President Obama on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
President Barack Obama addressed Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in Tuesday’s speech on the economy at Georgetown University.
President Obama: The problem with our deficit and debt is not new. It has been building dramatically over the past eight years, largely because big tax cuts combined with increased spending on two wars and the increased costs of government health care programs. This structural gap in our budget, between the amount of money coming in and the amount going out, will only get worse as Baby Boomers age, and will in fact lead us down an unsustainable path. But let’s not kid ourselves and suggest that we can do it by trimming a few earmarks or cutting the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. Along with defense and interest on the national debt, the biggest costs in our budget are entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that get more and more expensive every year. So if we want to get serious about fiscal discipline – and I do – then we are going to not only have to trim waste out of our discretionary budget, a process we have already begun – but we will also have to get serious about entitlement reform.
Nothing will be more important to this goal than passing health care reform that brings down costs across the system, including in Medicare and Medicaid. Make no mistake: health care reform is entitlement reform. That’s not just my opinion – that was the conclusion of a wide range of participants at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit we held at the White House in February, and that’s one of the reasons why I firmly believe we need to get health care reform done this year.
Once we tackle rising health care costs, we must also work to put Social Security on firmer footing. It is time for both parties to come together and find a way to keep the promise of a sound retirement for future generations. And we should restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by shutting down corporate loopholes and ensuring that everyone pays what they owe.
All of these efforts will require tough choices and compromises. But the difficulties can’t serve as an excuse for inaction. Not anymore.
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So the great saviour can continue to bail out huge companies whose CO’s have mismanaged their companies and the ones to take the hit are those citizens who worked for this country to make it great and now at a time when we can no longer work the benefits that we and our employers paid into is not there. This is not an entitlement program per se we contributed to it. An entitlement program is correctly defined as one in which the individual recieving it has not contributed to its funds. shame on our congressmen and women to give to the rich and take from those who have worked their entire lives and many have made many sacrifices for this country.
The fact that you think that people who receive these benefits are lazy and do not contribute to society. People can still need medical coverage even if they make to much to get Medicaid. The “working poor” Poor people or low-income workers do contribute to society through pay-roll taxes,gas, sales etc. However there are people that can’t work because of a mental/physical disability. Do they deserve the medicaid, and social security disability. Or maybe you think that the most vulnerable should get there own help. Maybe they are “faking” it?
I am one of the many disabled that Social Security will not help. There are so many of us, it is unbelieveable. Social Security is trying to make people unable to work do to illness work. But they can’t work so they are destitute, without hope, living homeless and/or begging for money. I know, I have been doing this for 5 years. Thank God for my ex-in-laws and HUD. I would have been living in the woods after I paid social security for 20 years. I still have to beg to get my utilities paid. I NEVER get to buy clothes, furniture, a car, go out to eat at a restaurant, any of the things working people take for granted. And believe me, if I could work, I would. Many of us are going through this. Can’t work but no help from Social Security. No health insurance yet needing to take many medicines with no way to pay for them. Is this the way we should be treated? Would you want to be treated this way? Of course not, yet it is happening all over America. I think it’s a sad state of things and I am so glad Obama is giving me and others like me, hope.