nor Medicare will be ready to handle them.
Explicit and implicit promises have been made to millions of people, but the Promissor has not put money aside in order to keep those promises. How can this be?
While it appears to some in the know, Wall Street charlatan Bernie Maydoff and now a couple of others got their business idea and ethics for their Ponzi schemes from studying the federal government entitlement programs. Check it out...they all operated in a similar manner.
Compounding the problem that will hit mainstream America is that in the private sector, many employer-sponsored pensions plans are not fully funded. And there doesn't appear to be any federal government insurance scheme behind those plans.
Conservative estimates places the potential taxpayer liability between $500 billion and one trillion dollars for those private pension plans. And too boot, nearly 1/3 of all Baby Boomers work for an employer who has promised retirement health care benefits. As with our now govermnment owned auto companies in Detroit and other places, almost no funding for these benefits is on the table either. Where and how will these promises be met?
Certain California municipalities have declared bankruptcy because of their employee retirement plans and the first Baby Boomer is still only 63 years old.
What all this points us to is a huge gap between what an entire generation believes is going to happen during its retirement years and the funds that are supposed to be there - but are not - to make good on all those promises.
What may happen as some have visioned is that somebody is going to be really upset. Either the Boomers will not have the retirement life they had counted on (and we're seeing this right now) or grassroot taxpayers are going to be hit with a walloping bill. Or both.
Now, rewinding back to the idea of a Ponzi scheme for a minute - this federal government has spent money that it doesn't really have. So we must ask, how can they keep promising more and more entitlements? They can't and do it legally. Remember, Maydoff and others are going to jail for this type of scheme.
This may help you crystalize on this matter better: Trustees for the SSA have estimated an unfunded liability of in excess of $100 trillion in current dollars. Not rocket science here, this would equate to mean that the feds have promised more than $100 trillion over and above any taxes or premiums it expects to receive. This $100 trillion represents about six and a half times of the US economy - they should have this on hand right now building interest.
Truth is Genevieve, it doesn't exist.
This in a brief fashion is a story of Social Security - Next Words of Widsom will talk about the other side of the government entitlement program, Medicare and after that the widsom of Private Health Care Insurance. Stay tuned to this page regularly.
Thanks for reading this article today.
Dennis
Well, the bad news is that getting through the current economic fandango will not be easy, and some say, that we're really confronted with a far bigger problem. To wit;
The first of the Baby Boomers signed up for early Social Security benefits last year and these same early beneficiaries will also enroll in Medicare in about two years. The PROBLEM is that neither Social Security nor Medicare will be ready to handle them.
Explicit and implicit promises have been made to millions of people, but the Promissor has not put money aside in order to keep those promises. How can this be?
While it appears to some in the know, Wall Street charlatan Bernie Maydoff and now a couple of others got their business idea and ethics for their Ponzi schemes from studying the federal government entitlement programs. Check it out...they all operated in a similar manner.
Compounding the problem that will hit mainstream America is that in the private sector, many employer-sponsored pensions plans are not fully funded. And there doesn't appear to be any federal government insurance scheme behind those plans.
Conservative estimates places the potential taxpayer liability between $500 billion and one trillion dollars for those private pension plans. And too boot, nearly 1/3 of all Baby Boomers work for an employer who has promised retirement health care benefits. As with our now govermnment owned auto companies in Detroit and other places, almost no funding for these benefits is on the table either. Where and how will these promises be met?
Certain California municipalities have declared bankruptcy because of their employee retirement plans and the first Baby Boomer is still only 63 years old.
What all this points us to is a huge gap between what an entire generation believes is going to happen during its retirement years and the funds that are supposed to be there - but are not - to make good on all those promises.
What may happen as some have visioned is that somebody is going to be really upset. Either the Boomers will not have the retirement life they had counted on (and we're seeing this right now) or grassroot taxpayers are going to be hit with a walloping bill. Or both.
Now, rewinding back to the idea of a Ponzi scheme for a minute - this federal government has spent money that it doesn't really have. So we must ask, how can they keep promising more and more entitlements? They can't and do it legally. Remember, Maydoff and others are going to jail for this type of scheme.
This may help you crystalize on this matter better: Trustees for the SSA have estimated an unfunded liability of in excess of $100 trillion in current dollars. Not rocket science here, this would equate to mean that the feds have promised more than $100 trillion over and above any taxes or premiums it expects to receive. This $100 trillion represents about six and a half times of the US economy - they should have this on hand right now building interest.
Truth is Genevieve, it doesn't exist.
This in a brief fashion is a story of Social Security - Next Words of Widsom will talk about the other side of the government entitlement program, Medicare and after that the widsom of Private Health Care Insurance. Stay tuned to this page regularly.
Thanks for reading this article today.
Dennis
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