Contrast "The Parable of the Talents" with the federal stewardship of Medicare

by Jeff Emmanuel at the American Spectator

....The moral of this New Testament parable -- be a good steward of a little and you will be trusted with more, but poor stewardship will lose you the privilege of being trusted with anything in the future -- is recalled to mind by the federal government's current attempt to take over the American health care system. The 33 years Medicare has been in existence have provided the federal government with an opportunity to demonstrate what type of steward its legislators and bureaucrats will be of a national health care program millions of Americans are trusting for their coverage and care.

At its inception in 1966, Medicare carried an annual price tag of $3 billion. Its Congressional founders predicted that cost would rise to $12 billion a year by 1990 -- a figure that accounted for inflation........

The true cost of Medicare is stunning. In 1990, rather than costing American taxpayers $12 billion, Medicare cost $107 billion -- an increase of 800% over the government's best guess at the program's cost 23 years before. That cost has increased exponentially as the years have passed since 1990. This year, $484 billion will be spent on mandatory Medicare outlays; by 2018, that number will be $885.1 billion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The total amount owed Medicare beneficiaries (American workers who are at least 22 years old and who have paid into the system, meaning they are due Medicare coverage upon retirement) is a staggering $32.3 trillion -- an amount over twice America's GDP, and nearly five times the publicized national debt.....

(JS Note: Assuming the Feds take in $2 Trillion in income this year, Medicare will have taken 24% of revenues - 24%!!)

Medicare, the chief example of health care as run by the federal government, is an utter mess that is losing doctors, resorting to anti-choice laws to keep seniors enrolled, and hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars by the trillions. President Obama and his allies in the Democratic-led Congress should demonstrate their ability to be good stewards of the people's health care dollars and coverage by fixing their own Medicare mess before they seek to expand their grip on America's health care system as a whole.

Read the whole post here ....