Medicare and Medicaid Enrollees Exceed Full Time Workers

If you ever needed to know, in a nutshell, the fundamental problem faced by the Congress and President when it comes to budgets and government expenditures, then a report in CNSNews.com and WHPTV should make it much more clear.  We're running out of workers to support all the others!!

In 2011, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), there were 70.4 million people who enrolled in Medicaid for at least one month. There were also 48.849 million people enrolled in Medicare. That gave Medicaid and Medicare a gross combined enrollment of 119.249 million in 2011.

At the same time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 112,556,000 people worked full-time in the United States in 2011. Of these 112,556,000 full-time workers, 17,806,000 worked for government (at the federal, state or local level) and 94,750,000 worked for the private sector.

The gross combined enrollment of 119.249 million in Medicaid and Medicare in 2011 outnumbered the 112.556 million full-time workers employed in both the private sector and in government in 2011.

By the way total Medicaid enrollment for the fiscal year of 2006 was 58,714,800.  So, enrollment in Medicaid has risen 11.7 million in just 5 years.

So, if the Federal budget was balanced (which it's not), this would mean that 94 million full-time private sector workers must support themselves, their families and pay for their own healthcare, PLUS

• support 108 million total Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries (back out 11 million to avoid double-counting those in both programs), and 
• nearly 47 million getting Food stamps and 
• pay most of the taxes to support nearly 18 million government workers
• pay the lion's share of all the other functions of government 

Regarding that 3rd item, government workers only have a job because you've taken most of the money from the private sector to pay for them!

I'm not trying to criticize the programs but I question the rapid rise of Medicaid enrollees, the rapid rise of Food Stamp recipients, the rapid rise of Social Security Disability recipients.  I also post this to show how the number of working Americans is now in the minority of people receiving substantial benefits. And Obama wants to expand Medicaid spending?  With 70 million of the nation's poor in Medicaid, why do we need ObamaCare?

You can see that we're running out of workers to pay for all of this!   There's not enough workers to tax!!  As of today, you'd have to raise taxes 50% (including corporate and other taxes) to balance the budget to actually pay for all of this!  I think everyone knows that there are not enough wealthy to "soak" either.

We need more workers and taxpayers.  I don't see it happening anytime soon when regulations and taxes are set to increase.  A pro-growth agenda was the only possible way out and we're not going to get it.  A new agenda from a new President might have been the thing that kick-started the economy.