Save Medicare for future generations

People often say, I paid into Medicare all my working life, and I have earned the benefit of health care in my old age. Well, yes, we have all paid in. However, I just saw on TV that the average family paid in $119,000 over their working years but uses $357,000 for care. Can you see the problem? We did not pay in enough.

Of course this is typical of anything run by the government. And it’s why the government should not be trusted to run something like this, or just about anything for that matter.

But maybe here’s the problem. The Social Security tax is 12.4 percent split between employees and employers. The Medicare tax is 2.9 percent split the same way. See the problem?

Social Security currently has a surplus of over $2 trillion, and Medicare has tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities which are on the verge of bankrupting the entire country. One solution just might be to raise the Medicare tax gradually until things get back in balance. Is that too complicated?

Bill Hartman

Barrington