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eridani
eridani's Journal
eridani's Journal
March 28, 2013
Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: There are ten orthopedists on the staff of Washington Hospital in Fremont, California who perform joint-replacement surgery, but only two are allowed to use the hospital's state-of-the-art Center for Joint Replacement. The Center charges more than twice the average for California, while the two approved surgeons apparently have a policy of discouraging low-income residents, including Medi-Cal patients.
Perhaps the most appalling consequence is that the patients of the other eight orthopedists receive their post-op physical therapy in the hallway of the main hospital rather than in the new "breathtaking physical therapy space."
As a community hospital, serving the public, and with pressure from the state Department of Public Health and the Washington Township Health Care District, it is likely that this arrangement will be modified.
So what does this have to do with health care reform? We can ask ourselves if a single payer system that separately budgets capital improvements would have ever allocated funds for a state-of-the-art center serving only two prima donna surgeons and their affluent patients exclusively. Of course not. Attention surely would have been directed to a decision on whether or not it was even appropriate to establish a separate joint replacement pavilion. Likely the funds would have been better spent on improving or replacing existing surgical and physical therapy facilities.
Achieving the goal of health care justice for all will be made that much more difficult if our health care professionals and administrators fall below the ethical plane that we envision for the healing arts.
CA hospital joint replacement center allows only 2 of its 8 orthopedists to practice there
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_22853885/fremonts-washington-hospital-patients-doctors-excluded-from-newWhen Robert Cantley needed both knees replaced in August, he was expecting to recover from the surgery at Washington Hospital's fancy, new $42.7 million Center for Joint Replacement.
According to hospital marketing brochures, the center offered "A Higher Level of Care" in a 20,000-square-foot space featuring 25 private patient rooms, a "breathtaking physical therapy space" and a beautifully landscaped therapy garden.
Instead, Cantley did his physical therapy sessions in a dimly lit hallway on the sixth floor of the main hospital in what he described as "a miserable set of circumstances."
Cantley's physician, Dr. John Jaureguito, who has been on the medical staff at Washington for 18 years, said the arrangement means his patients get "second-class" treatment. "Therapy is literally in the hallway," he said. "I've never come across anything like this before."
What Cantley and many other patients at the public hospital didn't know was that access to the new center, the only facility of its kind in the Bay Area, is restricted to just two orthopedic surgeons at the hospital -- the only ones on the Washington staff who met 24 criteria set by the hospital.
According to hospital marketing brochures, the center offered "A Higher Level of Care" in a 20,000-square-foot space featuring 25 private patient rooms, a "breathtaking physical therapy space" and a beautifully landscaped therapy garden.
Instead, Cantley did his physical therapy sessions in a dimly lit hallway on the sixth floor of the main hospital in what he described as "a miserable set of circumstances."
Cantley's physician, Dr. John Jaureguito, who has been on the medical staff at Washington for 18 years, said the arrangement means his patients get "second-class" treatment. "Therapy is literally in the hallway," he said. "I've never come across anything like this before."
What Cantley and many other patients at the public hospital didn't know was that access to the new center, the only facility of its kind in the Bay Area, is restricted to just two orthopedic surgeons at the hospital -- the only ones on the Washington staff who met 24 criteria set by the hospital.
Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: There are ten orthopedists on the staff of Washington Hospital in Fremont, California who perform joint-replacement surgery, but only two are allowed to use the hospital's state-of-the-art Center for Joint Replacement. The Center charges more than twice the average for California, while the two approved surgeons apparently have a policy of discouraging low-income residents, including Medi-Cal patients.
Perhaps the most appalling consequence is that the patients of the other eight orthopedists receive their post-op physical therapy in the hallway of the main hospital rather than in the new "breathtaking physical therapy space."
As a community hospital, serving the public, and with pressure from the state Department of Public Health and the Washington Township Health Care District, it is likely that this arrangement will be modified.
So what does this have to do with health care reform? We can ask ourselves if a single payer system that separately budgets capital improvements would have ever allocated funds for a state-of-the-art center serving only two prima donna surgeons and their affluent patients exclusively. Of course not. Attention surely would have been directed to a decision on whether or not it was even appropriate to establish a separate joint replacement pavilion. Likely the funds would have been better spent on improving or replacing existing surgical and physical therapy facilities.
Achieving the goal of health care justice for all will be made that much more difficult if our health care professionals and administrators fall below the ethical plane that we envision for the healing arts.
March 22, 2013
NYT Reader Response:by Don McCanne of PNHP
A forgiveness formula for hospitals?
Other nations have been successful in providing health care to everyone at a cost much below that of our dysfunctional system here in the United States. Their programs often have first dollar coverage; therefore medical debt is almost unheard of - certainly a minuscule fraction of what we have here.
Instead of establishing strategies for forgiveness in the future, wouldn't it be more logical to establish a health care financing system in which debt forgiveness would never need to be a consideration?
Plans for forgiveness of hospital debt
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/forgiveness-formulas/
In an ideal world, collecting debts would be as simple as asking debtors to pay their obligations when they are able to. But in reality most businesses have found that they need to obtain other assurances, such as collateral or the option to shut off services to a delinquent payer. Otherwise it is too easy for debtors to claim hardship and walk away without paying.
On the other hand, many families and other debtors do experience genuine hardship. In those cases it can be compassionate and even efficient to at least partly forgive the debts of people who have fallen on hard times. Many economists see loan defaults as (sometimes) an efficiency-enhancing form of risk-sharing.
One approach would be for lenders to develop and disclose a ?forgiveness formula? that would clearly define ?hard times? and indicate precisely what kind of forgiveness is possible. The advantage of forgiveness formulas is that distressed borrowers can be certain where they stand with the lender and can readily evaluate whether they were treated "fairly".
Hospitals are also known to partly forgive medical debts incurred by the uninsured, while they make no accommodation for many others. Some states require hospitals to explain in writing how they go about discounting charges for hardship patients, but you might guess that hospitals worry that patients will game those calculations in order to pay less.
In an ideal world, collecting debts would be as simple as asking debtors to pay their obligations when they are able to. But in reality most businesses have found that they need to obtain other assurances, such as collateral or the option to shut off services to a delinquent payer. Otherwise it is too easy for debtors to claim hardship and walk away without paying.
On the other hand, many families and other debtors do experience genuine hardship. In those cases it can be compassionate and even efficient to at least partly forgive the debts of people who have fallen on hard times. Many economists see loan defaults as (sometimes) an efficiency-enhancing form of risk-sharing.
