Granny Snatching: Baby Boomers Want To Know Whether They Can Count On Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security

As huge numbers of Americans approach the dreaded age of 65 years young we wonder what is going to happen to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?

It appears that all three are in serious jeopardy of being depleted – although even there we have disagreement and misinformation. Check in one place and they say that with a bit of tweaking – meaning cancelling benefits in places that traditionally are not funded with payroll deductions – the headlong rush to insolvency will be halted.

Check another place and the exact opposite story prevails. These accounts – which I guess actually aren’t accounts any longer but more like line items in the federal budget            – have more money going out than coming in and that is just going to get worse.

Eventually, meaning in our lifetimes, pretty much when we’ll need these programs the most, there will be no money left and we will all be heading back to the days when seniors ate cat food and lived in unheated flats wearing multiple layers of winter coats from November to April each year.

The Medicare fund is the one that concerns me the most because if we are able to move, think and put things in bags we can always go back to work somewhere, somehow, if we need the money after we retire. And after we reach 66 – by today’s rules – the government won’t even reduce our Social Security checks if we continue to work.

But if we get sick or need an operation, then we have an issue. Because if we have more than the maximum income – a changeable figure – we probably will rely on one of the Medicare programs, but if we have less than the maximum we’ll have to apply for Medicaid, which to many people is just another word for going on welfare and becoming a ward of the state.

It is difficult enough to figure out what is going on with these programs when things seem stable, but with all the back and forth discussions and arguments about them they represent a moving target. Something has to be done, we understand that, but what will it be, and how will it affect us?

Everyone who has to run for office periodically says that anyone currently on Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid won’t be affected. That has a nice ring to it when you are campaigning, but the truth is, everyone already has been affected in some way or another even if it is just not receiving a Cost of Living Adjustment, or through facing another increase in the deductions for Medicare.

Then we have the rumors flying around the Internet about how much we’ll have to increase our Medicare deductions in coming years. For instance, my Mom’s monthly Social Security has an automatic deduction of about $97 for Medicare coverage. But one Internet email blast says that next year the monthly deduction will increase to more than $104, and by 2014 it will more than double to $247 each month.

The $247 figure apparently is not correct, but the monthly deduction will be nearly $120 by 2014 which still is a steep increase for someone on a fixed income and no Cost of Living Increase.

I also received another missive that says the figures above are just a scare tactic, but in the same document I get a link to Kaiser Health News that says “In recent years, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (The Bowles-Simpson Commission), the Debt Reduction Task Force, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and lawmakers, including Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, have all suggested changing traditional Medicare.

Most of the ideas would create a single annual deductible – generally around $550 – after which beneficiaries would pay about 20 percent of medical costs up to a maximum annual cap, ranging from around $5,000 to more than $7,500.”

That’s right about where my jaw drops and I get a stunned look on my face because if I am going to be liable for up to $7,000 in annual Medicare costs why on earth would I want to be on Medicare? For that money I can get a decent personal medical care policy that probably will cover my wife as well.

And if Congress would get off its rear end and open up medical insurance to competitive, across-state-line bidding, I bet my policy costs would drop like a rock. Yours too. That’s another problem; if I want medical coverage in Connecticut I have to get it from an insurance provider that is licensed to sell insurance in Connecticut.

But if another company in Kansas or Missouri for instance, has a better policy at less cost because its pool of insurees has a smaller percentage of people who are likely to need major medical coverage, I still can’t buy from them at a cheaper rate. So why aren’t we fixing that instead of all the other complicated “fixes” we keep hearing about but don’t understand?

I have an idea. We have two senators and five representatives from Connecticut now serving in the US Congress. Since seven politicians in one place could easily become a debate, how about if we invite our two senators to get together and hold one of these Town Hall meetings to specially help us understand Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?

Sen. Lieberman already is considered an expert on these issues, and Sen. Blumenthal was a real tiger when it came to consumer issues when he was the state Attorney General, so why can’t we have a true information session on governmental consumerism, before something permanent is enacted, with those two as the headliners?

It’s time for our elected officials to surface in public, available for straight questions and capable of giving straight answers to the public the represent. It would help immeasurably if we could get a cohesive explanation of just what is happening to our health care programs, from the horses’ mouths.

(And I refuse to call these programs entitlements – which carries of the connotation of give-away programs – because I paid for them for my entire working life.)