I'm Old! Gimme Gimme Gimme!
Urban Institute Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle thanks you for funding his medical care absent even the semblance of means testing:
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have once again expanded the services provided under Medicare…As a baby boomer nearing Medicare eligibility, I'm hoping to benefit from some of these many new treatments promising a longer life and a healthier old age.
Who will pay for my additional benefits? Current law suggests you—at least, if you are in your prime working years. I'll pay a premium in retirement that covers perhaps one-eighth of the insurance value of my Medicare and potential Medicaid long-term care benefits. Benefits now are so extensive, especially relative to past Medicare taxes, that most of us baby boomers are already scheduled to reap huge transfers from you who are younger. A typical couple retiring in 2020, for instance, will have paid about $100,000 in lifetime Medicare taxes (much less if we don't credit them with interest on their past contributions). For that price, this couple is scheduled to receive about $500,000 in lifetime Medicare benefits over and above the premiums it additionally pays in retirement.
…you should know that, like most of my generation, I'm not poor and am quite capable of work. True, many capable and relatively young retirees look poorer because they stop working—as you would if you stopped working—but, even then, the poverty rate of retirees today is well below that of children.
Via Kip Esquire.
My take, circa 2003, here.
