By ,
Published May 08, 2017
NEIL CAVUTO, HOST OF “YOUR WORLD”: A red congressional district goes blue...
A lot of Republican faces turn ashen.
And now it looks like Medicare reform...is done.
And fixing entitlements is off.
Which got a lot of you sounding off...
Not at what could be the new reality.
At me.
Steve via Yahoo.
"Please stop referring to Social Security and Medicare as entitlements. They're not!! We paid into a fund for 40 years with a contract of payment at age 65. If these programs are entitlements, so are all investments, cds, treasury notes, oh, and most certainly, your salary."
Steve, I don’t care. You can call them leprechauns...for all I care...All I’m telling you...the pot of gold is gone...it is gone. The pot. The lockbox. No pot. No lock. No box. No money.
So I’m "entitled" to tell you this...and believe me, it kills me to say this, Steve...that contract is null and void....unless we wake up and act.
Not because of anything "you" did, Steve. Like you said, you dutifully paid in...Politicians dutifully took out.
Now you can deny that reality all you want, but that's where we are.
You're probably safe though, Steve.
But maybe time to think about your kids or grandkids, because I’m telling you... They are not.
Dennis emails.
"Cavuto, old people are enjoying Medicare and big oil is enjoying tax breaks and yet you find a problem with Medicare and don't find any with tax breaks...please make sense..."
Well Dennis, do you even watch this show? I've railed against tax breaks for big oil, for anybody, just as I condemned bailouts for banks, and financial rescues that themselves needed rescues in this administration and the last administration. I've even called this "incentivized gluttony."
But enough of me...back to you...because even if oil companies "were" to give all of their few billion bucks in tax breaks, which they should, it wouldn't come close to making up the half-trillion dollar hole Medicare is looking at over the next decade...which you simply refuse to see.
Dee emails.
"...if you want to take from Medicare, please take from big oil."
Again, with the big oil!
If you are saying, Dee. Pardon me, I’m just overcome here. Take from companies making a whole lot of money to make whole a government program losing a whole lot of money...where do you then draw the line...
When the oil guys' spigot slows...do you go after someone else making a lot of money? Apple or Google? They all make a lot of money. Do you go after them? The argument isn't how much private companies make...remember, their workers pay into Medicare and their companies match their contributions and taxes to Medicare...
This comes down to what any of them...or us...are getting for that money from Medicare...two words...not much.
Colonel French, Vero Beach, Florida.
"Shut the Republicans up on Medicare."
Well I fear, Colonel, they already have been. You might welcome that. I do not.
Not because I don't think Medicare’s worth keeping around.
But because all this fear-mongering all but guarantees...it "won't" be around.
Tara in Cleveland.
"I paid into Medicare. I deserve Medicare. Don't you now up and steal my Medicare...Medicare’s fine. You aren't...there's a reason I don't trust you, Cavuto...you're a godless tool of the right."
Tara, where do I begin.
No, Tara, just a nerdy fan of just simple spreadsheets.
And if you think Medicare’s fine...then someone's been spreading you "sheet."
Because here's what's going on, Tara, whether you choose to accept it or not...
Medicare is now doling out more than it's taking in...each year, every year...and now the government trustees are moving Medicare’s day of reckoning up five years!
And with all these baby boomers now flooding into the system...who knows what they’ll estimate next year!
Tara, I’m not saying it's your fault...I’m just telling you what is.
So you can criticize me for being heartless but here's the cold reality...
What is heartless are the folks who tell you with a straight face, everything's fine. And there is No need to worry.
You can fault me for being the messenger...but look at the numbers...there no denying the message.
Tara, stick a syringe in it...the way this thing's going, we don't fix Medicare...it is all but dead.
Entitlements or whatever you want to call them are a great commitment on the part of a great society for which we've discovered you know what, we now don't have a great deal of money.
You didn't do it. All hard working Americans who put money into this system didn't do it.
But a program that started at 65 million dollars in back in what 1965 with a commitment to look after Americans in their elder years...is now a trillion dollar monstrosity losing money so fast, it doesn't have a lot of years.
To ignore the problem, ignores the reality.
And that granny being pushed off the cliff because one congressman had a plan that people didn’t like?
Picture tens of thousands like her...because no one offered a plan...at all.
So all you folks can talk 'til you're blue in the face about what you deserve...
I'm just telling you what is.
So pick your fix...
But you might as well...
Pick your poison.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/viewers-sound-off-on-medicare