One approach would be for lenders to develop and disclose a ?forgiveness formula? that would clearly define ?hard times? and indicate precisely what kind of forgiveness is possible. The advantage of forgiveness formulas is that distressed borrowers can be certain where they stand with the lender and can readily evaluate whether they were treated "fairly".
Hospitals are also known to partly forgive medical debts incurred by the uninsured, while they make no accommodation for many others. Some states require hospitals to explain in writing how they go about discounting charges for hardship patients, but you might guess that hospitals worry that patients will game those calculations in order to pay less.
NYT Reader Response:by Don McCanne of PNHP
A forgiveness formula for hospitals?
Other nations have been successful in providing health care to everyone at a cost much below that of our dysfunctional system here in the United States. Their programs often have first dollar coverage; therefore medical debt is almost unheard of - certainly a minuscule fraction of what we have here.
Instead of establishing strategies for forgiveness in the future, wouldn't it be more logical to establish a health care financing system in which debt forgiveness would never need to be a consideration?
March 22, 2013
Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: Many critics of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) say that the health plans to be offered in the proposed state insurance exchanges should be replaced with plans that have fewer regulatory requirements and that can be sold across state borders. They often cite the bargain prices of plans offered by eHealthInsurance as an example of how we could make health insurance more affordable for everyone. So what is eHealthInsurance offering?
By their own analysis, eHealthInsurance does not consider their plans to be comprehensive unless they offer the eight benefit categories listed in the article excerpt above. If those benefits are included, the premiums are 47 percent higher for both individual and family plans than the premiums for their cheapest plans. Note that these eight benefits are not the same as the ten benefit categories that are required as essential health benefits under ACA, so it is likely that the premiums under ACA will be even more than 47 percent higher than the cheap eHealthInsurance plans. This doesn't even take into consideration cost sharing such as the deductibles.
There is already concern that the benchmark silver plans under ACA, with an actuarial value of only 70 percent (patient pays 30 percent of costs, which might be partially offset by income-indexed subsidies), may leave patients vulnerable to excessive out-of-pocket costs. If the stripped down eHealthInsurance plans were allowed as replacements for exchange plans, it is inevitable that most enrollees would face financial hardship should they develop significant medical problems.
So what is the response of eHealthInsurance? eHealth senior vice president Robert Hurley says, "I think there is a fair amount of concern that the health plan requirements are too rich."
This exposes the highly touted low cost eHealthInsurance plans as the shoddy plans that they are. You might be nominally insured, but don't you dare get sick.
ACA health care plan requirements "too rich"?
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-health-insurance-rates-20130319,0,2057027.story
"I think consumers can expect new health plans next year are going to be somewhere between 40% to 60% more expensive," said Bob Hurley, eHealth's senior vice president of carrier relations. "I think there is a fair amount of concern that the health plan requirements are too rich."
"I think consumers can expect new health plans next year are going to be somewhere between 40% to 60% more expensive," said Bob Hurley, eHealth's senior vice president of carrier relations. "I think there is a fair amount of concern that the health plan requirements are too rich."
Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: Many critics of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) say that the health plans to be offered in the proposed state insurance exchanges should be replaced with plans that have fewer regulatory requirements and that can be sold across state borders. They often cite the bargain prices of plans offered by eHealthInsurance as an example of how we could make health insurance more affordable for everyone. So what is eHealthInsurance offering?
By their own analysis, eHealthInsurance does not consider their plans to be comprehensive unless they offer the eight benefit categories listed in the article excerpt above. If those benefits are included, the premiums are 47 percent higher for both individual and family plans than the premiums for their cheapest plans. Note that these eight benefits are not the same as the ten benefit categories that are required as essential health benefits under ACA, so it is likely that the premiums under ACA will be even more than 47 percent higher than the cheap eHealthInsurance plans. This doesn't even take into consideration cost sharing such as the deductibles.
There is already concern that the benchmark silver plans under ACA, with an actuarial value of only 70 percent (patient pays 30 percent of costs, which might be partially offset by income-indexed subsidies), may leave patients vulnerable to excessive out-of-pocket costs. If the stripped down eHealthInsurance plans were allowed as replacements for exchange plans, it is inevitable that most enrollees would face financial hardship should they develop significant medical problems.
So what is the response of eHealthInsurance? eHealth senior vice president Robert Hurley says, "I think there is a fair amount of concern that the health plan requirements are too rich."
This exposes the highly touted low cost eHealthInsurance plans as the shoddy plans that they are. You might be nominally insured, but don't you dare get sick.
March 15, 2013
Legislators think voters are more conservative than they actually are
This is from a consultant's email list--I'm sure she won't mind my copying it, given that I spelled her name right. If you are interested in running for office or working on campaigns, do sign up.
As far as state legislators are concerned, all voters are conservatives.
OK, we’re being hyperbolic. But only a little bit, according to a recent survey that should have all progressive change-makers headed for the planning table - and maybe the budget spreadsheet - to revisit strategy decisions.
David Broockmany and Christopher Skovronz surveyed every candidate for state legislative office in the U.S. in 2012 (about 10,000 people). They got 1,907 responses from a wide variety of districts, candidate types (incumbent, challenger, etc.) and split about equally between Republicans and Democrats. They asked about the candidates’ own positions and what they thought their voters’ positions were on same sex marriage and universal health care. The researchers then matched up the candidates with district-level polling data on those same two issues.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/csdi/miller-stokes/08_MillerStokes_BroockmanSkovron.pdf
Key findings:
•Conservative politicians overestimate support for conservative policy views among their constituents by over 20 percentage points on average.
•70% of liberal candidates underestimate support for liberal positions among their constituents.
•The democratic process - elections - does nothing to alter politicians’ misperceptions of the conservatism of their voters.
•In districts where supporters of same sex marriage and universal healthcare outnumber opponents by 2 to 1, liberal politicians appear to typically believe these policies enjoy only bare majority support while conservative politicians typically outright reject the notion that these policies command widespread support.
Yikes. So, now what?
At least these three things:
1) Even if you don’t work on state policy, this should be alarming.
46 US Senators and half of current members of the House used to be state legislators. There’s no reason to believe state legislators don’t take their biases and issue positions with them when they’re promoted from the state house to the US Capitol. If you care about progressive federal policy, you should care that state legislators across the ideological perspective dramatically underestimate the progressivity of their constituents.
2) Safe assumption: it’s not just marriage equality and universal health care. Your progressive priority is suffering, too.
