Mav wrote: "First of all it isn't hidden, it right there on my insurance statement I get for every time I see the doctor. Secondly providers do take losses on gov't paid patients and this is the reason for the silly billing."
Mav, I did my best to make it clear that it was only a suspicion of mine that medical charges to the patient, what the patient sees, were heavily discounted by arrangement with the provider and that insurers remitted less than the amount printed on the patients' statement, without informing the patient. (To put it in a less delicate way, I'm suggesting that private insurers may be misleading you with regard to what was actually remitted to the provider, and that your statement from the insurer may not tell the whole story.)
Also, Mav wrote:"[Piezoe] spouts ideas easily shown incorrect like the military budet [sic] is larger than entitlements."
This is incorrect, Mav. I never said that, nor would I. What I did say is that the deficits are largely due to discretionary spending, not entitlements. This is correct, of course, because its been the money in the entitlement trusts that's been borrowed and used to pay for excesses in the discretionary budget! In the main, the amounts collected (separately, by the way) for entitlement payments have been calculated by actuaries and are intended to balance, over time, entitlement expenditures. (Not to suggest that these amounts don't have to be adjusted from time to time, as now, to account for changing demographics. And also not to suggest that congress has always attended to their fiduciary responsibility to see that the entitlement trusts remain fiscally sound. The recent example of the medicare drug benefit being enacted without making the necessary adjustment in medicare tax is a case in point.)
In summary, the source of deficits, to a major extent is arising in the discretionary budget, and not the entitlement budget. The trusts of the entitlement programs have ironically served as an indirect source of funding for the discretionary budget. Since military spending is the major component of the discretionary budget, it will have to be targeted.
The false argument that the Republicans are using to blame entitlements for deficits has to do, i'm sure, more with political philosophy than any thing else, but the American voter is not known for deep philosophical thought. Thus those philosophically opposed to entitlement programs are using politically-better-selling gee whiz numbers based on the calculation of future obligations to these programs. When these numbers are projected out ten and twenty years hence they sound absolutely gigantic , and they are naturally, because you are talking about the medicare costs and pension costs of a nation of 300 million plus people. But surprisingly, if you make timely adjustments to the contribution rates into these programs now, and don't put them off, these future obligations can be met except for one, and that is medical cost! Medical costs, for years, have been rising much faster than the inflation rate. Obviously this is not sustainable and something must be done about it.
The other real concern is that the congress has borrowed heavily from the Social Security Trust Fund, which currently has an accumulated surplus of about 3 trillion dollars. Instead of investing the borrowed money, however, much of it was spent on wasting assets, i.e., military adventurism, a failed drug policy, ineffective homeland security spending, CIA, etc. In my personal opinion, much of this spending is motivated by political expediency and irrational fear, originating in special interest groups.
Going forward the Social Security administration will need to start redeeming the bonds in the Trust, but the Treasury can not redeem them without more borrowing, and the Treasury won't be able to borrow from the Trust anymore. And that, boys and girls, will make it quite difficult for the U.S. to go on spending 4K$/ per capita per year on military expenditures as they have been. (Germany spends about $300!) Obviously those absurd military expenditures can't be sustained. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that that's true.
Because of this problem, and the lack of political will to make deep cuts in the discretionary budget, you are going to see the entitlement programs incorrectly and unfairly targeted, because that's where the money is. But the targeting will be largely covert rather than overt, because to target these program directly would be political suicide. The Republicans may learn this lesson next November, unless they moderate their rhetoric. No politician who openly proposes cuts in entitlements is electable. What is going to happen is that medicare payout will very likely be adjusted down, and it is virtually certain that Social Security payout will be "adjusted" in some way that will have the effect of slowing the rate at which the Trust needs to redeem its bonds. The adjustment will not be especially transparent. That much I'm also certain of.
Like you, Mav, I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. But please do me one small favor and read a little more carefully what i have written before responding. Thanks.
