WEBVTT
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Welcome to our 2026 podcast series.
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Let's start by introducing our
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guest from
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the National Retiree Legislative Network, NRLN, and American Retiree Education Foundation, AREF.
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Bill Kadereit . Bill
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tell us a little bit about
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both.
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N R L N is a 5 0 1 C four non-profit Mike, a nonpartisan organization representing over 2 million seniors, age 55 or over.
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And our members , come from about 300 different companies and public entities.
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They span the, and reside over 50 states and 75% of the congressional districts in our country.
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They advocate to protect pensions, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and lower your prescription drug costs.
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Bill, why don't you tell us what the mission of the organizations are?
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The mission basically is predicated on those things that mean the most to retirees.
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We advocate to protect pensions, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and lower prescription drug costs.
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Bill, how are you funded?
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We're funded primarily by contributions for members.
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We do not receive any other money from corporations, insurance companies of any kind or large donors.
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Our entire budget comes from membership support, Mike.
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That's good.
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Tell us a little bit more about the A R E F.
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the 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit.
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A R E F prepares research papers and position papers for public education.
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Funding for that organization comes from tax deductible donations, and those donations also come primarily from individuals of our organization who do contribute in some cases, actually part of their IRA distributions.
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And from other sources, we receive very little money, particularly people in the healthcare industry do not contribute at all to us.
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What other kinds of things that, that you deliver for that kind of money?
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The A R E F is involved in research and they affiliate with a number of other organizations that also do research on income security and Medicare protections.
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They protect beneficiaries from companies de-risking their plans, what we call pension risk transfers or PRTs.
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We try to enforce Medicare guarantee rights that protect people who lose their coverage.
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Unbeknownst to them when a insurance company terminates or non-renew their policies.
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We also have a white paper on protecting retirees and mergers spinoffs in bankruptcies.
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The organizations are separately financed, and I serve as President of the NRN and chairman of the A R E F.
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Tell us a little bit about the political environment that we exist in today and the power that voters have.
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How do these organizations function for retirees?
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Primarily in, in government, of course, we have the legislative and the executive branches, and Congress has become highly partisan and frankly, if nothing else, anti retiree.
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You hear a lot about what they're promising, but they seem to never deliver anything that has stabilized the economic position or income of retirees.
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And you hear about healthcare performance and reductions in costs they're not there.
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And so primarily we've lost a great deal of attention on the national stage.
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Are, Mike Roth ai7: all the currently have guaranteed?
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Those covered by , the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, (E R I S A ) protect those over age 65 when they have.
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Defined benefit pensions.
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But we represent people that are 65 plus.
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We also represent people that are under age 65.
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And a big issue there, of course, is even planning for retirement.
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There, there's very little evidence that people have enough money to retire.
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And so I don't think if you look across the board that retirees get very good service there and there's need for an improved savings mechanisms.
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Do we have a kind of disconnect in Congress between the needs of retirees and what they're doing?
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Yeah, sure.
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Politicians think on a two year or six year cycle.
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Members of the house are elected for two years and members of the Senate are elected for six years.
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And the seniors though, have to plan the rest of their lives and for their children and grandchildren.
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So the perception is entirely different.
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It's easy to duck an issue when, you're on the job for just two years and you're gone.
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It's not so easy if you have 25 years left to go and you're wondering how much money you're going to have in the till when you retire, and how your kids are gonna fear down the road.
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Or how you're gonna fear.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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Now, what's been happening in Congress and the executive branch that puts our pensions, our social security, our Medicare at risk.
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I would say there's been an awful lot of political rhetoric.
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There's too much infighting.
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What do we hear on TV?
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And what do we see in on TV every day?
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It's somebody is hollering and calling someone else up to be, chastised in front of a committee for doing something on a personal basis.
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There's more of that going on than there is problem solving.
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And you've matched that with the amount of over the top campaign contributions coming from industrial organizations such as the healthcare insurance industry.
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And you have a Congress that gets compromised and very many people in Congress today really are there to do the job.
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They were, they took an oath for.
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To do.
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And
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you mean very few people are there?
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Very few of them of course, do that kind of a job that they took the oath for.
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Examples are of course funding Social Security and funding Medicare.
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It's just outrageous what how Congress has kicked the can down the road.
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Mike Roth ai7: Now, what is the Yeah, it's very interesting.
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In, in the last presidential election, 65 million voters rage 55 to 65.
