A quote from the New York Times on the Democrats reaching an agreement regarding the public option. This is part of their solution.

Under the agreement, people ages 55 to 64 could “buy in” to Medicare.

Are these guys for real? Medicare is going bankrupt. And their solution is to offer people the “incredible opportunity” to buy into the system. Next thing you know they will be offering all of us a million acres of land underneath which sits a limitless supply of sweet crude oil that a beer tap can find. Come on Harry Reid, you aren’t going to get elected again anyway…do the right thing and do it well. It might be the only time you have ever done it but no better time than the present to start. Your offer of Medicare as a solution to people is not the right thing. Its larceny.

At first, it was baffling that the Democrats kept using a failing system as the cornerstone to build their vaunted health care system around. Now it stinks of vote getting in the future for their party. They realize entitlements like Medicare never go away so once they pass something as inane as the above statement, they now have a larger voting block attached to Medicare. And the Dems are kings and queens of entitlements. What a pathetic process this is becoming.

The facts are Medicare is a Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff could only dream of. It uses the earnings of the younger working population to fund the health care services of the older retired population. This works if there are more workers making good wages than recipients of the benefit. Well we are about to hit a perfect storm for Medicare. The recipients are going to explode with the baby boomers coming into their nest egg years. The work force is shrinking because the generations that followed are smaller in comparison. There is double digit unemployment and so far we are in a jobless recovery. Add to that the Democrat’s plans to cut Medicare by 500 billion dollars over the next 10 years and now their plan to add more people to the system-millions more. All these added individuals will be in age groups which will not reduce premiums because they are not young enough. In fact why would anyone in this age group buy in to Medicare at all since their premiums should be much higher because they will be pooled with older, sicker people. And the size of this pyramid scheme is a doozy…take a deep breath because this number is tough to wrap any head around: 35-90 TRILLION dollars in unfunded liability. That is the scenario these lucky folks are “buying” into. What a deal? A tsunami is brewing off the health care coast.

More patients, more cost, and less providers-physicians are fleeing Medicare now, wait until they get a load of this plan. The Dems are on to some sort of contrarian politicking here. Offer a disaster scenario and see how that flies. Because so far this health care debacle only seems to make sense for the folks who write and read(the same people) on the Left. An endless supply of articles extolling the virtues of how great Medicare is floods the Left Wing media. Either ignorant to its failings or so ideologically blinded they believe anything by the government is a good thing. There all siting around chanting in a Neanderthal baritone, “government good. market bad.” Health care is simply an ideological struggle to these folks and holds no other value than to co-opted into their grand philosophy of how the world should be run-the way they think and that’s it. While Conservatives aren’t always correct either and cling to their ideologies, in the case of health care reform, they have been for the most part spot on; mainly because they have been on the correct side of the doctor-patient relationship.

As an example, a sensible review and take on the pending legislation Phillip Klein in American Spectator has a nice little article. In there is a great quote from one of Obama’s much ballyhooed medical organizations of choice, the Mayo Clinic. Check out their reaction on their Health Policy blog (spot on by the way) which blasts this plan as reckless:

“The current Medicare payment system is financially unsustainable. Any plan to expand Medicare, which is the government’s largest public plan, beyond its current scope does not solve the nation’s health care crisis, but compounds it.”

Mayo went on to predict that, “Expanding this system to persons 55 to 64 years old would ultimately hurt patients by accelerating the financial ruin of hospitals and doctors across the country.” The Mayo Clinic alone, it said, lost $840 million last year under the existing Medicare system.

So after months of “thinking” and “talking”, this is the best the “bright” minds in the Senate could come up with. This is were Harry Reid has led them. To a swindling of the American people all for the ability to move us to government run health care. Well we would be remiss if we didn’t offer a free TBM solution. A better way forward that might just accomplish what the President laid out in his speech on health care: cover more people, reduce costs and keep the quality.

For years they have talked about pushing the Medicare eligibility age back to an older one. While unpopular, this strategy is something that makes sense. People are living longer than when Medicare was first enacted by about 15 years. Many older Americans are working longer. Pushing back the start of the benefit reduces the per patient cost to the system and increases the revenue into the system as these people continue to work and pay into it. If you want to access it earlier then you pay premiums on a sliding scale based on your income, net worth and the age at which you accessed the system. The younger you are, the more costly at first since you will be in the system longer and benefiting from it. You could continue to base Medicare recipient premiums on a sliding scale after eligibility. That of course would mean higher earning individuals would pay more twice…should make Nancy and Harry smile.

It would be great to see a CBO report on the savings to the system per year of age for eligibility Medicare was pushed back. That would be some great data. But nothing about this process is logical or data driven. The word capricious rules the day. As usual, it’s amateur hour on Capitol Hill.