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Senior Citizen Opinions & Analysis
President Obama Appears Poised to Tackle the Future
of Senior Citizen Programs Quickly
We can’t kick this can any further down the street,
the new president says
By Tucker Sutherland, editor & publisher
 Jan.
20, 2009 – It is a momentous day in America and senior citizens, who
have seen the most of our history, are the most aware of today’s
historic significance. We now live in a different and better country.
Americans have handed the mantle of power and leadership to a young,
brilliant, man of African descent. So, President Barack Obama has
crossed the bar but he must now face one of the most challenging
environments ever to greet an incoming president. Senior citizens will
be impacted by his leadership in the same way as all Americans on many
issues, but will also have a unique set of concerns – primarily
involving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Year after year seniors are warned that these key
programs, known as entitlements, are going broke. Just in the last few
days the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services warned that the trust
fund that is the primary source of funding for Medicare will run out of
money in 2016 – just seven years from now.
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The importance of this program to seniors is
obvious – seniors are the sickest of Americans and the cost of health
care continues to out pace prices for other goods and services. It
places a large and unique financial burden on older Americans that would
lead to disaster for many – probably most – without the government’s
health care program for seniors.
Leading the surge in health care costs have been
prescription drugs, although, price escalation seems to have declined in
recent months due, primarily, to an influx of generic drugs. The drug
program added by Medicare in 2005 has made it possible for many more
seniors to afford their prescribed medicines.
“Social Security is still the foundation for most
seniors' retirement. Without this critical safety-net program, over half
of all older Americans would fall into poverty,” according to the
National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
The importance of Social Security to older
Americans is probably greater than most assume. And, it has become even
more important to those seniors who have lost much of their retirement
security in the stock market crunch.
Social Security is expected to take in less money
in 2011 than in pays out in benefits and will have to dip into reserves.
The strain on the government and taxpayers is
tremendous and will get a whole lot worse. Social Security recently
announced a new online enrollment system and said they expect to enroll
10,000 seniors a day for the next 20 years in Social Security and
Medicare.
Medicaid, often over-looked, remains the real
safety net for millions of older people who run out of money in their
old age, often due to health care costs or the necessity of long-term
care, which is extremely expensive and not covered by Medicare.
President Obama is not unaware of the challenge to
preserve these critical programs but the question that worries senior
citizens is what will be the cost to them. Will benefits be trimmed for
these programs?
Obama told the Washington Post last week that the
nation's long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the
government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement
programs.
The Post said, “That discussion will begin next
month, Obama said, when he convenes a ‘fiscal responsibility summit’
before delivering his first budget to Congress. He said his
administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform
and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and
the stock market.
"’What we have done is kicked this can down the
road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to
kick it any further,’ he said. ‘We have to signal seriousness in this by
making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not
someone else's.’"
There is little there to explain
any specifics the new president may propose for the entitlement programs
at his “fiscal responsibility summit” in the next few days, but it is
clear that he plans to take substantial action to save these programs.
As he said, we can’t kick the can down the street any further.
In speaking of the entitlement programs, Obama told
the Post, "This, by the way, is where there are going to be very
difficult choices and issues of sacrifice and responsibility and duty.
You have to have a president who is willing to spend some political
capital on this. And I intend to spend some."
It is time for action on these
senior programs and we hope all advocacy groups, political parties and
all those who benefit from these programs will have open minds. Let’s
don’t jump to squash ideas and oppose proposals before they have been
fully presented and thoroughly debated.
>>
To read the complete interview reported in the Washington Post, click
here.
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