Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security - part one

This past week has provided more than sufficient evidence that there is a fundamental disconnect between the two political parties and specifically their presumptive nominees on the issue of funding Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

For reasons that escape the majority of the electorate, there is being presented two absolutely diametrically opposed realities of the financial health of these programs, both short term and for the future, despite the universally bipartisan accepted  truth that all of the programs are facing imminent financial distress.

President Obama claims that he has secured the future for the foreseeable future without changing the benefits provided for anyone.

Mr. Romney and Representative Ryan are presenting that their vision includes not changing it for today’s’ recipients, but if enacted, their policies will provide secure benefit options for all future recipients.

To clarify – both candidates claim that their respective solutions leave the present unaffected but the future secure and that their opponents are intent on throwing the elderly off of cliffs, under buses and generally leaving them destitute in the street.

This is not possible; both versions cannot be true.

One party is obfuscating the facts to a much greater degree than the other.

In short, someone is lying to the American electorate.

The principle charge against the President is that he has taken some seven hundred billion dollars from Medicare to fund the needs of the Affordable care Act, principally we are told by employing the granddaddy of all canards – “cutting waste fraud and abuse”.

The fact is that many a federal budget has been created by promising revenue from that particular source: this nation currently has a fourteen billion dollar debt with expectations of adding to that debt by one trillion dollars a year for the foreseeable future.

There cannot have been sufficient amounts of ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ in the history of man to provide sufficient revenue to address that level of fiduciary malfeasance.

Mr. Romney and congressman Ryan are presenting a scenario wherein those currently in the Social Security and Medicare programs will remain unencumbered by any changes, for they and those over the age of 55 are exempt from their plan. Those Americans aged 54 and under will have the option to remain in the programs as they exist or choose from a new slate of options, currently proposed to include the health care options afforded to all government employees. Their plan also calls for the repeal of the Affordable care Act and to return the seven hundred plus billions of dollars to Medicare that the President has accounted for in his plan.

As these two opposing concepts cannot coexist as a solution to the pressing issues, the Madison Conservative will attempt to provide factual context for both plans in upcoming blog posts.

As a matter of stated principle, the Madison Conservative is a proponent of smaller government, in the model envisioned for America by the framers and the founders, so it can be anticipated that there will be an objection based upon the supposition that ours will be a biased presentation of the two plans.

It is our intent to provide as much factual information as possible before providing an assessment of which plans adheres to the American sensibility of  freedom.