Paul Ryan claims to oppose dependency on the federal government. So let’s ask some questions:
Is a senior citizen who cannot afford health care “independent”?
Is a senior citizen who is without income “independent”?
No. Before these programs, senior citizens who did not have these things became dependent upon their families or charity to provide health care and sustenance. Before Medicare, only 51% of senior citizens had health insurance. Senior poverty has gone from 30% in 1959 to 8.9% in 2009 — largely because of Medicare and improved Social Security benefits.
Those senior citizens are more independent now, not less.
And it is not “government charity” that made it so. It is a much different concept: Social insurance. Folks pay into the system, and then they get something out of it when they retire. They’ve earned it by the time they collect benefits. You can call it an “entitlement” — as if it were a rich uncle’s windfall inheritance, or a title of nobility — but in fact it’s an earned benefit. It’s reciprocity, not charity, that’s at work here.
And we do it together, through the government, because that’s how you get everyone covered; that’s how you make it secure. And it has been that way for a long time now.
The problems of Medicare are twofold: One is that there’s a demographic bubble, with a large and aging population about to collect benefits; and the other is simply the rising prices in health care (cf pg 8-11), which pressures Medicare is subject to as much as the private market. That, by the way, is the source of the $500 billion in future Medicare savings that the Affordable Care Act contemplates, and which Ryan’s very plan anticipates as well. Medicare needs cost controls — we miss you Don Berwick — not to be gutted and turned into something weaker and less effective.
Dependency is what these programs prevent. That’s the reason why they exist, and the reason why they’re popular.
Christopher says
Specifically, if I pay into something it seems I am in fact entitled to receive from it as well.
More generally, as a citizen of the richest nation on the planet, yes, darn it, I AM entitled to a share of that wealth!
johnd says
That’s how many Conservatives feel however the feeling is many of us will never get a die back from the tens/hundreds of thousands we “pay in”. The people receiving SS now will receive every penny they “paid in” within the first few years of collecting.
Nobody is entitled to any wealth.
marc-davidson says
but it’s not supported by the facts. SS is an extremely well funded program and will pay out indefinitely with only minor adjustments.
johnd says
But in many cases the difference between catastrophe and a near miss is “only minor adjustments”. Until action is taken we are on a disastrous course with SS.
Mr. Lynne says
The problem isn’t social security, its health care.
SomervilleTom says
I agree with you that many Conservatives feel as you describe. They are dead wrong, and their dogmatic attachment to their prejudice (which is what that is) hurts all of us.
In fact, because Social Security is insurance (not an investment), SS recipients get back (a) far more than they put in, and (b) far more than they can gain in any legal investment program (most of us don’t have access to the legal scams used by Mitt Romney).
This simple fact has been true since inception of Social Security, and has been lied about by right-wing commentators since at least the George W. Bush era.
You are absolutely correct that nobody is “entitled to any wealth” — more than one culture has abandoned its elderly and ill to die of starvation and thirst in the wilderness. What you cannot do, however, is promote an “I’ve got mine so screw you” attitude towards wealth and simultaneously claim to be Judeo-Christian or even civilized.
Donald Green says
By the examples above people are impoverished because the social structure, not government, fails to fill in the gaps in a fellow countryman’s survival. When it operates this way the only alternative is to let many citizens live miserably or die prematurely. The entitled faux “job creators” are creating the very thing they abhor, namely people who depend on government to live decently. They want it this way because it excuses them from paying people properly or allowing for wider economic opportunity. Even here they put the brakes on anything above subsistance living. If a family earns enough to take care of basic needs no government interference is necessary. When neglected it produces a population that is unhealthy, unskilled, and uneducated. This is a recipe for social decline. False “dependency” on private charity assuages or provides the philosophy for malevolent uneven income distribution based on a zero sum game. Charity arising from a religious concept but is no substitute for a living wage. Time and time again civilizations have failed because they have given advantage to a few rather than fairness for all.
