Letters to the editor

Medicare is like a Ponzi scheme being played out on the public

Posted on Sun, Jan 24, 2010 : 11:42 a.m.

Mr. Daher believes “Medicare for all is the only ‘reform’ option that should have been presented from the beginning” (Letters to the editor, Jan. 17). It is as though Mr. Daher heard that a fund run by Bernard Madoff is delivering great results and he is encouraging everyone to invest. The last ones into a Ponzi scheme are the ones who get hurt the most.

Doesn’t Mr. Daher read like the rest of us that Medicare is broke (more accurately, bankrupt), that the unfunded liabilities are $90 trillion? Even today, Medicare does not cover its costs. Doctors who accept Medicare patients must accept less for their services than they think they are worth so they increase their prices to all others, including to the insurance companies that Mr. Daher so despises. In other words, those insurance companies and the participating doctors are subsidizing Medicare - today.

And ObamaCare will cut Medicare even further. What would happen if Mr. Daher’s wish came true and there were no more insurance companies and everyone had Medicare? And the baby boom generation is about to retire and to start collecting on the promise made to them by people like Mr. Daher. Mr. Madoff is in jail. Who should go to jail for the Medicare Ponzi scheme? Edwin R. Clarke Ann Arbor