Columnist Attacks
AARP
Calls Medicare Bill Step to “Economic Suicide”
“Medicare has become so large…it’s literally destroying the social
and economic structure…”
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The column is syndicate to other newspapers but apparently can only be
reached on the Web through the Dallas Morning News Website, which
requires a lengthy sign-in and then bombs the screen with advertising,
before you finally reach the column. It does not, however, cost anything
and you can reach the site by going to
www.scottburns.com. Burn’s email address is
sburns@dallasnews.com |
Dec. 14, 2003 - In his weekly business column in the Dallas Morning
News, Scott Burns attacks AARP for supporting the Medicare reform bill –
not because he wanted better benefits for senior citizens, but because
he thinks the cost of this new program is “economic suicide” for the
United States.
He opens his column pointing out the bill would not have passed without
the support of AARP and it will cost $400 billion over 10 years. He says
it places a financial burden of up to “a stunning $6 trillion” on future
generations.
The 63-year young Burns declares, “I
am not a member of AARP. I have never been a member of AARP. I will
never be a member of AARP.” He adds, “I made this decision because I am
a father and a grandfather. My wife and I have three children and five
grandchildren. For their sake, I will never join this organization.”
He
is mad at AARP for supporting the bill and writes, “But while our
president, the Republicans and the Democrats pander to this powerful
voting group with unlimited notions of entitlement, it remains that this
bill is yet another step – and a big one – toward economic suicide for
the entire country.”
Here
is his reasoning:
•
The most recent data show that 16 percent of all people under 65 –
nearly 40 million people – have no health insurance at all. Worse, about
11 percent of all children under age 18 are not covered by health
insurance. Note that the subject is not a particular insurance benefit.
It is having any health insurance at all. If our children and
grandchildren aren't protected, how can we demand it for ourselves? It's
not right. It's wrong.
•
This is not a problem experienced by a downtrodden underclass. It can,
and has, happened to millions of mainstream Americans. Indeed, one of
the issues in Silicon Valley is the high number of tech workers who no
longer have health insurance. The worst fear that employees over 50 have
is how they will pay for health insurance if they lose their jobs.
•
According to a survey of employers in March, only 56 percent of
establishments with fewer than 100 employees offer health insurance as a
benefit.
• In
larger companies, many workers don't have health insurance as a benefit
because they are part-time – and always will be. The Wal-Mart
alternative is to have the employee pay nearly half of the premium for a
limited coverage plan, even though the employee often earns less than
$12 an hour.
•
Rising corporate health insurance costs – many of them the result of
cost shifting due to low Medicare reimbursements – are threatening real
worker wages. After bottoming at a 2 percent annual rate of increase in
1996, employee benefit costs (largely health insurance) were rising at a
6.5 percent annual rate at the end of September. This is the "wage base"
that carries the entire weight of Social Security and Medicare. Without
it, neither can exist.
Social Security began in 1935 as a "social contract" between those who
still worked and the elderly who had seen their savings wiped out in the
Great Depression. It was a good and compassionate idea. It was enlarged
with the creation of Medicare in 1965.
But
you can have too much of a good thing.
Medicare has now become so large and so costly that it is literally
destroying the social and economic structure that supports it.
Burns is not the
only conservative taking this view in opposition to the Medicare
reform bill.
Rich Lowry, who is 33 years old, and editor of the conservative
National Review wrote a scathing column in October asking, “Why isn't
it considered uncouth for seniors to force young families, struggling
to pay the bills, to fund their often cushy retirements?”
He refers to the efforts to add prescription
drug benefits to Medicare as “Operation Please Granny.” He says, “. We no
longer have a Welfare State so much as a Geriatric State, at the service of
the selfish whim of the elderly.”
Read
his column...
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