Correct me if I'm wrong, and I may very well be as I'm not well-educated on the subject, but I was always under the impression that medicare was basically designed to fund itself through a SPECIFIC medicare tax. That's what a percentage of our payroll taxes are for, right? Same concept for social security I believe.

As I learned it, the current workforce pays in monies which pay for the people currently receiving benefits. Then, as people get older, reaching the age where they become eligible to receive medicare, the younger generations of workers pay for their benefits, and those who received benefits while THEY were working are at an age where they are passing away.

Now, I believe that there has been dipping into medicare and social security funds when there has been extra money. Is that right? Our government, which should have ensured that monies collected for these two programs stayed in those programs, used them for other things, which is a big reason the funds are in so much trouble now.

If this is correct, and someone is asking me to trust that the government can manage a healthcare program that is exponentially bigger than medicare, then I would consider myself crazy if I trusted that this time, it'll be different.

Not to go all "Dr. Phil" on you, but I think the guy is right when he says that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And we are not just talking about distant past behavior, we are talking about habitual fraud, corruption, and waste, up to and including the "economic stimulus" bill that included funding for such things as mouse habitat research.

Please please please correct me if my understanding about how medicare was SUPPOSSED to be funded and conducted is mistaken. But if I am correct, don't bother asking me to trust the government with a program that is so much bigger and will affect our country is such a larger manner than Medicare.

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