https://www.zerohedge.com/political/within-10-years-interest-and-medicare-will-each-cost-16-trillion-year

"This statement is true. According to the Congressional Budget Office's latest baseline, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, spending on interest is projected to total $870 billion, while spending on national defense will total $822 billion. This has never been the case before, going back to at least 1940.

Net interest spending nearly doubled from FY 2020 to 2023, rising from $345 billion to $659 billion. As a share of the economy, interest grew from 1.6 percent of GDP in 2020 to 2.4 percent in 2023. This year, interest is projected to rise to 3.1 percent of GDP and will exceed its record 3.2 percent set in 1991 in 2025.

In addition to breaching defense spending, interest costs are expected to exceed Medicare spending this year, making interest on the national debt the second largest line item in the FY 2024 federal budget, behind only Social Security."

Of course, the way we got to the place where interest expenses are this high is by overspending on everything else (most recently, insane in the Ukraine).

Meanwhile, our politicians...

Unless you tackle entitlements, the clock will just keep ticking.

I don't see it as so much of an issue. People need to pay for health care either in insurance premiums, or taxes. I would be more concerned with making sure it is paid for with revenue.

Of course the answer is to keep giving money away to other countries instead of reduce our spending.....

ATL Bear said:

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Unless you tackle entitlements, the clock will just keep ticking.

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And will eventually set off the bomb.

cowboycwr said:

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Of course the answer is to keep giving money away to other countries instead of reduce our spending.....

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I'm not sure 1% of our budget is the problem here...

ron.reagan said:

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cowboycwr said:

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Of course the answer is to keep giving money away to other countries instead of reduce our spending.....

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I'm not sure 1% of our budget is the problem here...

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But that is the problem every time a discussion of reducing spending seems to happen. Both on here on in Congress. If each individual cut does not seem to equal 20% or more of the budget or deficit then it seems to be dismissed.

But any amount adds up. That does not mean we go around looking how to cut $1,000 here and 10,000 there but cutting several hundred million here and a billion there will eventually add up to the amount we need- it just may mean cuts across 100 or 500 programs but we can't realistically expect to fix the budget with one or two cuts.

GrowlTowel said:

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Porteroso said:

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I don't see it as so much of an issue. People need to pay for health care either in insurance premiums, or taxes. I would be more concerned with making sure it is paid for with revenue.

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A majority pay neither - therein lies the problem.

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Majority? Really, they pay nothing? I doubt it.

Porteroso said:

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GrowlTowel said:

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Porteroso said:

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I don't see it as so much of an issue. People need to pay for health care either in insurance premiums, or taxes. I would be more concerned with making sure it is paid for with revenue.

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A majority pay neither - therein lies the problem.

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Majority? Really, they pay nothing? I doubt it.

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Well, we know that 50% of population does not pay income taxes so we can start there. If we assume a population of 330 million, do you believe more than 165 million people are paying for health insurance?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13116565/DC-mom-miami-vacation-taxpayer-benefits.html

Porteroso said:

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GrowlTowel said:

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Porteroso said:

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I don't see it as so much of an issue. People need to pay for health care either in insurance premiums, or taxes. I would be more concerned with making sure it is paid for with revenue.

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A majority pay neither - therein lies the problem.

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Majority? Really, they pay nothing? I doubt it.

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60% paid nothing in 2020, 57% paid nothing in 2021, 40.1% paid nothing in 2022

GrowlTowel said:

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Porteroso said:

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GrowlTowel said:

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Porteroso said:

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I don't see it as so much of an issue. People need to pay for health care either in insurance premiums, or taxes. I would be more concerned with making sure it is paid for with revenue.

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A majority pay neither - therein lies the problem.

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Majority? Really, they pay nothing? I doubt it.

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Well, we know that 50% of population does not pay income taxes so we can start there. If we assume a population of 330 million, do you believe more than 165 million people are paying for health insurance?

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The majority are sponsored through an employer, so yes, they absolutely are paying for it.

J.R. said:

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Interesting topic. I have done a lot of research on our insurance system as I'm self insured. We are the only industrialized country in the world where business subsidizes employee healthcare. This came about during WW2 when we couldn't find enough factory workers to work to assemble munitions for the war. As such, companies started offering insurance to get people to work in the factories and it stuck till this day. That is a hell of a deal for people who work for companies who can afford to subsidize insurance. Many smaller companies cannot afford to offer that benefit.

For those who have to pay out of pocket, it's brutal and I mean brutal. I do think that the system needs retooled. I think everyone should pay out of their pockets as that is the only way to reduce costs. Once people are paying out of pocket, they are much more focused on cost and not nearly as likely just to pay $10 for a script, not know the real cost of that scrip is $150. There could be some tax treatments for that. The system is broken. Just look at the profits of the big insurance companies. My ex had to have a procedure years ago that was going to have to pay out of pocket for. Estimate was $50K, so I told the doc, hey I'm paying out of pocket and he said "oh I can do it for $25K as they don't have to deal with the insurance companies.

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This is right on. We do not even know what the true cost of our own medical care is.