The study doesn’t go further than to document state legislative candidates’ dramatic misperceptions of the opinions of their voters on these two progressive issues. The researchers chose those issues because, “(1) these issues are very highly salient in both national and state mass politics, (2) both national and state legislators are currently making high-stakes policy decisions on these issues that will affect tens of millions of Americans, and (3) these issues tap into two core ‘dimensions’ of contemporary American politics: degree of government economic redistribution and involvement in the case of universal healthcare, and social conservatism in the case of same-sex marriage.”
We think it’s safe to hazard a guess that a number of other progressive priorities, from climate change to education to tax reform, could be described the same way, so they likely suffer from the same conservative bias amongst candidates for state office.
3) The overestimation of the conservatism of the electorate matters. Progressive campaigners should work to fix it. Here are some ideas to get you started.
If candidates think their voters are more conservative than they really are, it follows that candidates will take more conservative positions on the stump and in office. At minimum, it’s a safe bet that the misperception prevents some state elected officials from being leaders on progressive issues.
So: what will you and your organization do to fix it?
Just a few of the things we’d love to work with you to try:
•Do in-district, in-depth, issue-specific polling for public release and use in private meetings with state legislative candidates and incumbents.
•Pick a district represented by a wobbly ally (or a sometimes opponent) and go deep in that district to mobilize supporters of your policy position (even if not your organization) to make a call or send an email.
•Test a campaign aimed at people who are likely to support a target incumbent (Republicans in a safe Republican district, for example) to mobilize them to make their opinions known on your issue to their state legislator. Note that this is different than asking them to vote differently; that’s not the point. The point is to correct a misperception.
Holler if you/your organization is game: info@englin.net or 202.683.8465
If you’re interested in more reading on the study, some good resources:
The Atlantic: Are Americans as Conservative as Their Elected Officials Think?http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/are-americans-as-conservative-as-their-elected-officials-think/273669/
Washington Post Wonkblog: One study explains why it’s tough to pass liberal lawshttp://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/are-americans-as-conservative-as-their-elected-officials-think/273669/
Englin Consulting, LLC
Shayna Englin <info@englin.net>
2803 Mt. Vernon Avenue, Suite 719
Alexandria, VA 22301
202.683.8465
www.englin.net
March 13, 2013
Health Care for All PA, a statewide non-profit organization today released an economic impact study. The results prove that a single-payer health care plan will save families, businesses and tax payers $17 billion annually while at the same time providing comprehensive health care to all.
This study was done by University of Massachusetts – Amherst professor of economics Gerald Friedman, Ph.D. It compares the cost of the current for-profit health insurance model in Pennsylvania whereby provider choice is limited and health services are rationed by health insurance companies to that of a consumer-driven health care system which lets people have the freedom to choose their own doctors, hospitals and health care providers.
Some of the important advantages of a single-payer system are:
- Comprehensive coverage for every resident of Pennsylvania, including dental, vision and mental health services;
- Eliminates the need for hospitals to absorb the cost of care for the uninsured;
- Reduces bureaucracy for private physicians resulting in reduced administrative costs and improved compensation for private physicians;
- Reduces or eliminates health insurance over-costs for small business, allowing for more job creation, greater reinvestment of profits, and reduced workers’ compensation costs.
- Radically reduces the total cost of health care to levels more consistent with costs in the rest of the industrialized world.
Single-Payer Would Save PA $17 Billion Annually
http://www.healthcare-now.org/single-payer-would-save-pa-17-billion-annuallyHealth Care for All PA, a statewide non-profit organization today released an economic impact study. The results prove that a single-payer health care plan will save families, businesses and tax payers $17 billion annually while at the same time providing comprehensive health care to all.
This study was done by University of Massachusetts – Amherst professor of economics Gerald Friedman, Ph.D. It compares the cost of the current for-profit health insurance model in Pennsylvania whereby provider choice is limited and health services are rationed by health insurance companies to that of a consumer-driven health care system which lets people have the freedom to choose their own doctors, hospitals and health care providers.
Some of the important advantages of a single-payer system are:
- Comprehensive coverage for every resident of Pennsylvania, including dental, vision and mental health services;
- Eliminates the need for hospitals to absorb the cost of care for the uninsured;
- Reduces bureaucracy for private physicians resulting in reduced administrative costs and improved compensation for private physicians;
- Reduces or eliminates health insurance over-costs for small business, allowing for more job creation, greater reinvestment of profits, and reduced workers’ compensation costs.
- Radically reduces the total cost of health care to levels more consistent with costs in the rest of the industrialized world.
March 10, 2013
Given that health insurance plans will have to meet new minimum coverage standards starting in 2014, HealthPocket examined the current marketplace of individual health plans to measure the market disruption that will occur as these plans are replaced by plans compliant with the new standards.
Our research took the Affordable Care Act's Essential Health Benefits as our starting point. The Essential Health Benefits are the minimum categories of health insurance coverage that every qualified health plan must have starting January 1, 2014. HealthPocket then examined 11,100 individual health plans across the United States to see how many plans had coverage in each of the Essential Health Benefit categories.
The data shows that there will be a near complete transformation of the individual and family health insurance market starting in 2014. Less than 2% of the existing health plans in the individual market today provide all the Essential Health Benefits required under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Implications for Health Insurance Premiums?
One of the questions raised by the results of this study is whether the coverage expansion required by the ACA will cause premiums to rise in 2014. Although the answer to that question is beyond the scope of this study, premiums could rise due to a combination of factors, including:
* The closing of the coverage gap as described in this study
* Guarantee issue provisions that will allow people with pre-existing
medical conditions to enroll in health plans
* ACA actuarial value requirements on the maximum out-of-pocket costs that
can be charged to beneficiaries
Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: One of the problems that needed to be addressed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was the fact that health plans in the individual market have very skimpy benefits - benefit packages that were designed by private insurers who were attempting to keep their premiums competitive. This study confirms the extent of the inadequacies of these plans.
In response, ACA included a mechanism to require a minimum basic level of essential health benefits (EHB). The expansion of the benefits to be covered, along with guaranteed issue to those with preexisting disorders, and placing a maximum on out-of-pocket costs, will all result in significantly higher premiums for plans offered in the individual market. That is in spite of the fact that many will still find the benefits to be deficient, and will still face large out-of-pocket costs because of the low actuarial values of the plans that most people will select.
Even with subsidies, these plans will be expensive. And for those who do not qualify for subsidies? Maybe those potential purchasers would finally see the wisdom of establishing an equitable public system of financing health care through progressive taxes - a single payer national health program. They certainly aren't going to like what they are going to get under ACA.