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That was 40% of all votes cast in that election of 166 million votes.
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41% of them were between 55 and 65.
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Another 42 million voters were over age, 65, 20 9%.
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So combined 110 million or 66% of all voters.
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We're cast by seniors 55 years and older.
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The seniors in this country need to wake up to the fact that they're about to lose their Medicare.
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They're about to be challenged every time there's a presidential election about this two fundamental programs that are mandatorily funded.
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That means the Congress shouldn't walk away from a mandatory obligation, but they do.
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How do you think, the, and our National Retirees Legislative Network members should fight back
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Well today.
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There are several ways they can do it.
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Many attend town hall meetings where they live.
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They belong to the NRLN, and we are their advocate.
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We work hard on the issues that are very important to them.
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And so we use what's called an Action Alert system.
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Which is an email to our grassroots members asking them to make direct contact with their personal elected representatives in Washington to send a message to them on a particular issue, such as Social Security, Medicare and Rx drugs.
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Members, send personal emails to us Senators.
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Representatives, federal agencies, and the President, in fact.
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Now, is that system through your website?
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Absolutely.
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So that the member who wants to contact the representatives in Congress or the president directly can create the message through your website and they don't have to bother looking up the addresses, finding a stand, taking it
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to the envelope.
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Absolutely.
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We have a system available.
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Where our members can go up and construct their own message, their own representative, and send it by themselves.
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In addition to that, when we suggest that they take action and we present them with a message they can send to their elected representatives, they have the ability to edit it, to personalize it.
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So we have a, a system that retirees have a simple method to contact their representatives about issues which will affect them in their pocketbooks.
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Absolutely.
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Retirement income.
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Yeah.
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From social security or pensions.
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Sure.
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And the cost of Medicare and drugs.
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Absolutely.
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It's available 24 7 365 days a year.
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On the website, they have the access and all they simply do is go up and.
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Click on NRLN.org and go into the legislative agenda Action Alert, and they can pick any action alert, or they can create their own message and send it to their elected representatives.
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And they can talk with their friends and their neighbors and they can all converse and decide, yeah, this is an important issue.
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We'd like to use that vehicle.
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And so they sign up and become members of the NRLN and have that access.
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So joining the NLRN.
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Yeah.
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Is that done on the website?
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Absolutely.
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And
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NRLN.org
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NRLN.org?
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That's correct.
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Very simple.
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Everyone should do it.
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And you don't have to be 65 to do it, do you?
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Oh, no.
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You better start doing it 55 because you're still in the most savings mode.
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And what.
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Don't see coming down the road will become visible to you, and so you do a better job of planning ahead for your own financial success.
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As you see it, who is this podcast dedicated to?
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It's dedicated really to the hardworking people who are our grassroots members, because they can be most influential.
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Back home with their members of Congress and congressmen and senators are concerned about what they have to say.
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It's just that they don't do much about it.
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Bill?
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What are the indicators?
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Of what politicians should have been doing over the past 55 years regarding Medicare and social security?
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It is a proven fact that Congress and the Executive branch of the government of the United States have been well aware that these plans could be underfunded over time because they had the data.
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They had the census reports, they had the trustees reports of all, all these programs, and they saw you can visually see that years back when they didn't fund kick the can down the road and to protect themselves as being viewed as supporting a tax increase.
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They basically ignored the reality of financial calculations that someday these reserves will be zero.
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And we've reached that point.
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I guess at this point we wanna show our listeners a chart.
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Okay, that compares the 2020 census total population and growth rate.
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And Bill, why don't you explain what our listeners are seeing on the chart now?
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Sure.
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The population grows, as you can tell.
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About 26 million from 2025 out through 2050 on this chart, and it's growing slowly at a constant rate that is much lower, however than the prior years.
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If you look at 2020, for example, it grew at 3.4% from previous year.
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This is total population.
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So the total population is growing slowly, because as you can see from that orange line there,
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that's the population growth, the
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orange line, that's the population growth rate, and it shows that from 2025 out through 2050, it's well below 2% a year, which is less than half.
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The growth rate that is that we've seen prior to 2025.
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And so naturally the population is shrinking and so seniors became a larger and larger percent of the population.
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And so that's a very important factor.
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Now, when you look at this second chart,
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let's bring up the second chart.
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You can see the components of this chart and you can see from it the baby boomers in orange out in 2015 were 24.1% of the population, 78 million people.
