Taking "burying the lede" to new depths, the Agenda Press has demonstrated once again that it:
- Is colossally incompetent (always a strong possibility).
- Sets out to deliberately misinform the American Public.
What you pay for Medicare won't cover your costs
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press
WASHINGTON – You paid your Medicare taxes all those years and want your money's worth: full benefits after you retire. Nearly three out of five people say in a recent Associated Press-GfK poll that they paid into the system so they deserve their full benefits — no cuts.
But a newly updated financial analysis shows that what people paid into the system doesn't come close to covering the full value of the medical care they can expect to receive as retirees.
Wow! That sounds pretty bad! The article continues:
Consider an average-wage, two-earner couple together earning $89,000 a year. Upon retiring in 2011, they would have paid $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes during their careers.
But they can expect to receive medical services — from prescriptions to hospital care — worth $355,000, or about three times what they put in.
The estimates by economists Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane of the Urban Institute think tank illustrate the huge disconnect between widely-held perceptions and the numbers behind Medicare's shaky financing. Although Americans are worried about Medicare's long-term solvency, few realize the size of the gap.
"The fact that you put money into the system doesn't mean it's there waiting for you to collect," said Steuerle.
By comparison, Social Security taxes and expected benefits come closer to balancing out.
The same hypothetical couple retiring in 2011 will have paid $614,000 in Social Security taxes, and can expect to collect $555,000 in benefits. They will have paid about 10 percent more into the system than they're likely to get back.
Updated periodically, the Urban Institute estimates are part of an effort that Steuerle and others began several years ago to try to illustrate the complicated finances of Medicare and Social Security in a format the average taxpayer could grasp. The Washington-based institute is a public policy center that focuses heavily on budget and economic issues. Its analysis is accepted among other policy experts in Washington, including economists in government.
Of course, Medicare is like Social Security: the taxes from the current generation of workers are paying for the benefits of the current generation of retirees. To borrow a phrase from RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR's Agency for Propaganda article:
[a] financial analysis [would show] that what [current retirees] paid into the system doesn't come close to covering the full value of the medical care they [are receiving] as retirees.
RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR knows this. I've only quoted the first half of his article....it creates a mistaken impression. The second half of the article then walks it all back. It's a very odd way to structure an article: the headline and the first half reports pure bullshit as if it were straight facts. Then the second half of the article takes it all back. The way it is written, someone who reads only the headline and the first few paragraphs would get it completely wrong. This is a clever and deliberate gambit, to spread disinformation.
We shouldn't be too surprised by this. RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR may be happily working in concert with the Asswipe Paper's Ron Fornier.
AP's Ron Fournier exposed as a McCain shill
On Tuesday Michael Calderone at Politico produced definitive evidence of Ron Fournier's bias in favor of John McCain. He did it by linking the Associated Press Washington Bureau chief directly to the McCain presidential campaign. Over a period of several months during 2006, Fournier discussed taking a high-level communications job with the McCain campaign. Apparently Fournier turned down the job offer in the end.
I say 'apparently' because often it is difficult to tell from the reporting produced by Fournier and his Bureau whether or not he views himself as a campaign operative.
But to be fair to RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, he may not be responsible for the very odd structure of his article. It is possible that an Assholelike Predisposition editor very carefully cut and pasted this piece of crap.