Almost No Existing Individual Health Plans Meet New ACA Essential Health Benefit
http://www.healthpocket.com/healthcare-resources/few-existing-health-plans-meet-new-aca-essential-health-benefit-standards#.UTnodq4tb3VGiven that health insurance plans will have to meet new minimum coverage standards starting in 2014, HealthPocket examined the current marketplace of individual health plans to measure the market disruption that will occur as these plans are replaced by plans compliant with the new standards.
Our research took the Affordable Care Act's Essential Health Benefits as our starting point. The Essential Health Benefits are the minimum categories of health insurance coverage that every qualified health plan must have starting January 1, 2014. HealthPocket then examined 11,100 individual health plans across the United States to see how many plans had coverage in each of the Essential Health Benefit categories.
The data shows that there will be a near complete transformation of the individual and family health insurance market starting in 2014. Less than 2% of the existing health plans in the individual market today provide all the Essential Health Benefits required under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Implications for Health Insurance Premiums?
One of the questions raised by the results of this study is whether the coverage expansion required by the ACA will cause premiums to rise in 2014. Although the answer to that question is beyond the scope of this study, premiums could rise due to a combination of factors, including:
* The closing of the coverage gap as described in this study
* Guarantee issue provisions that will allow people with pre-existing
medical conditions to enroll in health plans
* ACA actuarial value requirements on the maximum out-of-pocket costs that
can be charged to beneficiaries
Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: One of the problems that needed to be addressed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was the fact that health plans in the individual market have very skimpy benefits - benefit packages that were designed by private insurers who were attempting to keep their premiums competitive. This study confirms the extent of the inadequacies of these plans.
In response, ACA included a mechanism to require a minimum basic level of essential health benefits (EHB). The expansion of the benefits to be covered, along with guaranteed issue to those with preexisting disorders, and placing a maximum on out-of-pocket costs, will all result in significantly higher premiums for plans offered in the individual market. That is in spite of the fact that many will still find the benefits to be deficient, and will still face large out-of-pocket costs because of the low actuarial values of the plans that most people will select.
Even with subsidies, these plans will be expensive. And for those who do not qualify for subsidies? Maybe those potential purchasers would finally see the wisdom of establishing an equitable public system of financing health care through progressive taxes - a single payer national health program. They certainly aren't going to like what they are going to get under ACA.
March 5, 2013
the evidence for incompetence in the private sector is overwhelming. Data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows that since 1997 private insurance costs have risen much faster than Medicare costs. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, medical administrative costs as a percentage of claims are about three times higher for private insurance than for Medicare. A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public Citizen found that health care bureaucracy last year cost the United States $399.4 billion. The U.S. Institute of Medicine reports that the for-profit system wastes $750 billion a year on waste, fraud, and inefficiency. As a percent of GDP, we spend almost twice the OECD average.
When we look beyond industry malfeasance to the effects on human life, we find that Americans are paying the ultimate price. We now have a shorter life expectancy than almost all other developed countries. A National Research Council study placed the United States LAST among 17 high-income countries.
It wasn't always this way. Since 1960 there has been a close parallel between worsening life expectancy and increased health care costs as a percentage of GDP. Most disturbing is our growing infant mortality rate relative to other countries. A UNICEF study places the U.S. 22nd out of 24 OECD countries in "children's health and well-being."
Horror Care: How Private Health Care is Shortening Our Lives
http://www.nationofchange.org/horror-care-how-private-health-care-shortening-our-lives-1362411408the evidence for incompetence in the private sector is overwhelming. Data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows that since 1997 private insurance costs have risen much faster than Medicare costs. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, medical administrative costs as a percentage of claims are about three times higher for private insurance than for Medicare. A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public Citizen found that health care bureaucracy last year cost the United States $399.4 billion. The U.S. Institute of Medicine reports that the for-profit system wastes $750 billion a year on waste, fraud, and inefficiency. As a percent of GDP, we spend almost twice the OECD average.
When we look beyond industry malfeasance to the effects on human life, we find that Americans are paying the ultimate price. We now have a shorter life expectancy than almost all other developed countries. A National Research Council study placed the United States LAST among 17 high-income countries.
It wasn't always this way. Since 1960 there has been a close parallel between worsening life expectancy and increased health care costs as a percentage of GDP. Most disturbing is our growing infant mortality rate relative to other countries. A UNICEF study places the U.S. 22nd out of 24 OECD countries in "children's health and well-being."
March 3, 2013
Here's a proposal for Social Security that was on the New York Times' op-ed page Wednesday (2/20/13):
Wealthy…or super-wealthy? This is part of Paul Ryan adviser Yuval Levin's attempt to find "common ground" on the entitlement issue: "Both sides should agree at least to spend less money on the wealthy." So who are these "wealthy" people who would be getting a benefit cut equal to the rate of inflation every year? According to the SSA, about 34 percent of people over 65 have family incomes of $50,000.
Now, you can argue about what "wealthy" is, but I think you would find pretty widespread agreement on what wealthy isn't: $50,000 a year. If you sent the New York Times an op-ed outlining your plan to balance the budget by raising taxes on "wealthy" people who make 50k a year or more, it would be put in the same pile that gets the submissions about Elvis's UFO diet. But when you're talking about cutting entitlements, if you want to call those people "wealthy," that's perfectly reasonable.
But wait! Those aren't the only people who are getting too much from the government and need to have their benefits cut–the middle third of the elderly are also "wealthy" and need their benefits cut–but by only half the rate of inflation per year. The ones making more than $50,000 must be the super-wealthy, the regular wealthy make…between $25,000 and $50,000, roughly.
For comparison purposes, the poverty line for a family of four is $23,350. Talk about a shrinking middle class!
When You're Cutting Social Security, 'Wealthy' Begins at $25K
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/02/23-3Here's a proposal for Social Security that was on the New York Times' op-ed page Wednesday (2/20/13):
The top third of beneficiaries (by lifetime income) [would] receive no annual cost-of-living adjustment in retirement. The middle third would get half of today’s adjustment, and the bottom third would receive the same annual increase they do now. Such a reform…would reduce Social Security spending by more than a tenth over a decade and fix the program’s long-term financing.
Wealthy…or super-wealthy? This is part of Paul Ryan adviser Yuval Levin's attempt to find "common ground" on the entitlement issue: "Both sides should agree at least to spend less money on the wealthy." So who are these "wealthy" people who would be getting a benefit cut equal to the rate of inflation every year? According to the SSA, about 34 percent of people over 65 have family incomes of $50,000.
Now, you can argue about what "wealthy" is, but I think you would find pretty widespread agreement on what wealthy isn't: $50,000 a year. If you sent the New York Times an op-ed outlining your plan to balance the budget by raising taxes on "wealthy" people who make 50k a year or more, it would be put in the same pile that gets the submissions about Elvis's UFO diet. But when you're talking about cutting entitlements, if you want to call those people "wealthy," that's perfectly reasonable.
