>In the case of Medicare, expenditure growth has exceeded inflation which is why the failure to run a surplus to invest to cover future predictable needs is a double whammy. Not only did you not pay enough tax, but the alternative source of the premium surpluses of the young instead are privatized and sucked away as dividends.
>

Here's an excellent example from today's NYT.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/health/medicare-proposes-paying-doctors-for-end-of-life-counseling.html
Is it a good idea?
That's irrelevant to this conversation.
As long as the items covered increase and the costs of providing them increase in unpredictable ways- at the same time that contributions are fixed- the notion that Medicare is a program whose surpluses/deficits can be predicted is absurd.