General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy is it that every time we get a COLA increase, we also get an increase in Medicare premium charges?
This was a rhetorical question. I already know the answer.
Shermann
(7,489 posts)In reality it doesn't keep up with the average inflation felt by seniors. A better index to use would be the R-CPI-E (Consumer Price Index for Americans 62 years of age and older).
Mopar151
(10,014 posts)Especially for seniors.
MichMan
(12,002 posts)Shermann
(7,489 posts)In some ways these indexes are good indicators of things like credit card rates that affect everybody equally. But with consumer prices, these indexes average out a large basket of different items. One may have exposure to one outlier like a prescription drug that is way above the average.
Also, those on fixed incomes may not benefit as much from falling inflation. If their income hasn't been adjusting for inflation, back-to-back high inflation years will take a bite out that they never get back.
One of the few winners is the fixed-rate loan borrower.
NCDem47
(2,257 posts)Sigh.
Bmoboy
(279 posts)A doctor once said smoking causes enough early deaths to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent..
Providing adequate affordable healthcare keeps people alive longer and costs money.
CrispyQ
(36,567 posts)Same with the way a lot of people treat old people, like they should move on & get out of the way. Were we always this way or did our consumerist, throw-away culture make it worse?
The actuaries just look at numbers, not people or their pain.
DFW
(54,506 posts)Both governments took so long to enact laws to protect non-smokers and discourage young people from starting for one simple reason: smokers as a statistical group died off much earlier than non-smokers, and thus were much less of a burden on the countrys health services. Lots of French and Germans dying of smoking-related diseases in their fifties and sixties meant the government had an easier time paying for treatment for the survivors. There were no protections for non-smokers at all here thirty years ago. Planes stank. Trains stank. Restaurants stank. Some cafés were so full of smoke, I called them Café Auschwitz, not giving a damn about the dirty looks I got. I couldnt take my children there, and they didnt want to go.
Friends who couldnt or wouldnt shake nicotine addiction would always mention that one relative or acquaintance who smoked 14,000 cigarettes a year (2 packs a day), and lived to the age of 98. We would always come back with the one guy who could walk across the Autobahn at rush hour blindfolded and not get a scratchunlike the other thousand people who tried it and became instant roadkill.
My wife was the rare German who never smoked. Many of her friends did but have quit. Her parents generation all smoked except for her mom. Her mom, now 96, is the only one still alive, and the government isnt even paying for most of her current care. I am. A health minister here is a bureaucrat. Bureaucrats hate complications. A population costing more in health care than is in the countrys health care budget is a complication. Their life is made easier when a good portion of their population dies early.
gab13by13
(21,508 posts)why don't they use a better cost of living formula?
dutch777
(3,062 posts)Ferrets are Cool
(21,117 posts)Igel
(35,390 posts)Because the US federal income tax system is progressive. Not as progressive as some would like, but more than others want. It's an unstable compromise.
Goonch
(3,623 posts)Patton French
(801 posts)Biophilic
(3,736 posts)Ticks me off every time, even though I know its going to happen. So, yeah, every year a little deeper in the hole.
mitch96
(13,947 posts)Or in other words a pass thru to the medical industrial complex as I see it...
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