60 days, 60 stats - #13
Today's stat is a year: 2017. That's the year Medicare will run out of money. 50,000,000 seniors depend on it, so we should probably fix it. Medicare is also a major drain on our budget - right now 21% of our federal tax dollars go to support it, making it just slightly higher than defense spending. So how to the candidates differ? Well, they both agree it's broken, and they both want to tie Medicare spending to a percentage of GDP, meaning as the national economy improves or declines, Medicare spending goes with it. The key difference is this; Obama is a critic of premium support. He would retain Medicare's defined-benefit structure, meaning that the government will pay whatever it takes to cover a specified set of services. Romney prefers a "defined contribution" approach, without actually fixing what's wrong with Medicare. This means, rather than paying whatever it takes, he'll give you a check, and you're on your own if that isn...