You’ve all heard about the problems with Medicare, the health care system. You’ve also heard, time and again, that Social Security is in deep doo-doo because the “baby-boomers” are about to qualify for early retirement, but that the “trust fund” will sustain the supplemental retirement system until almost mid-century.

Does it bother anyone that the finances of these two insurance programs don’t seem to make sense, that there’s a strong element of fantasy and delusion in each?

For one thing, if Medicare is in so much trouble – then where is its trust fund? Why isn’t the government drawing down on this stash, or even mentioning it? Do you hear any politicians talk about the Medicare trust fund the way they talk about the Social Security trust? I thought birds of a feather flocked together. Both Medicare and Social Security are supported by payroll taxes. That’s a pretty deep alliance, wouldn’t you think?

The two Medicare trust funds currently standing at a combined balance of $326.6 billion are only about a sixth of Social Security’s $1.8 trillion in its two trusts, but the monthly outlays are also about a third of Social Security’s.

If the Social Security trust funds will sustain its insurance program until 2041 or 2042 (2052 according to the CBO), then how long will the Medicare trust funds sustain that program? Is the Medicare program good for another fifteen years or so if it’s dependent on its trusts? Why the panic? Why isn’t anyone talking about this trust?

Those of you who understand just how these bogus federal trust funds work will understand why there’s little if any talk about this. Last year, the Medicare trust fund increased $12 billion, but this was due entirely to the $15.7 billion interest the government dumped into the account, no money involved.

If you look at the detailed receipts and expenditures, you will see that Hospital Insurance Part A was in the red nine months of the year. Receipts were not enough to cover $19.8 billion in outlays.

At the same time, Supplementary Medical Insurance Part B was in the red six months of the year with an overall shortfall of $2.3 billion.

Politicians hate it when this happens, not because they are concerned about the program, but because it means money to cover benefits must come out of the general fund of the Treasury and without a tax increase must come either from money borrowed from China or their own budget pork barrels. The result is that they will start screaming about Medicare being “in trouble” when they really mean it isn’t providing them with a slush fund anymore.

It doesn’t bother them at all when the Federal Employees Retirement System is in the red every month or their own Life & Health account never has any revenue. In these cases, they're using nonmarketable bonds to their own advantage and going to the general fund all the time.

On Monday, July 17, the New York Times published an article titled “Bush Administration Plans Medicare Changes” without a word about the trust fund or the billions in overpayments workers have made resulting in this “trust.”

If illegal aliens are a major part of the big draw on our health insurance programs, then what happens if they’re denied or taken out of the picture? All that we have to do is make them prove they are citizens before giving them anything but severe emergency treatment, and we can even bill them for that. Health providers want proof of insurance from normal citizens. How different is it to demand proof of citizenship from people who can't speak English or otherwise look like immigrants?

I don’t have a problem with “illegals” getting Social Security or Medicare as long as they’ve paid into the programs for a sufficient length of time to qualify. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the nature of buying any commodity on the open market. Insurance is a commodity people buy to protect themselves. If you pay for it, then you’re “entitled” to the benefits it promised. If the insurance company can’t adjust its program and premiums to meet conditions, then that’s their fault, they don’t deserve to be in the business and should be punished. As grandma used to say; “if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

I have yet to find anything at all in either the Social Security Act of the thirties or Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare rules that says participants and beneficiaries must be citizens. But there is the old bugaboo from Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt days, a black period in American history, when the Supreme Court denied Social Security benefits to a man who had worked in the U.S. for forty years but was accused of attending communist CIO rallies thirty years before he retired and went home to his place of birth (see: Fleming vs. Nestor). We refused to send U.S. dollars to a communist nation.

Isn’t that a kick? Today we are borrowing like crazy from communist China and anyone else that will loan us money. And many of our dollars are flowing into China through WalMart as products we buy gave us a $713 billion trade deficit last year, with a higher one coming this year. Where’s the Supreme Court now that we can’t support ourselves?

Where is the Supreme Court when FEMA (Failing Everyone Miserably Again), the major provider of flood insurance, can’t keep its promises because they blew the premiums collected or all along depended on the taxpaying public to cover outlays or loses? Do you hear anyone mentioning how much last year’s hurricane season is costing taxpayers in FEMA flood insurance?

Are the Supremes waiting for someone to file a complaint? Is Congress waiting for someone to complain about the thousands of trailers rotting in a field in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s home town?

The sad thing is that the American people will not pay much attention or get riled-up about anything unless the media covers the event and does so until some resolution is found. We’ve become a nation swayed by what newscasters chose to mention. And the talking heads of television are all millionaires themselves with a natural inclination to protect big businesses that pay them through advertising and to otherwise protect the oligarchy by ignoring major conflicting issues like this or the people’s real problems.

Grass root organizations and local action by cities and states is the only way anything meaningful gets done nowadays. The immigration problem is a perfect example of this.