Tea Party Republicans Left Dazed As Obama Cuts Bush’s Deficit By $1 Trillion

[D Gary Grady]

16. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are "entitlements" by definition!

Last edited Mon Oct 19, 2015, 07:38 PM - Edit history (2)

An "entitlement" means something you're entitled to. I paid into Social Security and Medicare all my working life so I'm legally entitled to them. How people ever got the notion that "entitlement" means something like "giveaway" is a mystery.

A few other details worth noting: Social Security and Medicare Part A (hospitalization insurance) are financed by dedicated taxes on earned income and to a smaller extent by interest earned on the the associated trust funds. The systems are pay-as-you-go, which means taxes paid this year cover money paid out this year, with the trust fund accounts acting like reservoirs in a water system, collecting surpluses and covering deficits. Medicare Part B (which mainly pays doctor bills and the like) is financed 1/4 by premiums and 3/4 by general revenues. Medicare Part D is also financed by a mix of premiums and general revenues, but it's more complicated. The "general revenues" part has meant "by borrowing" since it was introduce under George W Bush.

Medicare Part C (Medicare Advantage, private insurance partly or wholly funded by Medicare) is even more complicated.

Medicaid is financed by general revenues. (In typing the original version of this post I managed to attach the bit about the government's share of Part D being financed by borrowing to Medicaid, suggesting that Medicaid had been launched by W! Sorry about that brain phart; I've fixed it now, I hope.)