Post by jeffolie on Apr 10, 2011 15:06:57 GMT -6
Paul Ryan's budget saves $9 Trillion in large part with cuts in Medicare many years from now.
Medicare is huge and growing. Added with Social Security, the sum constitudes about 50% of the Federal budget.
I often write about the changing family structure in America and highlight that now 40% of all American newborns are to unmarried mothers. In the nuclear family, grandparents were ejected from the family home while today biological fathers are not found in the family home.
Families once were very big as parents used children for support, families got smaller in the industrial age and along came the nuclear family after WWII that expelled the grandparents to retirement homes where Social Security and Medicare funded the grandparents until death.
Demo Memo reminds that Medicare was a significant part of taking elderly grandparents out of the family home into independent 'golden years' rather than improverished death spirals.
Another gem from Demo Memo:
===============================================
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Who Needs Medicare?
A history lesson: Before Medicare came to the rescue in 1965, the poverty rate of Americans aged 65 or older was as high as 35.2 percent. Today, the poverty rate of the elderly is just 8.9 percent thanks to Medicare.
Before Medicare, few older Americans had health insurance because it was unaffordable. When they inevitably became ill, they spent down their savings to pay their medical bills, driving many into poverty--and that was before health care costs went through the roof. Research shows that net worth falls among adults whose parents do not have health insurance. Why is that? Because those children are not going to stand idly by while their parents get sick and die without medical care. So they spend down their savings to save mom and dad. And so on, and so on.
Who needs Medicare? Asked and answered.
demomemo.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-needs-medicare.html
Medicare is huge and growing. Added with Social Security, the sum constitudes about 50% of the Federal budget.
I often write about the changing family structure in America and highlight that now 40% of all American newborns are to unmarried mothers. In the nuclear family, grandparents were ejected from the family home while today biological fathers are not found in the family home.
Families once were very big as parents used children for support, families got smaller in the industrial age and along came the nuclear family after WWII that expelled the grandparents to retirement homes where Social Security and Medicare funded the grandparents until death.
Demo Memo reminds that Medicare was a significant part of taking elderly grandparents out of the family home into independent 'golden years' rather than improverished death spirals.
Another gem from Demo Memo:
===============================================
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Who Needs Medicare?
A history lesson: Before Medicare came to the rescue in 1965, the poverty rate of Americans aged 65 or older was as high as 35.2 percent. Today, the poverty rate of the elderly is just 8.9 percent thanks to Medicare.
Before Medicare, few older Americans had health insurance because it was unaffordable. When they inevitably became ill, they spent down their savings to pay their medical bills, driving many into poverty--and that was before health care costs went through the roof. Research shows that net worth falls among adults whose parents do not have health insurance. Why is that? Because those children are not going to stand idly by while their parents get sick and die without medical care. So they spend down their savings to save mom and dad. And so on, and so on.
Who needs Medicare? Asked and answered.
demomemo.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-needs-medicare.html