What next for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?
Every year since 2010, Social Security revenues, excluding interest earned, have been lower than payouts, and things promise to get worse. Credit: TNS / Alexey Yuryevich Rotanov
The July 21 editorial, “Washington’s three-card Monte,” about the future of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, struck home as I now reach my full retirement age as defined by Social Security.
Our government’s ill-conceived changes to the tax code will surely result in significant increases to the national deficit. While I would like to change that decision, I cannot. What I can do is suggest changes to how we fund our social programs in the hope of sustaining them. The big question is, will our politicians ever put the interests of our country above their own focus on being re-elected?
Steps need to be taken now. I suggest that we spread the pain by increasing not only future contributions, but by managing benefits. Specifically, increase amounts paid into Social Security, and increase the full retirement age. Place a moratorium on adjustments for inflation. With Medicare, increase premiums and deductibles. While none of these suggestions are popular, they are needed to assure these programs will be available to our future generations.
Robert Biancardi,Rockville Centre
Reforms to Social Security in 1983 accurately took demographics into account. The changes did not anticipate the share of income going to the wealthiest Americans increasing dramatically and no longer subject to Social Security payroll taxes, which are capped. According to the Center for American Progress, 90 percent of all wage income went to the wealthy in 2013, as opposed to 83 percent in 1983. That cost the Social Security Trust Fund $1.1 trillion.
Policies were created that crippled workers’ ability to gain a fair share of the national income, policies from crushing the labor movement, to trade and immigration policy that neither protected American workers, immigrants nor foreign workers.
Share buybacks, a stock manipulation prohibited until 1982, helped returns from profits for investors soar while other capital uses plummeted. At one time, an average of 50 percent of profits was reinvested in research and development, capital investment and increased benefits and wages; now upward of 94 percent of profits goes to investors, and at newly lowered tax rates. This has left the share of income subject to the payroll tax diminished.
There are no free markets. Politicians pick the winners and losers. Social Security and the American worker have been the losers for nearly 40 years.
Joel Herman,Huntington
July 30 marked the 53rd anniversary of Medicaid and Medicare. These programs provide quality, affordable health care to more than 100 million Americans, including the elderly, children, the disabled, and low-income households.
We also must be mindful of the serious threats to health care that we now face. A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, brought by Texas and several other states, has been filed in federal court. The Trump administration agrees with the lawsuit’s argument. If this lawsuit prevails, insurance companies will be allowed to deny health care to millions of people with pre-existing health conditions, or make them pay much more.
Some lawmakers are trying to revive the Graham-Cassidy bill, which could leave 15 million more Americans uninsured and cut federal funding to states for Medicaid over time.
The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice would pose a threat to health care. He argued that the president can refuse to enforce the Affordable Care Act. He has also ruled that the act’s birth control coverage mandate infringes on religious liberty.
Long Islanders need to make their voices heard, and their representatives should stand with them in the fight to prevent the dismantling of health care protections and coverage for all — especially those who need it most.
Dr. Eve Krief,Centerport
The Associated Press news story “A price tag on ‘Medicare for all’ ” [July 31] was incomplete. The estimated price of Medicare for all, an additional $32 trillion in federal spending over 10 years, is accurate, but according to a study last year by the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, at our current rate of spending, including estimated increases due to our aging population, the United States will spend $49 trillion over the next 10 years in our current system.
The predicted outcome is actually a savings of $2 trillion over 10 years in total national health care spending.
The question is not whether we can afford Medicare for all, but how can we not afford it? The United States is the only country in the industrialized world where your health care is so often tied to your job. Lose your job, lose your health care. People go bankrupt because of unexpected medical expenses.
Yes, your Medicare tax would go up. But your monthly premium would go away — the tax would replace the premium. Also, co-pays and deductibles would go away. I have spent more than $56,000 in 2013-17 on co-pays and deductibles.
Medicare for all will save people thousands of dollars. My only question is, where can I sign up?
Eric Gemunder,Huntington Station