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And everyone say the baby boomers are the biggest problem going on here.
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In fact, they're really not anymore because by 2028 were the two lines, the blue line and the orange line cross.
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All baby boomers in the United States of America will be over age 65 and in Medicare, that presents even with the slow growth, the growth in population, and the large growth in the number of people over age 65.
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Moving forward, you can see the population in the blue chart, blue lines and the blue stacks.
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Grows by 23.9%.
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While the baby boomers shrink down to 5% out in 2050, the phenomenon there that's happening you can't really see is that the people in orange or people over age 65 in orange and the, people who are baby boomers are now older and they consume a great deal, more of the Medicare services and the cost.
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Mike, I think it would surprise people to learn that.
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80% of every dollar spent for healthcare by the government is spent on only 25% of the people in Medicare over 65 . So 25% of the people consume 80% of the cost to the our budget.
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Our Congress has known this for 15 or 16 years, and they've done nothing about it.
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They knew that the cost per enrollee, the cost per headcount in people over age 65 was gonna be a major problem.
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And yet they resisted and did not fund these plans, and now they have to pay a price one way or the other.
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They're going to have to increase taxes or they're going to have to make radical changes and they should not do it to benefits.
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Okay.
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I thought our government is sold out to higher cost insurance companies.
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So now our taxpayers are paying 20% more than they need to.
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That's exactly right.
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If you look at the privatization of Medicare today, that has occurred, the government payments to Medicare private plans, also known as Medicare Advantage Plans, has subsidized the American insurance companies to the point where now 16% of every dollar paid to them.
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It covers their entire overhead and profit, and that today, the cost per enrollee in these private plans is 20% higher than the cost in original Medicare, and it's costing $89 billion a year in subsidies called rebates that go to insurance companies that are unwarranted.
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And if they're looking for more money to fund these plans, there's a hundred billion dollars.
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Mike.
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How much money did you
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spend?
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A hundred billion dollars almost a year.
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In two years.
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The latest budget, in 2025, projected a deficit loss of $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years.
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1.2 trillion of that 3.4 trillion is increases in rebates paid to insurance companies big hole that's 20% deeper than our fee for service would be.
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Why are our representatives politicians agreeing to pay all this money to insurance companies?
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They're agreeing to do it because they wanna privatize Medicare.
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They do not want the federal budget to have Medicare on its books.
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You will hear some people say, oh, we're not gonna cut your benefits.
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But what they're not saying is, we're just going to kill Medicare.
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Yeah.
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They're not gonna cut your benefits today.
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That's right.
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But tomorrow we're gonna kill 'em
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Tomorrow.
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The whole plan goes We'll, never cut your benefits one at a time.
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We're just gonna take the whole plan out from under you.
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That's that.
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That would be terrible.
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That would mean people would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for
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Absolutely.
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In this case, just a simple comparison here.
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They'd have to make up the difference in that 20% loss already.
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They'd have to make up the difference over the next 10 years for a $1.2 trillion loss, increased deficit just because of those rebates.
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And the problem is that after 54 years.
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They now have 55% market share.
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And when initially they planned and promised that if they could gain market share, they would show us how they would reduce costs in Medicare.
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Just give us these subsidies, give us these rebates, and we'll show you it's failed, it's over.
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The real problem is will our elected officials and our executives in this country and the government have the guts to tell the insurance companies.
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You can continue compete all you want to.
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We want you to compete, but not with taxpayer money.
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No more rebates.
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So that, that really should be the,
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that's a
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first thing.
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That
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big issue.
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Mike.
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Is there anything else, Bill, that you want to tell our listeners during this?
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For full episode.
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Yeah I think watch out in the future for our podcast regarding social security, Medicare, Medicaid funding and the cost of prescription drugs, much of what we just talked about in Social Security and Medicaid funding, and is the center of the future presentations.
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And so you'll want to call back to this presentation, this episode.
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Finally as the ending of this podcast, please support the NRN and do it quickly because we have a big job ahead of us.
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We appreciate you very much and we'll see you next time.
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Thanks again, Bill.
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We are gonna be back in two weeks with another episode, so look for us again.
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Welcome to our 2026 podcast series.
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Let's start by introducing our
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guest from
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the National Retiree Legislative Network, NRLN, and American Retiree Education Foundation, AREF.
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Bill Kadereit . Bill
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tell us a little bit about
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both.
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N R L N is a 5 0 1 C four non-profit Mike, a nonpartisan organization representing over 2 million seniors, age 55 or over.
