Les Jones

Medicare prescription program would have funded Social Security

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | Social Security |

I’ve said before that the Medicare prescription drug program was a disaster. We didn’t know how we were going to fund existing liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. Then Bush added the prescription drug benefit without raising a single dime of new revenue to pay for it.

I knew the Medicare prescription drug benefit was bad. I didn’t realize it was this bad.

We could also look at this another way. The federal reports released this week indicate that the unfunded liabilities associated with Social Security are about the same size as the unfunded liabilities associated with the Medicare prescription drug plan. So for the cost of the drug plan, we could have funded Social Security forever without cutting benefits or raising taxes.

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