Congress is about to rob Medicare to 'save' the Postal Service

[mystery-ak]

February 8, 2022
Congress is about to rob Medicare to 'save' the Postal Service
By Mike Feuz

In the business world, low-performance departments are often audited, reformed, and — if they continue to under-perform — eliminated.  It's one of the many ways companies stay competitive — by eliminating dead weight to stay profitable and keep customers happy with high-quality service and competitive prices.

This week, the House is set to do the exact opposite.  In typical "kick the can down the road" action by our elected officials, a bipartisan group of politicians are shifting billions of dollars in retirement costs from the U.S. Postal Service to Medicare.  Supporters celebrate that USPS will remove unaffordable retirement costs from its balance sheet, thus keeping itself solvent.  What they've tried to hide is Congress's sleight of hand, which will accelerate Medicare's projected 2026 bankruptcy.

The Congressional Budget Office's July 2021 report laid out the situation clearly.  In just the first ten years of the shifting of your tax dollars from one account to another — changing nothing but where the money is located — an additional 25% of retired postal workers are required to join Medicare.  That's required, mind you, not requested or given the opportunity to join.  And that means you and I, the people who pay the postal workers' salaries, are going to be even more on the hook for their retirements.

more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/congress_is_about_to_rob_medicare_to_save_the_postal_service.html

[Kamaji]

Once again, engaging in slick accounting tricks that would land the entire upper management of any private company in jail for criminal accounting and securities fraud.

[mountaineer]

As fewer and fewer Americans use the services of the post office, thanks to email and other electronic communications methods, the commonsense response might be to cut USPS staffing. But noooo, let's put the burden on taxpaying people who already are on a tight budget.

[DefiantMassRINO]

When isn't Congress robbing someone?  Appropriation is a college word for a mugging.

I think there might be greater public benefit to reducing the overall cost and inflation of medical care in the U.S.

No, not single payer Government healthcare with death panels.

Rather, use it's regulatory, requisition, and anti-trust powers to re-introduce real market competition to America's sick care and pharmaceutical markets.

- FTC pursue anti-trust investigation against pharmacy benefit managers
- Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices
- Require government to multi-source vendors, especially domestic vendors, of medical equipment and supply
- FTC purusue anti-trust investigations against hospital networks with monopoly or oligopoly market pricing power
- Require HHS to multi-source medical services within each market among multiple medical networks

Downward competitive pricing power to reduce medical inflation was overlooked when Medicare Part-D and the Affordable Care Act were created.

[LMAO]

And to think that there are a couple on this very forum who believe that the federal government should get even more of our tax dollars