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And our members , come from about 300 different companies and public entities.
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They span the, and reside over 50 states and 75% of the congressional districts in our country.
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They advocate to protect pensions, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and lower your prescription drug costs.
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Bill, why don't you tell us what the mission of the organizations are?
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The mission basically is predicated on those things that mean the most to retirees.
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We advocate to protect pensions, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and lower prescription drug costs.
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Bill, how are you funded?
00:01:19.659 --> 00:01:23.019
We're funded primarily by contributions for members.
00:01:23.078 --> 00:01:29.328
We do not receive any other money from corporations, insurance companies of any kind or large donors.
00:01:29.358 --> 00:01:32.838
Our entire budget comes from membership support, Mike.
00:01:33.078 --> 00:01:33.618
That's good.
00:01:34.019 --> 00:01:36.268
Tell us a little bit more about the A R E F.
00:01:36.385 --> 00:01:38.394
the 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit.
00:01:38.555 --> 00:01:43.075
A R E F prepares research papers and position papers for public education.
00:01:43.474 --> 00:01:58.355
Funding for that organization comes from tax deductible donations, and those donations also come primarily from individuals of our organization who do contribute in some cases, actually part of their IRA distributions.
00:01:58.754 --> 00:02:05.954
And from other sources, we receive very little money, particularly people in the healthcare industry do not contribute at all to us.
00:02:06.055 --> 00:02:10.104
What other kinds of things that, that you deliver for that kind of money?
00:02:10.504 --> 00:02:20.094
The A R E F is involved in research and they affiliate with a number of other organizations that also do research on income security and Medicare protections.
00:02:20.495 --> 00:02:28.354
They protect beneficiaries from companies de-risking their plans, what we call pension risk transfers or PRTs.
00:02:28.754 --> 00:02:34.675
We try to enforce Medicare guarantee rights that protect people who lose their coverage.
00:02:34.764 --> 00:02:39.655
Unbeknownst to them when a insurance company terminates or non-renew their policies.
00:02:40.074 --> 00:02:45.205
We also have a white paper on protecting retirees and mergers spinoffs in bankruptcies.
00:02:45.604 --> 00:02:51.794
The organizations are separately financed, and I serve as President of the NRN and chairman of the A R E F.
00:02:52.185 --> 00:02:58.264
Tell us a little bit about the political environment that we exist in today and the power that voters have.
00:02:58.664 --> 00:03:02.104
How do these organizations function for retirees?
00:03:02.504 --> 00:03:13.224
Primarily in, in government, of course, we have the legislative and the executive branches, and Congress has become highly partisan and frankly, if nothing else, anti retiree.
00:03:13.629 --> 00:03:21.879
You hear a lot about what they're promising, but they seem to never deliver anything that has stabilized the economic position or income of retirees.
00:03:22.120 --> 00:03:27.180
And you hear about healthcare performance and reductions in costs they're not there.
00:03:27.449 --> 00:03:32.729
And so primarily we've lost a great deal of attention on the national stage.
00:03:33.109 --> 00:03:37.224
Are, Mike Roth ai7: all the currently have guaranteed?
00:03:37.625 --> 00:03:44.659
Those covered by , the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, (E R I S A ) protect those over age 65 when they have.
00:03:45.060 --> 00:03:46.710
Defined benefit pensions.
00:03:46.979 --> 00:03:49.259
But we represent people that are 65 plus.
00:03:49.259 --> 00:03:52.056
We also represent people that are under age 65.
00:03:52.265 --> 00:03:55.866
And a big issue there, of course, is even planning for retirement.
00:03:55.895 --> 00:03:59.885
There, there's very little evidence that people have enough money to retire.
00:03:59.885 --> 00:04:08.795
And so I don't think if you look across the board that retirees get very good service there and there's need for an improved savings mechanisms.
00:04:09.195 --> 00:04:14.425
Do we have a kind of disconnect in Congress between the needs of retirees and what they're doing?
00:04:14.825 --> 00:04:15.695
Yeah, sure.
00:04:15.756 --> 00:04:18.636
Politicians think on a two year or six year cycle.
00:04:18.725 --> 00:04:23.646
Members of the house are elected for two years and members of the Senate are elected for six years.
00:04:24.045 --> 00:04:28.846
And the seniors though, have to plan the rest of their lives and for their children and grandchildren.
