Regarding benefits, one of Ronald Reagan’s objections to social security was that the beneficiary could not choose who could receive payments after death. It was and is limited to a spouse. He believed that since it was your money, you paid for it you should be able to choose, especially if you were unmarried or widowed.
the solution is to privatize the inheritance rights.
right now the government inherits the money.
so it goes automatically to the husband/wife intestate and if unmarried then? and then? and then? and then?
I agree, this is where the rubber meets the road. It was never about “hospital visitation” or other things. It was and always has been about money. When I asked a liberal “Christian” about who was paying for this new class of beneficiaries they just looked dumbfounded.
Most of the useful idiots I know just simply have failed to realize it’s gonna cost a lot of taxpayer money. I like Reagan’s thinking on this, very libertarian.
Does the CBO have numbers on the cost of this? I have not found them, but sometimes I miss things like that.