But wait! Those aren't the only people who are getting too much from the government and need to have their benefits cut–the middle third of the elderly are also "wealthy" and need their benefits cut–but by only half the rate of inflation per year. The ones making more than $50,000 must be the super-wealthy, the regular wealthy make…between $25,000 and $50,000, roughly.
For comparison purposes, the poverty line for a family of four is $23,350. Talk about a shrinking middle class!
February 22, 2013
Why Republican governors want Medicaid expansion but not exchanges
Medicaid is a government-run program, and the exchanges are market-based. They're just recognizing that government does better at funding health care than the market. On to single payer?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/21/why-republican-governors-are-saying-yes-to-medicaid-no-to-obamacares-exchanges/
These same governors have, however, also eschewed another big Obamacare component: The exchanges. The three most recent Medicaid expansion converts—Florida’s Rick Scott, Michigan’s Rick Snyder and Ohio’s John Kasich—have all rejected the idea of setting up the marketplace, leaving it to the feds to do the work, instead (Michigan is splitting the difference and will run its market in partnership with the feds).
Why embrace one part of the health care law — a single-payer system that will stretch President Obama’s law to cover millions more Americans — while ditching the other more market-oriented aspect? It likely has to do with the big consequences for a governor who chooses not to expand Medicaid—versus the tiny reward with setting up a very complex insurance marketplace.
There’s not a lot riding on governors’ decision to build a health insurance exchange. The marketplaces certainly are important to the Affordable Care Act: They’re the online portals where millions of Americans will ultimately purchase health insurance, the key vehicle for delivering the health law’s insurance expansion.
Building a health exchange is a huge undertaking. Between connecting disparate government computer systems and creating a seamless shopping experience, industry analysts say that this process should take two or three years.
If governors cram it into 10 months, and the final product comes out subpar, they would likely take the blame. But if a governor doesn’t go through with building one, the federal government swoops in. It has promised that every state will have an insurance exchange by Oct. 1, the date that the new markets will open for enrollment.
February 13, 2013
The Challenge
As conservatives relentlessly demand more and more spending cuts in their crusade to impose austerity on our economy, they have fixated on cuts to benefits offered by Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – the core pillars of family security.
One particularly noxious idea is the "chained CPI.” Conservatives like it because it would cut Social Security benefits immediately for everyone in the system – if we let them replace the more scientific index we have used for years to make sure benefits keep up with the cost of living. And some Democrats like it because it’s a way to give deficit hawks real spending reduction – while pretending it is simply a "technical fix" – not really a benefit cut.
At this writing, President Obama’s staff pretends it’s a better index – and the president keeps offering it as part a “grand bargain.”
But the chained CPI is a political trick, not a technical fix. It is a hidden benefit cut that would shackle seniors with lower benefits and thus less security over time. With seniors in the bottom 40 percent of the income scale dependent on Social Security for almost 90 percent of their income, it would dramatically raise poverty levels among the retired, the disabled and the widowed.
Tremendous pressure to enact this change is being exerted by private groups funded by Wall Street advocates of Social Security retrenchment or even privatization. They seek to use the current deficits – the result of the economic collapse caused by Wall Street's excesses – to force unpopular cuts in the security programs American families rely on. They do so by claiming that "entitlements" cause our long-term debt problems, lumping Social Security in with health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid. They claim Social Security is going bankrupt without changes. And then they call for "reform," with the supposedly technical fix of a lower cost of living adjustment masking a deep cut in benefits. A powerful bipartisan array of Washington insiders has echoed this argument, from deficit jeremiads like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the Bipartisan Policy Center's Deficit Reduction Task Force and the Heritage Foundation to established liberal groups like the Center for American Progress and Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
Without a massive mobilization by an informed public, there is a clear and present danger that within the next few months the economic security of the elderly, disabled and surviving children will be needlessly compromised for decades to come by our country's political elites.
Make the Case
A "chained CPI" differs from the standard consumer price index we're familiar with because it claims to take into account “substitutions” — the degree to which consumers will change what they buy in response to price increases. For example, if the price of going to the movies dramatically increases, consumers might instead rent more DVDs to save money. Now we all make substitutions – but many of the things seniors buy are things you just can’t substitute, like medicines, or doctors visits, or basic foods. But the chained CPI wasn’t designed with seniors’ buying habits in mind. Applying it to Social Security assumes seniors make the same substitutions as the average consumer, which they often can’t afford.
Here are seven reasons shackling seniors and the disabled with a chained CPI is just plain wrong.
1. It's a huge benefit cut that seniors, veterans and the disabled cannot afford. It would cut benefits by $135 billion over 10 years and much more in ensuing decades as its impact is compounded. It would also cut another $24 billion from veterans' and federal retirement benefits. The Social Security recipient who retired at age 65 in 2012 would be receiving $658 a year less in benefits under the chained CPI calculation by the time he or she is 75, an almost 4 percent cut; by 85, that person would be getting $1,147 less a year, a 6.5 percent benefit cut. This is a feature, not a bug; the budget savings from the benefit cuts are the key selling point of the chained CPI. These cuts would hit the oldest seniors the hardest, exactly when they are the most economically vulnerable, right when they are likely to have exhausted their retirement savings and are facing their highest out-of-pocket health care costs.
2. The chained CPI is patently inaccurate at measuring the cost of living of the elderly and disabled. This is a political trick, not a technical fix. Since 1975, Social Security benefits are adjusted annually based on what is now called the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W). Ironically, its cost calculations exclude people outside the workforce, and thus most Social Security beneficiaries. Recently, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics has developedan experimental CPI-E that more directly measures the cost of living of people age 62 and over. If the chained CPI were a technical fix, its advocates would be pushing to perfect the CPI-E and adopt it as the basis for Social Security's cost of living adjustments. But the CPI-E indicates that the cost of living of the elderly is rising faster than that of the overall population.So adopting a true measure of seniors' costs would increase benefits and cost more money. Advocates of switching to the chained CPI don't want more accuracy. They invented the chained CPI to shackle seniors with lower benefits in order to cut spending.