00:04:28.846 --> 00:04:30.795
So the perception is entirely different.
00:04:31.196 --> 00:04:35.305
It's easy to duck an issue when, you're on the job for just two years and you're gone.
00:04:35.706 --> 00:04:44.886
It's not so easy if you have 25 years left to go and you're wondering how much money you're going to have in the till when you retire, and how your kids are gonna fear down the road.
00:04:45.245 --> 00:04:46.146
Or how you're gonna fear.
00:04:46.605 --> 00:04:47.415
Absolutely.
00:04:47.565 --> 00:04:47.896
Yeah.
00:04:48.016 --> 00:04:57.050
Now, what's been happening in Congress and the executive branch that puts our pensions, our social security, our Medicare at risk.
00:04:57.451 --> 00:05:00.810
I would say there's been an awful lot of political rhetoric.
00:05:00.810 --> 00:05:02.521
There's too much infighting.
00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:04.201
What do we hear on TV?
00:05:04.201 --> 00:05:06.391
And what do we see in on TV every day?
00:05:06.391 --> 00:05:14.225
It's somebody is hollering and calling someone else up to be, chastised in front of a committee for doing something on a personal basis.
00:05:14.286 --> 00:05:16.896
There's more of that going on than there is problem solving.
00:05:17.255 --> 00:05:27.896
And you've matched that with the amount of over the top campaign contributions coming from industrial organizations such as the healthcare insurance industry.
00:05:28.286 --> 00:05:35.747
And you have a Congress that gets compromised and very many people in Congress today really are there to do the job.
00:05:35.747 --> 00:05:36.887
They were, they took an oath for.
00:05:37.286 --> 00:05:37.737
To do.
00:05:37.737 --> 00:05:37.887
And
00:05:37.947 --> 00:05:39.357
you mean very few people are there?
00:05:39.406 --> 00:05:44.016
Very few of them of course, do that kind of a job that they took the oath for.
00:05:44.406 --> 00:05:49.377
Examples are of course funding Social Security and funding Medicare.
00:05:49.836 --> 00:05:58.456
It's just outrageous what how Congress has kicked the can down the road.
00:05:54.867 --> 00:06:00.326
Mike Roth ai7: Now, what is the Yeah, it's very interesting.
00:06:00.357 --> 00:06:07.206
In, in the last presidential election, 65 million voters rage 55 to 65.
00:06:07.607 --> 00:06:13.456
That was 40% of all votes cast in that election of 166 million votes.
00:06:13.877 --> 00:06:17.086
41% of them were between 55 and 65.
00:06:17.416 --> 00:06:21.826
Another 42 million voters were over age, 65, 20 9%.
00:06:22.226 --> 00:06:26.487
So combined 110 million or 66% of all voters.
00:06:26.887 --> 00:06:29.857
We're cast by seniors 55 years and older.
00:06:30.257 --> 00:06:35.807
The seniors in this country need to wake up to the fact that they're about to lose their Medicare.
00:06:35.807 --> 00:06:45.716
They're about to be challenged every time there's a presidential election about this two fundamental programs that are mandatorily funded.
00:06:45.899 --> 00:06:50.081
That means the Congress shouldn't walk away from a mandatory obligation, but they do.
00:06:50.266 --> 00:06:56.726
How do you think, the, and our National Retirees Legislative Network members should fight back
00:06:57.127 --> 00:06:58.177
Well today.
00:06:58.266 --> 00:07:00.067
There are several ways they can do it.
00:07:00.466 --> 00:07:02.867
Many attend town hall meetings where they live.
00:07:03.266 --> 00:07:06.447
They belong to the NRLN, and we are their advocate.
00:07:06.877 --> 00:07:11.117
We work hard on the issues that are very important to them.
00:07:11.476 --> 00:07:13.846
And so we use what's called an Action Alert system.
00:07:14.247 --> 00:07:28.656
Which is an email to our grassroots members asking them to make direct contact with their personal elected representatives in Washington to send a message to them on a particular issue, such as Social Security, Medicare and Rx drugs.
00:07:28.975 --> 00:07:31.319
Members, send personal emails to us Senators.
00:07:31.720 --> 00:07:35.170
Representatives, federal agencies, and the President, in fact.
00:07:35.560 --> 00:07:38.800
Now, is that system through your website?
00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:39.889
Absolutely.
