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Carol Forsloff - In 1959 more than one third of the elderly lived in poverty without access to health care for complex diseases, as retirement plans often included living with children or in deprivation, facts politicians neglect in their discussion of the economy and the elimination of Medicare for other options.
In 1959 seniors had no health insurance, unless a company pension offered it. There was no Medicare, for example. Those who were poor lived mostly on Social Security and could not afford medical care. These numbers included legions of men who served in World War I.
Prior to the enactment
of Social Security in 1935 about half of seniors lived in poverty. This dropped to approximately 1/3 in 1959, with much of the continuing struggles occurring for lack of health coverage for the diseases impacting the elderly. For that reason Medicare was enacted.
Half of all seniors had no health insurance until
Medicare legislation in 1965. Medicaid was instituted to cover the low-income elderly, the disabled, and the blind as well as parents with dependent children on welfare.
The poverty status of the elderly became the impetus for legislation to help this vulnerable group. At the time, most elderly could depend on children for some minimum care. Some seniors opt for special communities for over-55 folk where folks look after each other to some extent, as in
Ryderwood, but even those towns with a built-in support system can't care for the most infirm.
By the year 2000 seniors were among the most solvent and were covered by Medicare, thus reducing the major source of economic damage on retirement planning. This was the end of the Clinton era, before George W. Bush took office.
But times changed in 2011, and seniors and persons with disabilities are again the vulnerable groups, as the problem of advancing medical costs, decreasing pensions and program reductions strike hard at those least able to care for themselves independently. It also comes at a time when an increasing number of seniors
cannot rely on children for dependent care, either because the children are suffering from economic losses or because the new elderly have no children.
Research established that about ¼ of older Americans in 2008 were below 150 percent of the poverty line, and the estimates are about 1/3 when including the additional medical costs that force elders to choose between food and medicines. Those statistics came in 2008 at the close of the Bush Presidency and before Obama took office. They also came during a time when nearly 2/3 of all Americans favored some sort o
f national health insurance.
All of this means that even with Medicare, 1/3 of all seniors or more are living at or near poverty, a rate that approximates the rate when Medicare was first enacted. And what the was stance of both political parties about Medicare at the time it was made law?
ThinkProgress offers the following quotations from key Republicans during that period:
"Ronald Reagan: “[I]f you don’t [stop Medicare] and I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years
telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”
George H.W. Bush: Described Medicare in 1964 as “
socialized medicine.”
Barry Goldwater: “Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind,
why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink.”
Bob Dole: In 1996, while running for the Presidency, Dole openly bragged that he was one of 12 House members who voted against creating Medicare in 1965. “
I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare . . . because we knew it wouldn’t work in 1965.”
In 1965 Democrats held the majority in Congress and passed Medicare into law under the Johnson administration. As the
Minnesota Post points out, the Republicans knew there were great numbers of Americans who wanted national health insurance according to polls at the time. They proposed an alternative program for Medicare they named “Eldercare.” The plan required a means test for low-income seniors to receive federal subsidies for privately administered health insurance.
Today the Republicans offer a new program, one that promises current seniors to maintain the present Medicare system that would change in ten years to one that would offer coverage by selected insurance plans. The cost of those plans relative to projected income, are not part of the promise of change that Republicans project.
The claim the Republican plan would improve senior’s lot is not advanced
by economists who have examined the plan. This new plan has been advanced by Paul Ryan, who as a member of the House Budget Committee is upheld for his originality in devising it. The plan would replace Medicare with a voucher program of $8000 to help seniors buy their own health insurance. It would advance in cost in relationship with the consumer price index and is said to cover 32 percent of the cost equivalent of Medicare. But the insurance beneficiary would be responsible for the rest, that is estimated at a total cost of more than $20,700, after the match of $9,750.
This plan is similar to that originally proposed by Republicans in 1965 when they voiced their opposition to Medicare.
Given the loss of real income of seniors experienced from 2000 to 2008, economists do not project that income will be advanced in the future with respect to medical and ordinary living costs.
How many seniors will be in poverty given the mounting health costs and the amount they are projected to pay in the next decade? Experts predict a 3 to 5 year timeline of recovery from the present economic problems,
including job rate, with more and more older persons in the ranks of the unemployed prior to age 65. It is a recipe for future poverty for US elderly.
