Caring Much About Medicare

I CONSIDER IT a great honor, privilege, and benefit to live in a country which maintains such enlightened, beneficial, socialistic programs as Social Security and Medicare. Anyone who argues that these programs are anything other than socialism is mistaken. Certainly, they are not capitalistic. Goods and services may be produced and distributed by privately owned (non governmental) businesses in a free market, competitively, for profit, or cooperatively by the government, at taxpayer expense. The former is capitalism, the latter, socialism. In a general sense, capitalism is competitive economics, socialism is cooperative economics. Both can be beneficial to society, both can be abused and harmful. Both may exist within an authoritarian form of government, or within a democratic political system. They can coexist within a single economic framework, as they do in the United States and Europe. Conservatives are always gung ho about programs like Social Security and Medicare, until I point out that they are socialism personified. Then, they either try to argue that somehow they are not socialism....maybe not capitalism...but, umm..somehow or other..not somiclaism...or they change the subject, bemused. Those who asknowledge that they are indeed socialiam often advocate for their termination, like some plague, trying to argue that they are unsuccessful, or inefficient, a claim clearly belied by historical reality and current society. Throughout my life I had never been especially anxious to reach the age of sixty five, but was instead content to be young. When I was seventeen I considered twenty one old. When I was twenty one I considered thirty old. Now I like to think that sixty six is not terribly old, though it is, and eighty seems old. Obviously, its all relative. If age is indeed "only a number", as we like to say, then we must agree that, if nothing else, it is a rather significant number. When I turned sixty five not only the government congratulated me, but so did many corporations, people, and, admittedly, I congratulated myself. To be automatically enrolled in Medicare upon turning sixty five is a great benefit from a great government in a great country. To people who have not yet reached the age of Medicare and Social Security I always say: "You're gonna love Mecidare and Social Security". Medicare supplemental plans are available to people of low income, people who rely exclusively on Social Security. I am one such person, and I take full advantage of all opportunities. My Medicare coverage comes with so many benefits, benefits such as membership in fitness facilities through the "Silver Sneakers" program, benefits which include dental, hearing, and vision insurance, monthly food allotments, among others, that I can scarcely keep track of all the benefits I receive. All I know is that I am sincerely grateful for every benefit, notwithstanding the fact that I worked my entire adult life and contributed to the programs from which I am now benefitting. My mother was born in 1920, and Social Security came into existence when she was fifteen. She and her parents were all good Republicans with a profitable dairy farm: they hated Roosevelt, and they all were convinced that they would never receive the full beneifts from all the money they paid into Social Security. Once I asked her whether she voted for Roosevelt, and she gave me two answers' "No!", and "Hell No!". Damned if anybody in my ancestral family was gonna vote for any damned socialist... Mother worked as a nurse until she retired at sixty five, and she lived to ninety three. Late in life she acknowledged that she had indeed gotten back all her money paid into the system, and then some. Now we are told that by the year twenty forty one, or something like that, the system will go bankrupt. I don't think it will. Even my modest understanding of mathematics tells me that a few simple, modest adjustments to the system, involving changes to full retirement age and benefits paid, will suffice to permanently repair the currently broken system. And its true; some people work their entire life paying into the system, then die before they retire, or soon after retiring, and thus never receive what they are owed. These people are the unfortunate victims of life's inevtitable vicissitudes and unfairness. We must be content with the knowledge that every good citizen who works and pays into the Social Security system contributes to someone's retirement, if not their own. When the system was started, there were thirty three workers for every recipient. Now, the ratio is less than three to one. So, obviously, adjustments will be necessary. For more than eighty years Social Security has kept almost all older Americans out of poverty, and for that reason alone, despite any shortcomings, Social Security is well worth the effort it has taken to maintain socialism in concert with a free market capitalist economy. I am constantly receivng phone calls from companies who offer to carefully examine my current Medicare benefits package, and, perhaps to add more benefits to it. I alwasy respond that I am quite content with my current enrollment, and can hardly imagine getting more than I already do. I express appreciation for what I have, for my country, and for the phone call. Rarely does this discourage the caller, who insists that she or he can give me more benefits, if only I change my enrollment to what she is offering. My older sister says that she doesn't trust the phone calls, and always hangs up on them. What does she think is going to happen to her, that whe will be bored to death?