How to stop the revival of Laissez-Faire?

[Vepres]

     You can start by recognizing that there is no chance of any program getting abolished, except maybe Obamacare prior to it starting up in full. People will fight to the death for their precious entitlement programs.

[Vepres]

     You can start by recognizing that there is no chance of any program getting abolished, except maybe Obamacare prior to it starting up in full. People will fight to the death for their precious entitlement programs.

But people are just as willing to fight to the death for other people's precious unsustainble tax levels. We're drowing in Ronald Reagan and W's red ink.

     Which goes back to what wormyguy was saying. The country is a train that's about to derail & nobody in office is willing to fix what is wrong. We'll be seeing progressively more of this insanity until the government finally goes bankrupt & the United States becomes a third-world country. By then it will be too late.

And getting rid of medical coverage for seniors and sending a good number of them into poverty will save this country?

I'd really like to hear how you or any of the other libertarians here suggest what should happen to these people without SS or Medicare.

Real, practical, and plausible explanations.  None of this "things will be all peachy keen and apple pie as long as the rich pay no taxes!"

You know, strawman is really annoying

Anyway, the general consensus among most libertarians/conservatives is that you cannot take them away from those on them, it just isn't feasible. If you lived your whole life expecting them and then live on them for years, then you would be royally screwed if they just disappeared. What you do is first, give those on it the choice to get off for a private alternative. Next, you make modest cuts to social security payments, but keep in mind, nothing draconian.

You tell everybody over 60, look, you'll get your benefits, but you have to wait until you're 70 instead of 66. You eliminate the lifetime cap on payroll taxes to feed the spending, in the short term. Means-testing would probably be put in place, too.

For people under 60, you dismantle SS until it is a small program for only the most needy, and create a private Medicare system, where the government will subsidize those who really need it (or those who incur "extraordinary" costs in a year, which would equal x). Presumably you'd have to change the regulatory structure of the health insurance industry to do this, but it can be done.

The government creates tax-free retirement savings accounts for everybody, and tax free health savings accounts.

You could nip-pick about specifics (like, maybe a small Medicare system would exist for poorer folk even in the end), but the general idea is workable.

Again, it must be emphasized that this would have to be gradual.

[Vepres]

Again, it must be emphasized that this would have to be gradual.

In order not to have libertarians lynched by mobs on sight, it would have to be very gradual. As in, taking decades. There is a problem with gradual, though: it would be extremely unpopular among the young: they'd have to pay taxes to fund a program which they will not be benefitting from. Furthermore, there would have to be a political commitment to that gradual abolition. Given, for instance, how stubborn the Mickey Mouse copyright has been in refusing to expire, I somehow doubt that a much greater political pressure for reinstatement could be resisted. And, of course, even that may only work for Social Security: that, indeed, could, in time, be replaced with private accounts and family support (it would radically change how Americans live their lives, but, gradually, it could be done).

Abolishing Medicare would cause such a backlash that no government would even dare seriously proposing it. Furthermore, means testing it would, almost inevitably, guarantee that very few people would ever save enough for retirement to fail the means test. In fact, saving would be considered almost suicidal. When you are 75 and sick, you'd have to be extremely rich to afford private medical care in the US, or private insurance for that matter: you are not even risky at that stage, you are a near certain drain on resources.  It makes no sense to save all your life to then spend it all in a couple of years on a few hospital stays and a surgery or two, and land on the dole at that point, anyway. So people won't save, period, or else would hide their savings in the offshores, or gift everything they own to kids, or you name it. T

It could be mitigated by requiring insurance companies to sell cheap insurance coverage to all the elderly, and than subsidizing them to cover the losses. But what, exactly, would be the difference between that, and the Medicare, as we know it?

Hm. Come to think of it, this would result in a humongous migration of elderly Americans to Mexico. Mexico provides elderly American expats a way of buying into the national medical insurance scheme (IMSS). Admittedly, it is not free, but it is orders of magnitude cheaper than it would be in the US. The IMSS care is no frills, but reasonably high quality, especially in the largest cities. Furthermore, private insurance can be bought for a fraction of the US price. And even private medical services are much cheaper than north of the border. Also, of course, modest pension fund savings go much further in Mexico than in the US. So, I get it. The whole abolition thing is designed to transfer the bulk of Florida's population to the Yucatan. The moment the abolition bill is tabled, I am investing in the beachfront property on Riviera Maya (and, unlke all of you,  North Americans, I can buy under my own name!! And even with a government subsidy!!!! Hoot!!!!)

Seniors wouldn't flee. Again, as I said, the government would subsidize all costs beyond a certain point, it's not like we just drop them entirely. The point is, they get private healthcare with some government subsidies, but not the gargantuan single-payer system we have now.

[Vepres]

However, I should say that mostly/fully privatizing social security is one of those things you support in theory, but know that it wouldn't work out in practice even if done in good faith.

For it to truly work, you'd have to have major cultural shifts, which won't happen.

[Vepres]

Seniors wouldn't flee. Again, as I said, the government would subsidize all costs beyond a certain point, it's not like we just drop them entirely. The point is, they get private healthcare with some government subsidies, but not the gargantuan single-payer system we have now.

That's not abolition. That's just diluting benefits somewhat. That will, surely, happen: medical costs have to be contained. But, in the end, it's still Medicare pretty much intact.

The problem w/ private health insurance for the elderly is that the elderly don't, really, present that much of a risk after a certain point: they are a near certain cost. So, after a while it's not, really, insurance, it's paying out of pocket. And you know what out of pocket costs are in the US. So, at the end of the day, it's either the single-payer government paying the doctors, or single-payer government paying the insurers (ok, you can have the elderly themselves pitch in a few percent of the cost), or out-of-pocket medicine w/ most of the elderly on the dole after a few years, or substantially decreased life expectancy. Pick your poison.

If you mandate insurance coverage, and make insurance companies keep the same premiums across all age groups, it could work out.

Essentially, you don't even have the insurance companies look at individuals' characteristics.