There was a time if the government left the funds alone over the years that all the Social Security money if untouched would of been able to take care of it. 

My doctor does not order unnecessiary test.  Medicare is a good program and should stay in tack with proper monitoring.  The doctors have nothing to gain when ordering test because the money goes to the hospital of facility.  Leave medicare alone and stop bailing out failing businesses.

Maybe if health insurance companies we reformed totally we’d wouldn’t be in this presumed fix.

Then Joan, am I to assume that you don’t support any further government sponsored health care plans? If the one we have is going to bankrupt us, then how can we afford to add another?

hmmm…. I am so very glad that you can afford private health insurance. How lucky you are to not have been born with a birth defect like Spina Bifida Myelomeningocele, as was my mother. She was born in September 1928 and survived until 2 years ago. She, of course, wasn’t allow to attend the public schools system because she was considered a ‘crippled’. In 1928 being trapped in a malformed body equated mental deficiency to the majority of Americans. Everything she did learn she learned from her mother and sisters. She started working at the age of 20 and she continued working until she was well along in her 50’s. Then she had to retire and guess what, both disability and medicare refused her. Yup, that is right! Here was a woman so insistant that the culture she lived in consider her a whole human being that she spent her productive adult years living by their standards and when her body finally failed she had to fight that same culture in order to not take her wheelchair and live under some bridge. She paided her taxed and contributed to charities all her working life, yet when she needed help the government program Medicare told her she would have to wait until she 65. 

You are either a cruel hearted person or you don’t understand what changes homo-sapiens into humans is compassion and empathy.

Medicare is a good and neccessary program, but, it does need a make-over. It needs a re-structuring and a system where abuse is not tolerated by anyone. For one thing, waste built into the system. I just reiceved my card for basic medicare. It needs someone with common sense to write ir over. I had to call the number on the info for an explanation of a sentence, spoke to a very nice woman, and she explained it to me. She said "I am paraphrasing" about 3 times and I finally said to her, "then this instruction should be written in Paraphrase".  I mailed in the portion I thought they wanted back, but, forgot to send in one part of the card. I then get a letter saying I needed to send in the whole card, the letter said there was an envelope enclosed. No envelope, no problem. I sent it back. My point is this is a very simple process, but, the government had made as convoluted as possibe. So two letters and one call were made necessary because simple English is a second language to Bureaucrats. Overhaul is definitely needed. Medicare  works but, could absolutely be made  to work better.

I’m looking at joining the great ranks of Medicare recipients in a little more than a year, and frankly, I’m dreading it. Not that I disagree with the principle behind it. Not at all! Providing health coverage for older Americans is essential. But the red tape, the bureaucracy, the gaps big enough to swallow entire families whole - - - no, that is NOT something to look forward to.

And, frankly, since most Americans look forward to living a nice long life (and statistics tell us we have a darn good chance of doing just that) and since we also know that the stuff that happens to our bodies as we grow older is usually pretty major … the prospect of living long enough to incur HUGE Medicare costs in payouts is very real. OK. If we need it, we need it, but I’m not sure the current system isn’t designed to implode under the immense expenses. Medicare should not be so sacrosanct that the parameters of the program are etched in stone. As we struggle toward SOME kind of perspective on national health care, we’d better be thinking very seriously about working on Medicare to make it less of a burden for its subscribers and for taxpayers. I definitely want the safety net of Medicare, and I will undoubtedly NEED it at some point. But It needs plenty of work to ensure that it functions better, and at a more reasonable cost to a nation already struggling economically. When my mother was on Medicare, I remember spending at least one or two Sunday afternoons a month going through the paperwork, making sure the correct forms were filled out back in the pre-computer days, sending out various receipts, and so on. Mom was a sharp cookie always, but even she needed a little help to process everything. We used to wonder how elderly, frail people living alone without a family member or friend to help managed this task. Now, in the age of the computer - well, I still wonder about that.

Joan,how very common of you! What ever happened to "Noblesse oblige".  You got yours so the rest of us should just fend for ourselves?  Perhaps this is not what you meant to convey but it comes across rather cold hearted.

Hi

I am not really too familiar with Medicare.  I have lived in this country for 21 years having moved here from the UK in 1988.  I was always under the impression that we all paid for Medicare from our wages.  Am I right in thinking this??  If so then why has the abuse that Obama was talking about been allowed to happen, someone was obviously asleep at the wheel.  So does this mean it will be fixed soon?  Also what I want to know is if Medicare is in such dire straights and the rumor is that it will soon run out with the influx of the baby boomers, how can Obama take $500b from it to fund his healthcare bill?  Doesn’t that money belong to the people who paid into Medicare?  Am I missing something here?

Scarlett, thanks so much for the reply, it will be interesting to see where this all goes.

If you are not on Medicare then you are not qualfied to answer this question, as you have no idea of the positives re it.