Exposing Looney Left Lie 13: We Seniors Pay For Our Medicare

One of the favorite lying left¹ deceptions about Medicare is that we seniors do not pay for our health care costs.

The above illustration² explains how Medicare funds flow from we seniors to our providers

• facilitated by the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration and
• administered by about 50 insurance companies in the United States, depending on whether Part A or Part B fee for service payments are involved or Part C capitated fees or a Part D vouchers are used.

If you were born in the 1940s -- which is the vast majority of people now entering Medicare or who have entered Medicare in the last few years -- you pay your own way³. Dont' let the lying left tell you otherwise.

¹I hear this lie about seniors not paying their own way from the right as well. Not as often but I think we have all kinds of historical evidence this century about the stupidity of Republicans. No matter who says it, the claim is not true concerning those of us who have fully been "under Medicare" since the program began in 1965.

²My one deviation from illustrating the flow purely in the image is that the "Medicare income tax contribution" shown in the upper right corner does flow through the General Fund. There is no literal "Medicare income tax contribution" but instead I am referring to the percentage of your income tax payment that goes into the Part B Trust Fund via the General Fund. In a forensic accounting sense, the General Fund gets involved only if the sum of all other specific or effective earmarked contributions (such as that percentage of income taxes or the specific Medicare payroll tax) exceeds the sum of expenses. That has not happened yet for people born in the 1940s and is unlikely to happen unless a vary large percentage of us live into our late 80s.

³This statement is based on analysis -- as with all similar analysis -- that assumes the "premiums you pay" into Medicare Trust funds for the 40-50 years before you begin drawing benefits from Medicare are invested at a reasonable rate of return the way they would be if a real financial services company -- instead of the inept Federal government bureaucracy -- were involved.