ilovedessert
Member
Registered: Jan 2003
Location:
Posts: 37 |
1. soc sec was never designed to be solely self supporting, orginally it was supposed to draw $ from the general budget years ago. Congress raised fica taxes a number of times to continue soc sec from having to draw from public coffers.
The largest of these raises was done during the Carter admistration. This was done because as the baby boomers (of which I am one, I am 47, but more about that in a min.).
Carter supported the idea and I did thena and still do. The idea was to give a 20 some odd year to accumulate extra funds so that when the baby boomers, the largest one time group to be approching soc sec age.
Later retirement age was raised gradually from 65 to 67. If you did not reach 65 by 2000, starting back to the Reagan admstrations time until 2000, your retirement age was gradually and fractionally increased toward 67, ie if you would have turned 60 in year 2000, your retirment would have been a few months after your 65th birthday, which each successive year worth of recpients would have another monthor a few weeks added to it, until the retirement age of 67 was reached. Thereafter all recpients who applied for full (100%), soc would be age 67.
The early reirement age of 62m was also to be gradually increased by the same formula and I beleive it was to go to age 64, when you could first get soc sec but at 80% of what your age 67 rate would be.
Medicare rates were increased as well, 1st by eliminating the cap on medicare on income over a certain ammount. I beleive it was 1.6 or 1.8% of your 1st 100,000 in annual income and then nothing after $100,000. per anum.
That was first changed to all money under and over $100,000 were taxed by the same percentage. (I think that was Crater's proposal as well, but it is a long time ago, so I maybe wrong about the timeng of it).
Later Reagan, gradually increased medicare ages (was age 65 or 24 to 5 months after you are disabled. (5 moths of all disability claims are eaten by the claimant, then 24 moths after your first soc sec diability check you get the same medicare as retireees. However a great many get that benifit retroactively since disabilty claims can take up to more than the 5 months elimation period and the first 24 months, (as did mine, my fiels was lost and soc sec did not discover it for 8.5 mothsn and then took3.5 to recosntrcut the file. My soc sec disablity claim took 29 months, of which i had no income at all and then when i was awarded it, it was during the first of newt's government shut down and while technically i was eliagable for meidcare it took 3 moths due to the second of newt's shut down. In fact i had to pay $444.44 x 3 the week before iwas told i won my soc sec dis claim form private med ins, of whcih i had no income at all. evetaully i was awarded medicare retoatively and was refunded the $444.44 x 3 back 9 months after i paid it!).
Reagan also changed soc and medicare to round down. for example my soc sec orginal disability figure incuded the amount of .84 cents. that was rounded out to the lower $ ammount, each raise we get is based on the lower figure and each new raise is lowered down to the nearest dollar.
In addition he rounded up as well. Medicare rates during some of the following increase came to .70 cents which was rounded up to the nearest $.
This rounding up and down adds up across the millions of retirees and the 1.5 million of us who get soc sec disablity.
all of carter's fgures turned out to be amazingly accurate and it owuld have been fine of all of the boomers who will file for soc and medicare.
The problem is that reagan spent moeny like a drunken sailor and also promised to balance the budget at the same time. While he sucessfully blaming congress for spending all fo that money in actuallity he asked for way more than they sepnt and only once out of all of regean's budet did they spend more than reagan asked for and my a small ammount.
Thus the huge deficit was created. Eventally the republican congres balanced the budget in part by taking 138 BILLION out of medicare's coffers. Thsi caused the a cap in medicare's payments to providers based by zip code, (aech county in the entire country gets adifferent ammounbt), in fact where i live in fla, m,y county gets $255 a month less per month for providers than does the next one 16 miles away.
This rate is also is waht is used to calcvulate the fees, if any for medicare hmo's if any in the county, if there is not one in your county you are out of luck as you cannot go to another county.
So my medicare hmo closed leaving ,me to find other ways for covering my $1200 A MONTH RX bill!
SO if you are unhappy of the plight of soc sec and medicare you apply just remember that Reagan and the republicans did this to us, at the time I suspected he was not of his right mind and he wasn't
For better or worse, I beleive supply side cannot work as it seems to me that only the rich get the tax breaks. Out of W's orgianl tax cuts across 10 year only 75% of us will ever see another cut, the percentage of people not gettting a cut is far higher here as the incomes are so much lower here in fla.
So once agian, we are told you can get something for nothing and congress is eating it up, while they get richer.
BTWthey gave themselves a cost of livinga and a another raise the COLA was more than twice the soc raise that I got!
So think about it before you vote!
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04-10-2003 04:34 AM
to accuse GWB of having. And FTR: I don't go in for the oil or 21st-Century Crusade theories either. Having said all this, I sincerely believe the war is Very Far from being over. There's still a lot left to do.
well now
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