3. The chained CPI violates Social Security's promise: that Social Security's cost-of-living adjustments should maintain the purchasing power of benefit levels over time. This is no minor detail. The value of pensions or 401(k) balances that are not inflation-protected typically decline by half over 20 years. Virtually no retirement savings vehicles available in private markets offer inflation protection for life. Social Security does. It is one of the program's most important defining features. Given that the average benefit today is only $1,153 per month, that 36 percent of beneficiaries get 90 percent or more of their income from Social Security, and that 65 percent of Americans get 50 percent or more of their income from the program, this inflation protection is critical to recipients' economic security. It's just obscene to shackle seniors and the disabled to benefits that won't keep up with rising costs. Faced with the soaring costs of drugs, seniors already are sometimes forced to cut back on food or on medicine to make ends meet. We should be raising benefits to alleviate those pressures, not cutting them because to reflect the savings they exact.
4. The chained CPI flagrantly flies in the face of public opinion. By a two-to-one margin in one recent poll, respondents said using the chained CPI was "totally unacceptable" as a way to adjust Social Security benefits. Other polls have found that overwhelming majorities of Americans are opposed to undertaking Social Security reform in the context of deficit reduction talks. The most recent polling by the National Academy of Social Insurance shows that a majority of Americans across the political spectrum think Social Security benefits should be raised, not lowered – and are willing to pay more in taxes to protect those benefits. By far the most popular reform is to raise the cap on the payroll tax, so that the wealthier Americans pay at the same rate as low-wage workers.
5. The chained CPI will hurt more than just the elderly. The groups of Americans that would also see their benefits cut if the chained CPI were implemented government-wide include people with disabilities; widows and children who receive survivor's benefits; disabled veterans, particularly those who are totally disabled and therefore eligible for both veterans benefits and Social Security Disability; lifelong public servants who retire from the federal government, and anyone who retires from the military after serving our country for decades.
6. Social Security benefits are modest and should be increased, not cut. Social Security retirement benefits average just $14,900 a year, and nearly 5 million retirees live below 125 percent of the federal poverty level. Already their current cost-of-living adjustments do not compensate for the fact that they spend roughly twice as much on health care as the average worker or urban consumer and a larger percentage of their income on basic necessities. A chained CPI only makes that problem worse. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has estimated that more than half of the nation's households would be unable to maintain their standards of living during their retirement years, given the damage the 2008 financial crash did to housing values, stock portfolios and worker earnings. Given our national retirement income security crisis, policymakers should be increasing Social Security benefits, not cutting them.
7. The advocates of the chained CPI implicitly admit that it is not an accurate measure of inflation faced by seniors. They are now scrambling to propose modifications that will "protect" the oldest and poorest seniors from the effects of a change they claim is technical. But if the chained CPI were an accurate measure of the cost of living, why would 80-year-olds need protection? In fact, the measures proposed to blunt the effect of the chained CPI on vulnerable populations are shamelessly inadequate. For example, even with the most commonly proposed compensatory measure – a bump-up in benefits after 20 years, starting at age 82 – an 85-year-old would still lose more than $12,000 in benefits over a 20-year period.
Counterpoint
When they say: The chained CPI is more accurate.
You can say: The chained CPI is a political trick, not a technical fix. It is not more accurate for seniors and people with severe disabilities. As 250 top economists and more than 50 social insurance experts with Ph.D.s in related fields recently pointed out in an Economic Policy Institute statement : "Since elderly and disabled people spend a greater share of their incomes on necessities such as health care, rent, and utilities, and since this population is also less mobile, a chained COLA based on the spending patterns of workers or the general population may overestimate the ability of Social Security beneficiaries to take advantage of cheaper substitutes." To obtain a more accurate cost-of-living adjustment, we should give the experts the resources needed to perfect the CPI-E (a consumer price index for elderly consumers) and then consider adopting it for determining Social Security COLAs. It would surely end up increasing rather than decreasing the adjustment for inflation.
When they say: If we reduced the COLA, wouldn't that just slow the rate of growth of benefits rather than cut benefits?
You can say: Cost of living adjustments don't increase benefits, they simply allow them to keep pace with inflation. A lower adjustment will result in benefit checks that have less purchasing power. This is a benefit cut masked as a technical fix.
When they say: Isn't the chained CPI a relatively small cut?
You can say: The chained CPI snowballs year after year, so the cut is the largest for the oldest seniors who need it the most. For the average worker retiring at age 65 in 2012, the chained CPI would cut benefits by more than $1,000 a month by the time that worker is 85. The cumulative effect of the cut gets worse over time.
When they say: Can't we make accommodations in the chained CPI to protect the most vulnerable people?
You can say: No. None of the proposed "sweeteners" to cushion the impact of the chained CPI on vulnerable groups holds them harmless – far from it. The proposed modest increase in benefits after 20 years (sometimes called the "birthday bump"
still leaves the average senior with a net cumulative loss of $12,000 by age 85 and over $16,000 by age 95.
When they say: The chained CPI is a necessary part of getting our deficits under control
You can say: Social Security has not and cannot by law contribute to the federal debt. And the program is too important to be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations about deficits that Social Security has not contributed to.
When they say: Isn't the chained CPI necessary to help balance Social Security's finances?
You can say: Social Security's finances should be addressed on their own, not in the midst of the hysteria surrounding deficits that have nothing to do with Social Security. In fact, Social Security is in good shape, with current assets covering benefits for the next 22 years. To strengthen the long-term solvency in Social Security, there are far better policy options than cutting benefits. For example, lifting the Social Security tax cap would eliminate at least 70 percent of Social Security's modest 75-year shortfall.
Public Pulse
•62% of individuals called the Simpson-Bowles recommendation to adopt the chained CPI "totally unacceptable," while 31% said it was "acceptable." (Democracy Corps)
•60% of Americans thought that it was "unacceptable" to change Social Security to increase at a slower rate in order to strike a deal to avoid the January 1 "fiscal cliff." ( Washington Post )
•Only 8% of individuals support cutting "scheduled benefit increases for future retirees" when asked to choose one preferred Social Security reform (New York Times/CBS).
•56% of individuals consider preserving current Social Security and Medicare benefits a higher priority than reducing the budget deficit" (Pew).
•77% of Americans consider cutting Social Security "mostly or totally unacceptable" in order to reduce the deficit ( Wall Street Journal/NBC ).
•Two-thirds of people support raising payroll taxes on the upper-income earners, compared with 38% who support raising Social Security's "eligibility age." (Pew Research) .
•66% of Americans, including 45% of Republicans and 64% of Independents, favor increasing income taxes for upper-income Americans, compared with 42% who favor making "significant changes" to Social Security and Medicare" (Gallup/USA Today).
•57% of respondents think that reducing retirement benefits for people who are currently under age 55 is a bad idea (Gallup).
•62% of individuals agreed that the government needs to keep its promises to older people by maintaining their benefits, even for those who are well-off (Pew Research).
