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Viva Presidente Catpewko!Viva Presidente Catpewko!

2005-01-28 - 10:31 a.m.
Alrighty, boxx9000 asked me to add my plans for Healthcare and Social Security. Some of you will have a problem with this stuff I'm sure,
but I am a smoker, a drinker and I love donuts and french fries, so it hurts me too :>

Healthcare

Prevention is always better (and cheaper) than cure. Early detection is a good way to prevent complications down the road.

Leading cause of death: Heart disease
Leading causes of heart disease: Smoking and Obesity

Cost to the US: $300 billion in 2001
Screening reduces this by 10% ($30 billion)

1) Smoking

You get a Smoking License, and it is renewed annually by Heart Disease screeners. Cost to administer program, $6.5 billion.

20.5 billion packs of cigarettes bought in 2003
At a cost of $3/pack, thats $61.5 billion.
Program is paid for by 30 cent screening tax.

Health cost savings $30 billion

Remember, I'm running the country and I don't have to give a crap what tobacco industry lobbyists say (unless they say 'we have the negatives and the names of the sheep involved').


2) Obesity

10% federal sales tax on bad foods. The three worst foods are:

1) Donuts
2) French Fries
3) Soda

With total US annual sales of $36 billion, this generates $3.6 billion in additional tax revenue.

Alcohol is another health risk. Americans drink the equivalent of 500 million gallons of pure alcohol each year,
spending $116 billion. 10% federal sales tax generates $11.6 billion

Combining all the above, we have an additional $48 billion

This money would be used to pay for medical benefits for the 20 million children in this country who have no insurance.

There are also 20 million working adults who fall outside the state Medicaid programs, but with decreased tax rates
I would expect them to be able to make up their own shortfall. Some people just don't want to get health insurance.
But that is irresponsible for children, hence the above program.

Social Security


In 2003 there was $759 billion outgoing on all of social security & medicare.

SSI Tax is currently set at 6.2% (employee and employer), but is capped at $87,900 per year.
However, 15.1 million people make more than $100K per year.
Remove the cap and you generate an additional $68 billion per year.

The funds then increase $68 billion annually, but that is before interest and additional impacts such as not reducing assets as is beginning to happen with
the Hospital Insurance Trust fund.

In essence, the increase adds between 10 and 20 years to the funds life expectancy.
However, the number of people earning more than $100K per year will increase by 2007
to 63 percent.

This provides a further bump of about another $100 billion to the fund.
Now we're looking at an additional 25-35 years of survivability.

KEY DATES FOR THE TRUST FUNDS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OASI . DI OASDI .HI
First year outgo exceeds income including interest .. 2029 2017 2028 2010
Year trust fund assets are exhausted. . . . . . . . . 2044 2029 2042 2019

So we move from 2028 and 2010 to 2053 and 2025 or maybe 10 years more than that.
More long term predictions than that are pretty meaningless until we come up with
a better geo-political model. Which puts us back to Education discussed in the previous entry.

Tomorrow: Crimes & Punishment.

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