Payback?

To the editor:

I have a question on nationalized health care, open to anyone who might have even considered this.

One would assume, if we go to a tax-funded, one-payer system, where everyone is covered from one pool of tax dollars, that there will no longer be a need for Medicaid, SCHIP, veterans health benefits — or Medicare. My question is: What happens to the money I’ve been paying into Medicare for the past 35 years?

Everyone who has ever drawn a paycheck, no matter how small (there is no minimum income level for payroll taxes), has been contributing to the Medicare system. Do we just lose that money and start over, paying into a new system? The money I’ve paid in was to cover my health care after I retired; it belongs to me. If I have to start paying higher taxes to get health care benefits from the government, I should get a credit for what I’ve already been paying.

Brian Hughes,
Lawrence