{"id":6278,"date":"2011-06-15T18:56:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T23:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=6278"},"modified":"2011-06-15T19:05:33","modified_gmt":"2011-06-16T00:05:33","slug":"medicare-saves-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/06\/15\/medicare-saves-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Medicare Saves Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is the money quote from the article Medicare Saves Money<\/strong><\/a> by Paul Krugman:<\/p>\n

Indeed, as the economist (and former Reagan adviser) Bruce Bartlett points out, high U.S. private spending on health care, compared with spending in other advanced countries, just about wipes out any benefit we might receive from our relatively low tax burden. So where\u2019s the gain from pushing seniors out of an admittedly expensive system, Medicare, into even more expensive private health insurance?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think the same reasoning in our country is applying here as the reasoning that most people go through to minimize the taxes they pay on investments.\u00a0 I have heard it said that if you put money away in tax deferred accounts, you will end up paying more in taxes than if you paid the taxes right away.\u00a0 I did a few hypothetical calculations and found out that this claim is true.\u00a0 However, the reason you pay more taxes is that you make more money.\u00a0 If you calculate how much money you have after paying your taxes, you will find you have more by investing in tax deferred accounts like IRAs and 401k’s than if you invested without the benefit of tax deferral.<\/p>\n

People get stuck on the idea of minimizing their taxes, when they ought to be concentrating on maximizing the money they get to keep after paying taxes.\u00a0 Doing one of these things is not the equivalent of doing the other. (For the mathematically inclined who want to know why the difference, the simple answer is that compound interest is not mathematically linear. In fact, it is geometrically nonlinear.)<\/p>\n

Now for Krugman’s strong finish:<\/p>\n

The point, however, is that privatizing health insurance for seniors, which is what Mr. Lieberman is in effect proposing \u2014 and which is the essence of the G.O.P. plan \u2014 hurts rather than helps the cause of cost control. If we really want to hold down costs, we should be seeking to offer Medicare-type programs to as many Americans as possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is the money quote from the article Medicare Saves Money by Paul Krugman: Indeed, as the economist (and former Reagan adviser) Bruce Bartlett points out, high U.S. private spending on health care, compared with spending in other advanced countries, just about wipes out any benefit we might receive from our relatively low tax burden. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6278"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6285,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions\/6285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}