As an addendum to my earlier post, the AP is now reporting that the finances of both Social Security and Medicare, especially the latter, are in worse shape than recently thought. Medicare will pay out more money this year than it takes in and will be insolvent by 2017, a mere eight years from now.

Social Security — whose trust fund the federal government has been raiding for years to meet current expenses — will have a surplus of only $4 billion next year instead of the $86 billion projected last year and will begin running a deficit in 2016 as the tidal wave of retiring baby boomers crests. Assuming the government redeems its IOU’s, which constitutes the trust fund’s assets, the fund will be empty in 2037.

So the Obama administration wants to “reform” American healthcare by setting up a “public option” that would compete with private health insurance and would be modeled on . . . . Medicare!

That is like an engineer deliberately designing a bridge modeled on Galloping Gertie.