SENIOR MATTERS
It is important to understand the impact that our aging population will have on our country as the baby boomers retire and require necessary services under our "entitlement" laws. Many seniors do not recognize or even accept that Social Security and Medicare fall into the "entitlement" category because "we paid into them", but the simple fact is that they do. As well, Medicaid and our Food Stamp programs will subsidize a large portion of seniors as many will be financially unable to meet their basic needs with Social Security and other retirement savings alone. Certainly, an extended care facility stay will eat through any traditional retirement savings quickly and require the assistance of Medicaid to step in and fill the gap as well as other State and Federal programs.
SOCIAL SECURITY
Social Security was established to address the 60% poverty rate experienced by our senior population. We have heard claims in the media and by members of Congress that Social Security will not be there for "you" when you retire and that "Social Security will be bankrupt" by 2030. The reality is that Social Security, as well as the private sector, will have a tsunami of retirees as baby boomers leave the workforce. This wave of retirees will put significant stress on meeting the expected outflow of Social Security checks. Worse case scenario according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections is that payments will fall to 80% payout if we do nothing, but there are very simple fixes to maintain 100% integrity of Social Security. Many do not understand that the Social Security taxes removed from our paychecks stop after $118,000 of annual income. Simply raising that taxability to $250,000 would accommodate the baby boomer tsunami.
MEDICARE
The costs to administrate private insurance portions of Medicare are 6 times more costly than the government run program. Kaiser Family Foundation report.
AN IMPORTANT REPORT ON ENTITLEMENTS
This is another valuable report from the non partisan government agency Congressional on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) that sheds an important light on entitlements. There has been a significant propaganda war waged against some of our essential programs. This report finds that over nine tenths of entitlement benefits go to the elderly, disabled, and the working poor.
FRAUD IN THE SYSTEM
Investigations by the Department of Justice reaps financial benefits by prosecuting Healt Care Providers engaged in Medicare and Medicaid Fraud. The costs of the investigations gives a high return on the investment by fraud convictions. The primary complaint by the agency is inadequate funding to investigate fraud on a larger scale.