Posted on 07/21/2002 7:12:04 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
Pity the poor retirees.
If conventional wisdom is to be believed, America's elderly struggle to get by on limited incomes, sometimes forced to choose between buying groceries or essential prescription drugs. As the U.S. Senate debates competing proposals to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, you will hear lots of sob stories about the stereotypical grandmother reduced to eating cat food.
Don't believe it. That impoverished grandmother forced to eat Whiskas tuna because of her high prescription drug bills may exist somewhere --- but she is a very rare case. The simple truth is that the nation has done a good job of providing for its senior citizens, so much so that many of them have the money not only for their medications but also for those geezer bus tours to Atlantic City or Dollywood.
The vast majority of elderly citizens have manageable pharmaceutical bills. Sixty-eight percent of seniors spend less than $1,000 per year in out-of-pocket costs on prescriptions. Fifteen percent spend between $1,000 and $2,000 a year.
The other 17 percent have soaring out-of-pocket expenses topping $3,000 a year and may genuinely need help, if they are poor. But the massive drug benefit proposed by Democratic senators would cost $500 billion in the first six years and aid all seniors, wealthy and poor alike.
There is no doubt that the cost of prescription drugs has escalated sharply, squeezing the budgets of Americans of all ages. But the Senate's mawkish concern for the elderly has less to do with their finances and more to do with their political clout: Senior citizens are the nation's most reliable bloc of voters.
(Unhappily for me, they also have the spare time to write or phone not-yet-retired newspaper columnists. I will no doubt spend the next week fending off their criticisms. To my mother: Please stop reading here; it doesn't get any better.)
Because of their political activism, the elderly have received a substantial share of the nation's welfare spending. (Yes, Social Security is a welfare program. Retirees consume the equivalent of funds they and their employers paid in within the first few years. Medicare is a welfare program, too.) Measured in 1990 dollars, total federal spending on a social safety net for older Americans amounted to approximately $13,190 per elderly resident in 1995, according to Martha Ozawa, a social scientist at Washington University in St. Louis.
By contrast, the nation has allowed many of its children to languish in poverty --- without the housing, educational opportunities or health care they need. In 1995, total federal spending on a children's safety net amounted to about $1,400 per child, according to Ozawa.
Here's why older citizens, including baby boomers like me, should worry about that: Younger workers support retirees. Social Security and Medicare are paid from taxes collected by people still working. If the nation doesn't properly take care of its children, they will not have the skills to shoulder the massive burden of paying for the next crop of retirees --- the huge baby boom cohort.
"America's future is being jeopardized by the country's inability to invest effectively in the education and financial well-being of its children. It is critical for policy-makers to keep in mind that children have lost substantial economic ground in relation to adults and elderly people since the late 1960s," Ozawa has said.
Of course, if children could vote or give huge donations to political campaigns, politicians would jump to accommodate them. Since they cannot, a course correction toward more spending on impoverished children will require great political courage and sacrifice.
What the nation needs is for a few geezers in Congress to stand and speak frankly to their own generation. They ought to say, "It's time for us to allow children to receive a larger portion of the nation's affluence."
cynthia@ajc.com
That impoverished grandmother forced to eat Whiskas tuna because of her high prescription drug bills may exist somewhere --- but she is a very rare case.
Now if Cynthia would keep addressing the democRAT's scare tatics and lying to the American people, we may make headway. Unfortunately, my Dad is in the group with Cynthia's mother and believes in handouts from "Uncle Sugar".
Some would say that she shows just how bad a newspaper the AJC has become.
Well... it is, of course, ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS that consume around 30% of our get well financial effort. Most of them, of course, mandated and demagogued by our generally corrupt state and federal elected representatives.
I'm sure malpartice insurance and out of control jury awards have little impact. (sarcasm off)
Naah, I respectfully disagree. If you did a numerical breakdown on her columns, I'd think you find 90% or better of her views on given issues to be standard liberal boilerplate.
She'll manage a good curveball like this one sometimes, but it's nowhere near 50/50, as you seem to imply.
What happened to children being responsible for their elderly parents? I love it when the socialists get into arguments amongst themselves about how to redistrbute our earned money.
The point is the next big grab of our money by the geezers is not based on need but on their political power.
Taxing families to cushion geezers only makes it more difficult to care for our own children.
Cynthia makes several good points about the elderly, but then proceeds to squander them in the end. The simplest way to increase the money available to children is to quit taxing the bejabbers out of young parents.
Yes. Dare I hope that this was what she meant?
a.cricket
I remember on article she wrote about two black Democrats running against each other in a primary - and she still found a way to attack the GOP in it.
The AJC should just print some pictures of her (she is quite a babe) instead of her column.
Unfortunately no, she wants more Goverment spending, but instead of to Seniors, to the children.
What was that skit on SNL, "Deep Thoughts"? I can see your point, I really can, but I just think that family is responsible for one another, the "Deliverance" aspect notwithstanding.
Unfortunately the result is to do try to do all, and increase taxes.
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