Hot Facts
•$55 a month: That's how much less a 65-year-old retiree today would end up getting 10 years from now than they would under the current cost-of-living adjustment.
•Health expenses take up almost twice as much a share of a senior's monthly expenses as it does of average workers, and health care costs rose at twice the rate of inflation in 2012.
•Even with Social Security, almost one in seven seniors fall below the poverty line when all of their expenses are taken into account, according to the Census Bureau's supplemental poverty measure.
Tweet This
#ChainedCPI is a #SocialSecurity cut that gets deeper every year, hitting the oldest hardest. http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
Average Social Security check under $1,200/month. Don't chain seniors to poverty with #ChainedCPI http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
#ChainedCPI is NOT more accurate for Social Security beneficiaries. It just cuts benefits http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
Instead of #ChainedCPI, make millionaires pay same rate into Social Security as the rest of us. http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
2 years of no Social Security COLA—and now they want to cut it?! Stop the #ChainedCPI. http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
Why Social Security Recipients Shouldn't Be Shackled With the Chained CPI
Institute for America’s Future http://www.ourfuture.org/The Challenge
As conservatives relentlessly demand more and more spending cuts in their crusade to impose austerity on our economy, they have fixated on cuts to benefits offered by Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – the core pillars of family security.
One particularly noxious idea is the "chained CPI.” Conservatives like it because it would cut Social Security benefits immediately for everyone in the system – if we let them replace the more scientific index we have used for years to make sure benefits keep up with the cost of living. And some Democrats like it because it’s a way to give deficit hawks real spending reduction – while pretending it is simply a "technical fix" – not really a benefit cut.
At this writing, President Obama’s staff pretends it’s a better index – and the president keeps offering it as part a “grand bargain.”
But the chained CPI is a political trick, not a technical fix. It is a hidden benefit cut that would shackle seniors with lower benefits and thus less security over time. With seniors in the bottom 40 percent of the income scale dependent on Social Security for almost 90 percent of their income, it would dramatically raise poverty levels among the retired, the disabled and the widowed.
Tremendous pressure to enact this change is being exerted by private groups funded by Wall Street advocates of Social Security retrenchment or even privatization. They seek to use the current deficits – the result of the economic collapse caused by Wall Street's excesses – to force unpopular cuts in the security programs American families rely on. They do so by claiming that "entitlements" cause our long-term debt problems, lumping Social Security in with health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid. They claim Social Security is going bankrupt without changes. And then they call for "reform," with the supposedly technical fix of a lower cost of living adjustment masking a deep cut in benefits. A powerful bipartisan array of Washington insiders has echoed this argument, from deficit jeremiads like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the Bipartisan Policy Center's Deficit Reduction Task Force and the Heritage Foundation to established liberal groups like the Center for American Progress and Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
Without a massive mobilization by an informed public, there is a clear and present danger that within the next few months the economic security of the elderly, disabled and surviving children will be needlessly compromised for decades to come by our country's political elites.
Make the Case
A "chained CPI" differs from the standard consumer price index we're familiar with because it claims to take into account “substitutions” — the degree to which consumers will change what they buy in response to price increases. For example, if the price of going to the movies dramatically increases, consumers might instead rent more DVDs to save money. Now we all make substitutions – but many of the things seniors buy are things you just can’t substitute, like medicines, or doctors visits, or basic foods. But the chained CPI wasn’t designed with seniors’ buying habits in mind. Applying it to Social Security assumes seniors make the same substitutions as the average consumer, which they often can’t afford.
Here are seven reasons shackling seniors and the disabled with a chained CPI is just plain wrong.
1. It's a huge benefit cut that seniors, veterans and the disabled cannot afford. It would cut benefits by $135 billion over 10 years and much more in ensuing decades as its impact is compounded. It would also cut another $24 billion from veterans' and federal retirement benefits. The Social Security recipient who retired at age 65 in 2012 would be receiving $658 a year less in benefits under the chained CPI calculation by the time he or she is 75, an almost 4 percent cut; by 85, that person would be getting $1,147 less a year, a 6.5 percent benefit cut. This is a feature, not a bug; the budget savings from the benefit cuts are the key selling point of the chained CPI. These cuts would hit the oldest seniors the hardest, exactly when they are the most economically vulnerable, right when they are likely to have exhausted their retirement savings and are facing their highest out-of-pocket health care costs.
2. The chained CPI is patently inaccurate at measuring the cost of living of the elderly and disabled. This is a political trick, not a technical fix. Since 1975, Social Security benefits are adjusted annually based on what is now called the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W). Ironically, its cost calculations exclude people outside the workforce, and thus most Social Security beneficiaries. Recently, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics has developedan experimental CPI-E that more directly measures the cost of living of people age 62 and over. If the chained CPI were a technical fix, its advocates would be pushing to perfect the CPI-E and adopt it as the basis for Social Security's cost of living adjustments. But the CPI-E indicates that the cost of living of the elderly is rising faster than that of the overall population.So adopting a true measure of seniors' costs would increase benefits and cost more money. Advocates of switching to the chained CPI don't want more accuracy. They invented the chained CPI to shackle seniors with lower benefits in order to cut spending.
3. The chained CPI violates Social Security's promise: that Social Security's cost-of-living adjustments should maintain the purchasing power of benefit levels over time. This is no minor detail. The value of pensions or 401(k) balances that are not inflation-protected typically decline by half over 20 years. Virtually no retirement savings vehicles available in private markets offer inflation protection for life. Social Security does. It is one of the program's most important defining features. Given that the average benefit today is only $1,153 per month, that 36 percent of beneficiaries get 90 percent or more of their income from Social Security, and that 65 percent of Americans get 50 percent or more of their income from the program, this inflation protection is critical to recipients' economic security. It's just obscene to shackle seniors and the disabled to benefits that won't keep up with rising costs. Faced with the soaring costs of drugs, seniors already are sometimes forced to cut back on food or on medicine to make ends meet. We should be raising benefits to alleviate those pressures, not cutting them because to reflect the savings they exact.
4. The chained CPI flagrantly flies in the face of public opinion. By a two-to-one margin in one recent poll, respondents said using the chained CPI was "totally unacceptable" as a way to adjust Social Security benefits. Other polls have found that overwhelming majorities of Americans are opposed to undertaking Social Security reform in the context of deficit reduction talks. The most recent polling by the National Academy of Social Insurance shows that a majority of Americans across the political spectrum think Social Security benefits should be raised, not lowered – and are willing to pay more in taxes to protect those benefits. By far the most popular reform is to raise the cap on the payroll tax, so that the wealthier Americans pay at the same rate as low-wage workers.
