Utah Insurance

 WASHINGTON - It was plain that Senator John McCain is desperate about raising money for his presidential campaign by the solution he offered to the latest report on the Social Security “crisis.”

The Arizonan, carrying a tin cup to California and Utah, said last week the federal problems with old age insurance system can be solved through enactment of personal retirement accounts.

McCain’s treasury was only $ 3.7 million at the end of last month, about a third of Senator Hillary Clinton’s, and eighth of Senator Barack Obama’s.

President Bush was busy raising millions last week for McCain and other Republicans in low-profile, big-yield parties in private homes in Fairfax, Va., and Sewickley, Pa.., A rich suburb of Pittsburgh.

The folks who cough up checks at these events GOP strongly support Bush’s personal retirement failed

Accounts plan. They like it because it would divert more money into retirement Wall Street, it could end employers’ share of half the 12.4 percent payroll tax and it would block the biggest threat to their own paychecks.

Jason Furman of the Brookings Institution says that the Social Security account could be balanced perpetually almost $ 102000 if the cap on personal deductions was removed.

Two-family households earning more than $ 102000 are pretty common now. Lifting this artificial cap million would bring into the insurance pool.

In their final report for the Bush administration, the Social Security trustees said the pension system will begin in paying more benefits than it brings in by 2017. However, it remains technically trust fund solvent until 2041 based on the money it owes the government.

Of the three candidates Obama only supports lifting the income cap - something that the party-goers in Fairfax Sewickley and would abhor.

A much more serious threat exists for the Medicare system, a branch of the Social Security.

The Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will start running deficits in two years, and all of its reserves will be depleted in a decade.

This is serious as hell, but none of the three directly addressed the Medicare trustees of the report.

They have, lateral. McCain would let the magic of the marketplace solve the 6 percent to 10 percent annual increase in health care costs, which is breaking disease. He would let nationwide health insurance be purchased, instead of just within states. This is the stuff that dreams are made of a lead Maltese Falcon. But it is balm to the silk suits at the house parties.

Because of the payroll tax and taxes on threat of a million individual, Social Security and Medicare programs that are most big donors, particularly hard-liners brought to power in the Reagan and Bush years, would like to euthanize.

Meanwhile, the insurance business under Bush is milking Medicare through Medicare Advantage, the privatized part of the program. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission says Medicare Advantage costs 13 percent more than money prices under traditional Medicare.

The independent Congressional Budget Office says equalizing rates under Medicare Advantage would save $ 150 billion over 10 years, and extend Medicare’s solvency by two years.

Obama Clinton and say their health care plans will address the hazards to Medicare by lowering drug costs, broadening health insurance coverage and making private health insurance programs compete with the government.

Absolutely nobody is talking about turning over to health care: a federal agency that has - scandal free - distributed trillion over 70 years, the Social Security Administration. Liberal Obama would be more likely to smile on the idea as president than Bill Clinton, who is a centrist.