The contributions into the HI Trust Fund (Medicare Part A) does earn interest for Medicare. The HI Trust Fund will cash in all of its non-market, interest bearing T-bills by 2024.
The reality is that Medicare and SS are pay as you go systems. Today's workers pay for today's retirees. They are Ponzi schemes. Medicare and SS represent an unfunded liability of over $60 trillion.
That's what I was getting at. If it had been run responsibly as an insurance scheme, it might have worked, but Democrats spent it all?
What would one have, had that $55,000 been invested in t-bills over 30 or 40 years? I don't know.