Reply #23: What waste and what cost of what program? [View All]

MediCare was the most efficient program that has been run in this nation.

It has been managed for many decades for less than a five percent management charge.

Yes, there are fraudsters and there are hucksters. As with all programs. (Funny how we start harping about MediCare fraud, but not about the Seventy Billion dollars unaccounted for over in our War on Afghanistan. And some people fear much of this money has ended up in the hands of those we are purportedly fighting there!)

Some people here on DU are applauding the fact that according to Obama, MediCare cuts will occur in terms of payments to doctors, and not price increases to seniors. But as someone who spent most o f the nineties out there helping seniors - doctors doing gerontology were already abandoning their practices back then, due to the fact that they were being under paid.

As for Social Security, it is its own Fund. It has nothing to do with the Federal budget. Although pundits like Bill Maher and Blue Dog Dems are so excited about their neat little pie chart analyses of how MediCare and Social Security are a
whopping one third of the budget. But that is hog wash. Social Security is its own fund, it has a two point something TRILLION dollar surplus and it is doing just fine.

Now we need to keep Washington DC Power Players for getting their cling-y hands all over it!