00:07:39.889 --> 00:07:54.319
So that the member who wants to contact the representatives in Congress or the president directly can create the message through your website and they don't have to bother looking up the addresses, finding a stand, taking it
00:07:54.319 --> 00:07:54.769
to the envelope.
00:07:55.004 --> 00:07:55.545
Absolutely.
00:07:55.545 --> 00:07:56.930
We have a system available.
00:07:57.329 --> 00:08:03.300
Where our members can go up and construct their own message, their own representative, and send it by themselves.
00:08:03.509 --> 00:08:15.589
In addition to that, when we suggest that they take action and we present them with a message they can send to their elected representatives, they have the ability to edit it, to personalize it.
00:08:15.779 --> 00:08:28.540
So we have a, a system that retirees have a simple method to contact their representatives about issues which will affect them in their pocketbooks.
00:08:28.810 --> 00:08:29.439
Absolutely.
00:08:29.439 --> 00:08:30.430
Retirement income.
00:08:30.430 --> 00:08:30.519
Yeah.
00:08:30.670 --> 00:08:32.500
From social security or pensions.
00:08:32.799 --> 00:08:32.950
Sure.
00:08:32.980 --> 00:08:35.860
And the cost of Medicare and drugs.
00:08:36.279 --> 00:08:36.970
Absolutely.
00:08:36.970 --> 00:08:40.549
It's available 24 7 365 days a year.
00:08:40.580 --> 00:08:44.809
On the website, they have the access and all they simply do is go up and.
00:08:44.828 --> 00:08:54.327
Click on NRLN.org and go into the legislative agenda Action Alert, and they can pick any action alert, or they can create their own message and send it to their elected representatives.
00:08:54.368 --> 00:09:00.357
And they can talk with their friends and their neighbors and they can all converse and decide, yeah, this is an important issue.
00:09:00.357 --> 00:09:02.337
We'd like to use that vehicle.
00:09:02.518 --> 00:09:06.057
And so they sign up and become members of the NRLN and have that access.
00:09:06.057 --> 00:09:10.388
So joining the NLRN.
00:09:10.462 --> 00:09:10.523
Yeah.
00:09:10.923 --> 00:09:12.572
Is that done on the website?
00:09:12.962 --> 00:09:13.623
Absolutely.
00:09:14.023 --> 00:09:14.322
And
00:09:14.332 --> 00:09:15.312
NRLN.org
00:09:15.712 --> 00:09:16.173
NRLN.org?
00:09:16.572 --> 00:09:17.173
That's correct.
00:09:17.572 --> 00:09:18.263
Very simple.
00:09:18.663 --> 00:09:19.442
Everyone should do it.
00:09:19.842 --> 00:09:21.613
And you don't have to be 65 to do it, do you?
00:09:21.643 --> 00:09:22.212
Oh, no.
00:09:22.212 --> 00:09:26.562
You better start doing it 55 because you're still in the most savings mode.
00:09:26.562 --> 00:09:26.802
And what.
00:09:27.202 --> 00:09:33.793
Don't see coming down the road will become visible to you, and so you do a better job of planning ahead for your own financial success.
00:09:33.852 --> 00:09:36.613
As you see it, who is this podcast dedicated to?
00:09:37.013 --> 00:09:45.451
It's dedicated really to the hardworking people who are our grassroots members, because they can be most influential.
00:09:45.587 --> 00:09:52.727
Back home with their members of Congress and congressmen and senators are concerned about what they have to say.
00:09:52.937 --> 00:09:54.707
It's just that they don't do much about it.
00:09:54.957 --> 00:09:55.347
Bill?
00:09:55.677 --> 00:09:56.457
What are the indicators?
00:09:56.857 --> 00:10:04.327
Of what politicians should have been doing over the past 55 years regarding Medicare and social security?
00:10:04.727 --> 00:10:18.413
It is a proven fact that Congress and the Executive branch of the government of the United States have been well aware that these plans could be underfunded over time because they had the data.
00:10:18.812 --> 00:10:38.363
They had the census reports, they had the trustees reports of all, all these programs, and they saw you can visually see that years back when they didn't fund kick the can down the road and to protect themselves as being viewed as supporting a tax increase.
00:10:38.633 --> 00:10:45.962
They basically ignored the reality of financial calculations that someday these reserves will be zero.
00:10:46.173 --> 00:10:47.582
And we've reached that point.
00:10:47.597 --> 00:10:51.148
I guess at this point we wanna show our listeners a chart.
