The Deficit

It’s clear to anybody who pays attention that we are heading for a cliff with unsustainable government spending on Health Care, Social Security, Medicare, and Prescription Drugs. Yet we are incapable of doing anything now to make the future less onerous. All the politicians know what the answer is and yet none of them will stick out their necks to solve the problem. We truly are led by people who only care about how they personally are doing now and how they can get reelected. There are no Adams or Jeffersons in today’s government. Just people who care about their personal short term benefits. The solutions are difficult but necessary. Our gap between rich and poor is growing and history shows that it will eventually cause huge problems.

The only solution for the deficit is to reduce the benefits and increase taxes
on the well off. Social security eligibility needs to be based on need and not an
automatic entitlement. I get it every month even though it’s a small portion of my retirement income and if it went away I would do just fine. The health care mess is escalating the costs to unsustainable levels. A single payer plan with a focus on keeping people healthy instead of paying to fix their problems would save big time. A good example is the Kaiser HMO. They don’t get paid when a patient comes in and they can charge them for a procedure. They make money when they keep you healthy so they have a much more streamlined process with phone consulting, email, consolidated records for all the physicians to access, etc.