johnd says
Civilizations do control their own destiny which is as it should be. We often look back at prior days as being so much better than current days but I would challenge you to name a time when things were better in our country in totality. Remember, you would have to take the good with the bad so for example don’t say in the 1950’s unless you want to say you were ok with rampant institutional racism, equal pay for women being a joke, homosexuality being something to put you in jail or an asylum…
The Civilization we live in now determines who is elected and what policies will define who we are. Luckily we have the US Constitution to protect us from a true democracy which would have created a far different country than we live in today with absolute majority rule. We will always have some people with more money and that is fine with me. We will always have some people who are much smarter than others, some much faster, some more caring… I would postulate that if you could wave a magic wand and delete everyone’s wealth down to zero or at least to an equal level, within a few short years we would be back where we are since the cream would rise to the top, the entrepreneurs would start businesses and excel, the lazy people would put their hands out and need help, the laborers would look for labor jobs… and we would eventually get back to where we are now. Just my opinion…
Donald Green says
Our civilization started in 1776 hardly a gold medal winner for longevity. So we continue to evolve. Allowing the expression of rights has been a work in progress and I certainly think it is foolish to start all over again. Another Civil War, no thanks. It is part of progressive or liberal thought to expand choices and if some actors have their thumb undeservedly too heavy on the levers of economic prosperity this needs change. No I do not accept the status quo but say it can be improved. However again wiping the slate clean would put off economic, political, and social fairness for centuries. Making change is a slow slog in this country. On some things that is OK but on others it is hampering prosperity for many. If you asked the same question of the Conservative camp, of course you get a different answer. So we have to engage in a political struggle—what do we keep and what do we change. Those civilizations that failed continued to deplete resources from its people resulting in people starving, moving away, or changing their government. That’s how this civilization began. Maybe the return of the same players in a society would occur in your model but if employees were paid properly for their productivity and there was a greater sense of what a progressive tax code means, if security was better managed, and if health care as a human necessity was available to all, then maybe there would be more resources to ensure a decent existence even for the poor and the slackers. After all the latter are somebody’s children or family member. If you want insight from a more elegant source than I can give you I refer you to Thomas Paine’s treatise “Agrarian Justice” or the work of Henry George, “Progress and Poverty.” Both are available through a simple google search.
JHM says
looks very different to a member of the Baincapper Class de haut en bas. In that case, the usual technical term is “(Personnel) Management.”
Mittius Coriolanus Pompo himself is, as you know, M. B. A. ’75 from the H*rv*rd Victory School, formerly the Allston (Mass.) Academy of Chirurgy and Haircut Science.
Happy days.
seascraper says
Poverty rates improved for all age groups before 1970, not from Medicare.
The situation now is you have had a weaker economy post 1970, but you’re still handing out all this money to seniors. The result is you now have a much higher rate of poverty among young people than among seniors.
Christopher says
…if Europe and Canada had not largely figured out how to have more just societies. This isn’t utopia, but somehow we can’t do better even though we’re richer than our counterparts?
seascraper says
My guess is that we committed to social spending at an unreasonable level, and it began to take resources from production and jobs leading to higher debt. At that point the country delinked the dollar from gold in order to use inflation to cut social spending and escape from the debt.
“Cuts to Medicare” in whatever form are just another way to slow down the delivery of these services and escape from a debt we can’t afford to pay. Obama proposes to reform Medicare essentially by euthanizing the old people earlier. The Republicans expect us to do it individually by buying cheaper premium plans. Either way it has to be done, is going to be done, because we are now stuck in a system that is dumping money into the medical care industry without much regard to cost or effectiveness, and we don’t have the growth to keep paying for all that care at such a high premium.
SomervilleTom says
This canard: “Obama proposes to reform Medicare essentially by euthanizing the old people earlier” — is a demonstrated lie.
At least you acknowledge that this entire meme is premised on a “guess” (a wrong one, at that). Since the 1970s, the deficit and national debt has increased under GOP control and decrease under the Democrats.
Lies, guesswork, and failed governance — the essence of today’s GOP.
JHM says
A. Not a hard question:
Happy dys.
Christopher says
The GOP just cuts them off while Dems try to enact policies which necessitates less dependency. When someone whines that too many people are dependent on government, my first question is what is that person’s solution for needing less dependency.