5. The chained CPI will hurt more than just the elderly. The groups of Americans that would also see their benefits cut if the chained CPI were implemented government-wide include people with disabilities; widows and children who receive survivor's benefits; disabled veterans, particularly those who are totally disabled and therefore eligible for both veterans benefits and Social Security Disability; lifelong public servants who retire from the federal government, and anyone who retires from the military after serving our country for decades.
6. Social Security benefits are modest and should be increased, not cut. Social Security retirement benefits average just $14,900 a year, and nearly 5 million retirees live below 125 percent of the federal poverty level. Already their current cost-of-living adjustments do not compensate for the fact that they spend roughly twice as much on health care as the average worker or urban consumer and a larger percentage of their income on basic necessities. A chained CPI only makes that problem worse. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has estimated that more than half of the nation's households would be unable to maintain their standards of living during their retirement years, given the damage the 2008 financial crash did to housing values, stock portfolios and worker earnings. Given our national retirement income security crisis, policymakers should be increasing Social Security benefits, not cutting them.
7. The advocates of the chained CPI implicitly admit that it is not an accurate measure of inflation faced by seniors. They are now scrambling to propose modifications that will "protect" the oldest and poorest seniors from the effects of a change they claim is technical. But if the chained CPI were an accurate measure of the cost of living, why would 80-year-olds need protection? In fact, the measures proposed to blunt the effect of the chained CPI on vulnerable populations are shamelessly inadequate. For example, even with the most commonly proposed compensatory measure – a bump-up in benefits after 20 years, starting at age 82 – an 85-year-old would still lose more than $12,000 in benefits over a 20-year period.
Counterpoint
When they say: The chained CPI is more accurate.
You can say: The chained CPI is a political trick, not a technical fix. It is not more accurate for seniors and people with severe disabilities. As 250 top economists and more than 50 social insurance experts with Ph.D.s in related fields recently pointed out in an Economic Policy Institute statement : "Since elderly and disabled people spend a greater share of their incomes on necessities such as health care, rent, and utilities, and since this population is also less mobile, a chained COLA based on the spending patterns of workers or the general population may overestimate the ability of Social Security beneficiaries to take advantage of cheaper substitutes." To obtain a more accurate cost-of-living adjustment, we should give the experts the resources needed to perfect the CPI-E (a consumer price index for elderly consumers) and then consider adopting it for determining Social Security COLAs. It would surely end up increasing rather than decreasing the adjustment for inflation.
When they say: If we reduced the COLA, wouldn't that just slow the rate of growth of benefits rather than cut benefits?
You can say: Cost of living adjustments don't increase benefits, they simply allow them to keep pace with inflation. A lower adjustment will result in benefit checks that have less purchasing power. This is a benefit cut masked as a technical fix.
When they say: Isn't the chained CPI a relatively small cut?
You can say: The chained CPI snowballs year after year, so the cut is the largest for the oldest seniors who need it the most. For the average worker retiring at age 65 in 2012, the chained CPI would cut benefits by more than $1,000 a month by the time that worker is 85. The cumulative effect of the cut gets worse over time.
When they say: Can't we make accommodations in the chained CPI to protect the most vulnerable people?
You can say: No. None of the proposed "sweeteners" to cushion the impact of the chained CPI on vulnerable groups holds them harmless – far from it. The proposed modest increase in benefits after 20 years (sometimes called the "birthday bump"
still leaves the average senior with a net cumulative loss of $12,000 by age 85 and over $16,000 by age 95.
When they say: The chained CPI is a necessary part of getting our deficits under control
You can say: Social Security has not and cannot by law contribute to the federal debt. And the program is too important to be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations about deficits that Social Security has not contributed to.
When they say: Isn't the chained CPI necessary to help balance Social Security's finances?
You can say: Social Security's finances should be addressed on their own, not in the midst of the hysteria surrounding deficits that have nothing to do with Social Security. In fact, Social Security is in good shape, with current assets covering benefits for the next 22 years. To strengthen the long-term solvency in Social Security, there are far better policy options than cutting benefits. For example, lifting the Social Security tax cap would eliminate at least 70 percent of Social Security's modest 75-year shortfall.
Public Pulse
•62% of individuals called the Simpson-Bowles recommendation to adopt the chained CPI "totally unacceptable," while 31% said it was "acceptable." (Democracy Corps)
•60% of Americans thought that it was "unacceptable" to change Social Security to increase at a slower rate in order to strike a deal to avoid the January 1 "fiscal cliff." ( Washington Post )
•Only 8% of individuals support cutting "scheduled benefit increases for future retirees" when asked to choose one preferred Social Security reform (New York Times/CBS).
•56% of individuals consider preserving current Social Security and Medicare benefits a higher priority than reducing the budget deficit" (Pew).
•77% of Americans consider cutting Social Security "mostly or totally unacceptable" in order to reduce the deficit ( Wall Street Journal/NBC ).
•Two-thirds of people support raising payroll taxes on the upper-income earners, compared with 38% who support raising Social Security's "eligibility age." (Pew Research) .
•66% of Americans, including 45% of Republicans and 64% of Independents, favor increasing income taxes for upper-income Americans, compared with 42% who favor making "significant changes" to Social Security and Medicare" (Gallup/USA Today).
•57% of respondents think that reducing retirement benefits for people who are currently under age 55 is a bad idea (Gallup).
•62% of individuals agreed that the government needs to keep its promises to older people by maintaining their benefits, even for those who are well-off (Pew Research).
Hot Facts
•$55 a month: That's how much less a 65-year-old retiree today would end up getting 10 years from now than they would under the current cost-of-living adjustment.
•Health expenses take up almost twice as much a share of a senior's monthly expenses as it does of average workers, and health care costs rose at twice the rate of inflation in 2012.
•Even with Social Security, almost one in seven seniors fall below the poverty line when all of their expenses are taken into account, according to the Census Bureau's supplemental poverty measure.
Tweet This
#ChainedCPI is a #SocialSecurity cut that gets deeper every year, hitting the oldest hardest. http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
Average Social Security check under $1,200/month. Don't chain seniors to poverty with #ChainedCPI http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
#ChainedCPI is NOT more accurate for Social Security beneficiaries. It just cuts benefits http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
Instead of #ChainedCPI, make millionaires pay same rate into Social Security as the rest of us. http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
2 years of no Social Security COLA—and now they want to cut it?! Stop the #ChainedCPI. http://bit.ly/WIbHsO #SmartTalk @ourfuture
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