Medicare D

Medicare is a troubled system that needs to be reinvigorated.

The future of Medicare is very much in doubt these days. Seniors currently enrolled in the Medicare program are at least assured of their current ability to remain active in the program, but future generations are worried that funds for the program will run out, and the health care that their parents and grandparents received won't be available to them because funds are rapidly depleting. The youth of today are understandably troubled by these fears, not only because they have a vested interested in their own health coverage, but because of the taxes they pay into the Medicare system. Payroll taxes currently levied by the United States government are the main source of operating funds for the Medicare program, as Medicare is a publicly funded, governmentally run program. The youth of today don't believe its at all fair that they should pay into a system that will leave them high and dry when it comes time for them to collect Medicare benefits. They obviously care deeply for their elders, and want them to be happy and insured in the twilight of their lives, but at the same time they are concerned for their own financial well being. As the economy continues to spiral downward into a deepening recessions, people tend to worry not only about the current state of their finances, but the future state of their finances as well. As health care costs in the United States continue to rise, health insurance premiums rise as well. Thus, each year a larger and larger percentage of a person's paycheck is devoted to paying for health insurance, if they can even afford it all. At the same time, jobs are becoming more and more scarce as companies downsize and some even go bankrupt trying to stave off the growing threat of economic disaster. Thus, more people are hunting for jobs, which drives down wages. So there are fewer jobs that have a lower pay. And health insurance costs continue to rise. So while Medicare tries to stay afloat to keep elderly Americans over the age of sixty five healthy and insured, the taxes the support the program are in danger of dwindling to an unmanageable level, if not disappearing completely.

Because Medicare D is such a large scale program, requiring a budget of billions of taxpayer dollars, there is of course a considerable risk of fraud and waste. Recent estimates put the yearly amount of taxpayer dollars lost to fraud, committed by governmental agencies and on the beneficiary side, and waste, often in the administrative sector, in the billions of dollars. The fraud and waste inherent in the Medicare system is often a lightning rod for critics who urge swift and radical reform in the program. Critics also call into question the quality of services rendered to Medicare beneficiaries, insinuating that Medicare contractors often don't have the best interests of the beneficiaries at heart, and more concerned with appeasing the Medicare bureaucracy in order to get paid than they are with providing quality medical care the participants in the medical program.

Summary: While Medicare is a necessary program, to provide health insurance to seniors, changes must be made to ensure its continued existence.