Mr. McCain also called for wealthier Medicare recipients to pay higher premiums to qualify for the prescription drug coverage that President Bush and the Congress added to the program a few years ago, over his objections.
“People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet don’t need their prescriptions underwritten by taxpayers,” he said.
John McCain as reported in The New York Times
Hello! Bill Gates is 52. He’s not eligible for Medicare. Once again McCain’s example is a bad one.
Besides, even among the “wealthier Medicare recipients” just how typical is Warren Buffet?
This is just plan demagoguery — or stupidity.
Doesn’t he know that Medicare Part D is private? Those extra premiums would just go to the insurance companies. The big savings would come from lowering the price of the drugs in the first place. And Congress forbade them from negotiating on prices for meds. I bet John McCain voted for that.
The rich do pay higher premiums for Medicare. The Medicare payroll tax, unlike the social security portion of FICA, has no dollar limit.
Most really rich people get $1,000,000 of cash compensation a year, with the rest in FICA free benefits. This means that they typically pay about $14,500 a year as their employee share, with their employer paying another $14,500 a year, often for decades. Moreover, because most of those rich people have had excellent health care all their lives, they typically enter the Medicare system much healthier than their less affluent peers.
Allowing these people who have already paid a huge, means tested premium for Medicare coverage to participate on the same basis as everyone else, in the interest of far less paperwork for everyone (which is why Medicare is so much more efficient than traditional health insurance) sounds like a good deal all ways around.
If we are convinced that the rich don’t pay enough, we should extend the Medicare tax to employee stock options, rather than trying to impose premiums on the back end.