Article from the Associated Press in today's newspaper. Study Reveals Medicare Overpaying for Back Braces! Medicare Pays $919 for Standard Back Braces that Retail for $100 on the INTERNET and $191 at Retail Stores! Medicare Admistrator says they will consider adding back braces in an EXPERIMENTAL Competitive Bidding program for medical equipment! WOW, the government is preparing to plunge into a process that was first introduced in the 1900's. How radical! This only 50 years after the military was purchasing $10k toilet seats and nuts & bolts for $20 that retailed for .25c. Budget talks between Obama & John Boehner may lead to more competitive bidding! Same article "It's Estimated That Medicare Squanders $750 Billion per year through uneeded care, wasteful spending and fraud." Maybe we can convince Congress and the Federal Civil Service to emulate lemmings and run off the fiscal cliff.

""Health care costs for seniors is costing too much money. This from national politicians who get free medical care in office.......""

? Name a national politician who gets free medical care. And since that comment was your only point made in rebuttal, it should be pointed out that whatever you were paying into in 1958 was a pittance compared to the wonderful, miraculous and terribly expensive pharmaceutical, surgical, diagnostic and preventative healthcare juggernaut that is the American system today.

And the pleasant but terribly expensive result of that system is that life expectancy has gone through the eaves. An American male born in 1900 had a life expectancy of 49 years. Your average man didn't LIVE to collect medicare or social security. Those programs weren't created or funded for today's America.

"Blame" is an emotive word. But reality is that entitlements of all flavors are what have gotten us to where we are.

Patience
Try Corporate Farming subsidies, Ethanol subsidies, Bridges to No Where in Alaska, Incompetent FEMA disaster recovery programs, production of army transport vehicles that were under armored for Middle East combat leading to military deaths & injuries but are still in production, Obama gets free health care (and I will provide additional names in another post). If you would read my second post you might see that the system set up by bureaucrats is a large part of the Medicare cost debacle (with No Competive Bid for Purchases). How about the ridiculous price of prescriptions when compared to the same products purchased in other countries. Prescriptions that miraculously drop from $435 for a 30 day supply to $38 for the same drug the month after the patent expires?) Life expectancy has increased dramatically, unfortunately job opportunities for anyone over 55 have gone in the opposite direction, with a lot of jobs going overseas resulting in fewer people paying taxes and more collecting unemployment.
By the way, I paid Social Security taxes starting in 1958 and continued for the next 45 years, and still pay taxes on my monthly benefits today. How long have you contributed to Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, Disability, School, etc. taxes.
It is b---s--- "that entitlements have gotten us where we are". It is budgets bloated with patronage programs/susidies/wasteful spending devoted to getting career politicians re-elected that have gotten where we are.

-- prescription drugs in America are expensive because our private sector has produced the vast majority of new drug breakthroughs.

-- The POTUS receives healthcare as Commander-in-chief through the military network, just as a veteran would. And I sort of doubt he was the one you were talking about saying seniors cost too much.

Congressman pay premiums, as does the president once he isn't CIC anymore.

Whatever taxes any american has paid since 1958 has obviously been returned to them forefold since we have spent WAY more than we have taxed. And that debt isn't being paid off by your generation.

http://www.lowcosthealthinsurance.com/how-much-health-insurance-does-the-president-of-the-united-states-have/

The irony in all of this is that in an effort to hold onto their entitlements, seniors voted to kill themselves. They were terrified of Romney and Ryan who tried to address the unsustainable growth of entitlements by - among other things - shifting more of the burden onto the consumer of these services. Seniors voted to kill themselves by demanding to pay the same or less for what costs more, because the inescapable consequence of that demand is rationing. In deed, rather than in words, seniors are saying that their own grand-kids and great-grand-kids should pay for them long after they turn to dust. The "me generation" is living up to their reputation by running out on the bill for hundreds of trillions in unfunded liabilities. A fine legacy indeed.

DXJ
You are leaving a few things out of the equation. Fewer people paying into Social Security as our workforce population shrinks, especially jobs that pay well, as we export jobs to other countries. Remember the statement by "deep thinkers" in the 90's that the USA was going to be a "service economy" instead of wasting it's time on manufacturing? I guess they thought other nations were not going to develop and pass us in science and technology. How many decades have the politicians diverted Social Security taxes into their pet projects and given the U.S. Treasury IOUs? Remember the joke by a Senator that "You take a $100,000 here and $100,000 there and pretty soon you are talking big money"? Well that easily became $100 million dollars here and $100 million dollars there. What is your solution? Reduce medical funding without reducing the cost of of the medicine and services? Have an age cut off line for various types of medical procedures? Reduce funding for some categories of illness? A simplistic "just raise Social Security and Medicare taxes" doesn't address the problem unless you significantly reduce medical costs at the same time.

Patience
Who is the "we" in "we have spent WAY more than we have taxed". Is it you and your generation (whatever generation that may be) who have increased the national debt by ridiculous amounts? It is much larger than it was while I was working full time . You also seem to assume that no senior citizens are in the work force, even though they are well past the retirement age. Open your eyes and look around and see the number of "grey and white" haired employees in the stores. For the most part they are not the ones driving BMWs & JAGUARs. Drug companies recoup their costs many times over for the research they put into developing new drugs. How can U.S. manufactured drugs cost so much less in Canada? If it wasn't profitable would the drug companies bother selling into that market? The latest ploy is to try and "tweak" a drug that has been on the market for years and apply for a patent extension on the grounds it is a "new drug"?