J.R. said:

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Interesting topic. I have done a lot of research on our insurance system as I'm self insured. We are the only industrialized country in the world where business subsidizes employee healthcare. This came about during WW2 when we couldn't find enough factory workers to work to assemble munitions for the war. As such, companies started offering insurance to get people to work in the factories and it stuck till this day. That is a hell of a deal for people who work for companies who can afford to subsidize insurance. Many smaller companies cannot afford to offer that benefit.

For those who have to pay out of pocket, it's brutal and I mean brutal. I do think that the system needs retooled. I think everyone should pay out of their pockets as that is the only way to reduce costs. Once people are paying out of pocket, they are much more focused on cost and not nearly as likely just to pay $10 for a script, not know the real cost of that scrip is $150. There could be some tax treatments for that. The system is broken. Just look at the profits of the big insurance companies. My ex had to have a procedure years ago that was going to have to pay out of pocket for. Estimate was $50K, so I told the doc, hey I'm paying out of pocket and he said "oh I can do it for $25K as they don't have to deal with the insurance companies.

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That is a good point.

I would also add that the costs have gone up due to inflation of "specialists". You need one person to take an x-ray, one person to read it and one person to then tell the patient.

Yet in smaller hospitals, vet offices, dentists, other countries, one person can do all 3 of those jobs.

And that is just one example of costs being inflated

Guy Noir said:

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J.R. said:

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Interesting topic. I have done a lot of research on our insurance system as I'm self insured. We are the only industrialized country in the world where business subsidizes employee healthcare. This came about during WW2 when we couldn't find enough factory workers to work to assemble munitions for the war. As such, companies started offering insurance to get people to work in the factories and it stuck till this day. That is a hell of a deal for people who work for companies who can afford to subsidize insurance. Many smaller companies cannot afford to offer that benefit.

For those who have to pay out of pocket, it's brutal and I mean brutal. I do think that the system needs retooled. I think everyone should pay out of their pockets as that is the only way to reduce costs. Once people are paying out of pocket, they are much more focused on cost and not nearly as likely just to pay $10 for a script, not know the real cost of that scrip is $150. There could be some tax treatments for that. The system is broken. Just look at the profits of the big insurance companies. My ex had to have a procedure years ago that was going to have to pay out of pocket for. Estimate was $50K, so I told the doc, hey I'm paying out of pocket and he said "oh I can do it for $25K as they don't have to deal with the insurance companies.

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This is right on. We do not even know what the true cost of our own medical care is.

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Had lunch with a friend today, he said that Blue Cross, Aetna, and others are paying him almost half of what they paid 20 years ago for the same treatment codes.

The cost to run a single dr clinic is about 60k a month now, it was about 35k a month 20 years ago.

Fox Business reports that cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is "on the table" for Republicans pic.twitter.com/ETUjJHbt3h

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 5, 2024

J.R. said:

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Interesting topic. I have done a lot of research on our insurance system as I'm self insured. We are the only industrialized country in the world where business subsidizes employee healthcare. This came about during WW2 when we couldn't find enough factory workers to work to assemble munitions for the war. As such, companies started offering insurance to get people to work in the factories and it stuck till this day. That is a hell of a deal for people who work for companies who can afford to subsidize insurance. Many smaller companies cannot afford to offer that benefit.

For those who have to pay out of pocket, it's brutal and I mean brutal. I do think that the system needs retooled. I think everyone should pay out of their pockets as that is the only way to reduce costs. Once people are paying out of pocket, they are much more focused on cost and not nearly as likely just to pay $10 for a script, not know the real cost of that scrip is $150. There could be some tax treatments for that. The system is broken. Just look at the profits of the big insurance companies. My ex had to have a procedure years ago that was going to have to pay out of pocket for. Estimate was $50K, so I told the doc, hey I'm paying out of pocket and he said "oh I can do it for $25K as they don't have to deal with the insurance companies.

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Yes, it is brutal for individuals and small businesses. I've had many kind-natured arguments with my non-entrepreneurial friends on this topic. The system "feels" broken for most Americans because it only works well for those that are part of private group insurance.

One of the reasons you spelled out, individuals aren't paying out of pocket. The insurance companies are paying, and by doing so, they have artificially inflated the price of services and made it so practically EVERYONE has to have insurance or risk bankruptcy. The insurance companies are incentivized to keep the prices high enough to keep the free market from working at the individual level. They'll profit when the costs are more than fully passed on to their customers and society. Don't have to worry about too much competition because the barriers to entry are so strong. Additionally, add to all that the government backing, the shortage of physicians, lawsuits, etc. There is no way prices will fall unless there is a significant shift somewhere. So it will continue to be brutal for the individual, not going to get better any time soon sadly.

Not saying government is the answer, only that it will be part of the answer.

Last, our high-cost health insurance situation in America is actually anti-entrepreneurial. It makes it so that people are afraid to start businesses or can't hire good talent. This works well for established businesses of course, but limits those willing to take risks. Not enough to risk being poor, you also have to risk your family's health.