00:10:51.548 --> 00:10:57.628
Okay, that compares the 2020 census total population and growth rate.
00:10:58.028 --> 00:11:02.717
And Bill, why don't you explain what our listeners are seeing on the chart now?
00:11:02.748 --> 00:11:03.168
Sure.
00:11:03.567 --> 00:11:05.788
The population grows, as you can tell.
00:11:06.207 --> 00:11:19.937
About 26 million from 2025 out through 2050 on this chart, and it's growing slowly at a constant rate that is much lower, however than the prior years.
00:11:20.207 --> 00:11:26.217
If you look at 2020, for example, it grew at 3.4% from previous year.
00:11:26.278 --> 00:11:27.868
This is total population.
00:11:28.268 --> 00:11:34.087
So the total population is growing slowly, because as you can see from that orange line there,
00:11:34.298 --> 00:11:35.743
that's the population growth, the
00:11:35.743 --> 00:11:46.023
orange line, that's the population growth rate, and it shows that from 2025 out through 2050, it's well below 2% a year, which is less than half.
00:11:46.423 --> 00:11:51.342
The growth rate that is that we've seen prior to 2025.
00:11:51.743 --> 00:11:59.113
And so naturally the population is shrinking and so seniors became a larger and larger percent of the population.
00:11:59.513 --> 00:12:01.403
And so that's a very important factor.
00:12:01.852 --> 00:12:03.893
Now, when you look at this second chart,
00:12:04.163 --> 00:12:05.393
let's bring up the second chart.
00:12:05.793 --> 00:12:18.743
You can see the components of this chart and you can see from it the baby boomers in orange out in 2015 were 24.1% of the population, 78 million people.
00:12:19.143 --> 00:12:22.503
And everyone say the baby boomers are the biggest problem going on here.
00:12:22.903 --> 00:12:30.347
In fact, they're really not anymore because by 2028 were the two lines, the blue line and the orange line cross.
00:12:30.748 --> 00:12:46.028
All baby boomers in the United States of America will be over age 65 and in Medicare, that presents even with the slow growth, the growth in population, and the large growth in the number of people over age 65.
00:12:46.087 --> 00:12:51.977
Moving forward, you can see the population in the blue chart, blue lines and the blue stacks.
00:12:52.097 --> 00:12:55.138
Grows by 23.9%.
00:12:55.538 --> 00:13:18.197
While the baby boomers shrink down to 5% out in 2050, the phenomenon there that's happening you can't really see is that the people in orange or people over age 65 in orange and the, people who are baby boomers are now older and they consume a great deal, more of the Medicare services and the cost.
00:13:18.597 --> 00:13:21.028
Mike, I think it would surprise people to learn that.
00:13:21.403 --> 00:13:38.663
80% of every dollar spent for healthcare by the government is spent on only 25% of the people in Medicare over 65 . So 25% of the people consume 80% of the cost to the our budget.
00:13:39.062 --> 00:13:43.238
Our Congress has known this for 15 or 16 years, and they've done nothing about it.
00:13:43.638 --> 00:13:51.168
They knew that the cost per enrollee, the cost per headcount in people over age 65 was gonna be a major problem.
00:13:51.197 --> 00:13:57.927
And yet they resisted and did not fund these plans, and now they have to pay a price one way or the other.
00:13:58.168 --> 00:14:05.288
They're going to have to increase taxes or they're going to have to make radical changes and they should not do it to benefits.
00:14:05.687 --> 00:14:06.077
Okay.
00:14:06.258 --> 00:14:09.618
I thought our government is sold out to higher cost insurance companies.
00:14:10.018 --> 00:14:13.528
So now our taxpayers are paying 20% more than they need to.
00:14:13.738 --> 00:14:14.788
That's exactly right.
00:14:14.817 --> 00:14:34.908
If you look at the privatization of Medicare today, that has occurred, the government payments to Medicare private plans, also known as Medicare Advantage Plans, has subsidized the American insurance companies to the point where now 16% of every dollar paid to them.
00:14:34.952 --> 00:14:56.423
It covers their entire overhead and profit, and that today, the cost per enrollee in these private plans is 20% higher than the cost in original Medicare, and it's costing $89 billion a year in subsidies called rebates that go to insurance companies that are unwarranted.
00:14:56.822 --> 00:15:01.533
And if they're looking for more money to fund these plans, there's a hundred billion dollars.
00:15:01.932 --> 00:15:02.442
Mike.
