Medicare is Going Broke, So Let's Give it to Everyone

Michele Bachmann | October 22, 2009 4:24 PM

The Treasury Department has reported that America faces a $43 trillion unfunded obligation in Social Security and Medicare benefits with 77 million retiring baby boomers and rising health care costs.

According to the CBO, paying for the promised benefits will eventually force Congress to impose a 63% income tax on the middle class and an 88% tax on the “wealthy.”

Yet, even as we try to figure out how to meet our current obligations, the President wants to create an additional health care entitlement and further increase spending elsewhere in the budget.

The Social Security trust fund will be exhausted by 2037, and the Medicare hospital trust fund will become insolvent by 2017 according to a report by the trustees of the two programs.

In fact, next year – 2010 – Social Security’s costs will exceed it’s income.
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Medicare has an unfunded liability of $36 trillion over the next 75 years, or about $317,000 per U.S. household, and in just the next 5 years, by 2013, Medicare’s unfunded liability is projected to grow by 33 percent, to $48 trillion – or about $412,402 per household.

When Social Security and Medicare are taken together,

the total unfunded liability is $40 trillion, or about $353,000 per household. By 2013, that total will grow to $54 trillion, or $474,077 per household.

So let me ask you this: When we can't afford the public health plan we have already, does it make sense to expand it? That’s exactly what the Democrats want to do with their health care overhaul. The public option by another name is just “Medicare for All.”

The system is already broken, yet they want to compound the problem. With math like this, it’s no wonder we have a debt nearing $12 trillion and our country is running record deficits. This is real money we’re talking about here, and real people’s futures. Let’s get serious.