00:15:02.878 --> 00:15:03.988
How much money did you
00:15:03.988 --> 00:15:04.168
spend?
00:15:04.168 --> 00:15:06.868
A hundred billion dollars almost a year.
00:15:06.898 --> 00:15:07.738
In two years.
00:15:08.138 --> 00:15:17.498
The latest budget, in 2025, projected a deficit loss of $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years.
00:15:17.498 --> 00:15:28.192
1.2 trillion of that 3.4 trillion is increases in rebates paid to insurance companies big hole that's 20% deeper than our fee for service would be.
00:15:28.192 --> 00:15:34.852
Why are our representatives politicians agreeing to pay all this money to insurance companies?
00:15:35.253 --> 00:15:37.743
They're agreeing to do it because they wanna privatize Medicare.
00:15:38.143 --> 00:15:42.192
They do not want the federal budget to have Medicare on its books.
00:15:42.592 --> 00:15:45.293
You will hear some people say, oh, we're not gonna cut your benefits.
00:15:45.293 --> 00:15:48.023
But what they're not saying is, we're just going to kill Medicare.
00:15:48.423 --> 00:15:48.572
Yeah.
00:15:48.623 --> 00:15:50.393
They're not gonna cut your benefits today.
00:15:50.543 --> 00:15:51.082
That's right.
00:15:51.263 --> 00:15:52.432
But tomorrow we're gonna kill 'em
00:15:52.832 --> 00:15:53.673
Tomorrow.
00:15:53.722 --> 00:15:57.562
The whole plan goes We'll, never cut your benefits one at a time.
00:15:57.562 --> 00:15:59.212
We're just gonna take the whole plan out from under you.
00:15:59.613 --> 00:16:00.332
That's that.
00:16:00.543 --> 00:16:01.472
That would be terrible.
00:16:01.873 --> 00:16:05.413
That would mean people would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for
00:16:05.722 --> 00:16:06.442
Absolutely.
00:16:06.442 --> 00:16:09.173
In this case, just a simple comparison here.
00:16:09.572 --> 00:16:13.623
They'd have to make up the difference in that 20% loss already.
00:16:13.952 --> 00:16:22.092
They'd have to make up the difference over the next 10 years for a $1.2 trillion loss, increased deficit just because of those rebates.
00:16:22.493 --> 00:16:25.582
And the problem is that after 54 years.
00:16:25.982 --> 00:16:28.832
They now have 55% market share.
00:16:28.863 --> 00:16:37.293
And when initially they planned and promised that if they could gain market share, they would show us how they would reduce costs in Medicare.
00:16:37.623 --> 00:16:42.533
Just give us these subsidies, give us these rebates, and we'll show you it's failed, it's over.
00:16:42.932 --> 00:16:52.143
The real problem is will our elected officials and our executives in this country and the government have the guts to tell the insurance companies.
00:16:52.543 --> 00:16:55.163
You can continue compete all you want to.
00:16:55.163 --> 00:16:57.982
We want you to compete, but not with taxpayer money.
00:16:58.383 --> 00:16:59.373
No more rebates.
00:16:59.773 --> 00:17:01.332
So that, that really should be the,
00:17:01.423 --> 00:17:01.903
that's a
00:17:02.023 --> 00:17:02.802
first thing.
00:17:02.802 --> 00:17:03.013
That
00:17:03.283 --> 00:17:03.822
big issue.
00:17:03.822 --> 00:17:04.212
Mike.
00:17:04.403 --> 00:17:07.722
Is there anything else, Bill, that you want to tell our listeners during this?
00:17:07.752 --> 00:17:08.712
For full episode.
00:17:09.133 --> 00:17:23.923
Yeah I think watch out in the future for our podcast regarding social security, Medicare, Medicaid funding and the cost of prescription drugs, much of what we just talked about in Social Security and Medicaid funding, and is the center of the future presentations.
00:17:24.073 --> 00:17:28.423
And so you'll want to call back to this presentation, this episode.
00:17:28.823 --> 00:17:37.073
Finally as the ending of this podcast, please support the NRN and do it quickly because we have a big job ahead of us.
00:17:37.282 --> 00:17:39.772
We appreciate you very much and we'll see you next time.
00:17:41.333 --> 00:17:41.857
Thanks again, Bill.
00:17:43.711 --> 00:17:49.070
We are gonna be back in two weeks with another episode, so look for us again.
