Gilbert Cranberg: Those Deluded, Greedy Old Folks
Posted at 5:27 pm, December 1st, 2010
Once upon a time I was elderly. I called it quits with that demographic after learning from The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki about the anti-social antics of my former cohorts.
Surowiecki wrote that the mid-term election results might accurately be called the “revolt of the retired”. The elderly not only turned out in unusually large numbers, they were fired up over a cause: to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, reviled by many critics as Obamacare.
Surowiecki reports that seniors are the only age group to favor actual repeal of the law. How can that be? Medicare is wildly popular among the elderly. Before it came to their rescue, about half of them had no health insurance. So they know first-hand the value of government-backed insurance. They just don’t want it extended to others.
Surowiecki says, “Opposing the new law while reaping the benefits of Medicare is essentially saying ‘I’ve got mine-good luck getting yours.’” He is being polite. What he describes is hypocrisy and those who espouse it are hypocrites plain and simple. Many elderly are not just passively saying “good luck, you are on your own,” they are actively voting to prevent the uninsured from achieving coverage.
To make matters worse, apparently it is misguided fear that the Affordable Care Act will be at the expense of Medicare that drives the anti-Act sentiment. Surowiecki says the act won’t actually cut Medicare spending, only slow its growth.
Can you blame me for not wanting to be part of that self-centered, misinformed, hypocritical and selfish crowd? It gives me no pleasure in predicting that they are in for a rude awakening. Their new friends have never liked Medicare and Social Security and never will. The same politicians who will go after the Affordable Care Act will sooner or later have Medicare and Social Security in their sights.
At 85, of course, I am elderly. But I am no more deluded in declaring myself not elderly than the millions of elderly who know from personal experience that government-managed health care is do-able and worthwhile and are in denial about it.
December 1st, 2010 at 6:01 pm |
“Opposing the new law while reaping the benefits of Medicare is essentially saying ‘I’ve got mine-good luck getting yours.’”
The statement above is beyond misleading because it’s 100% false. I want medicare for all and I want the new law repealed. How can that be? The new law is NOT medicare for all. Obama and the Democrats denied everyone the public option in the new law. It’s sad that this article is in a blog that usually gives the straight scoop.
December 3rd, 2010 at 7:30 pm |
I agree, with the previous poster, Medicare for all would be the way to go. But repealing the present law is not the way to go. I feel betrayed by Obama and I won’t vote for him again, but at least we have a first step to a government program. If you erase that it will take another 78 years to get their. A+ for intent, F- for political strategy. Face it, you fit in the group Cranberg was talking about. You just don’t like to admit it.
December 12th, 2010 at 11:01 pm |
Who wasn’t deluded and greedy during the health care reform debate?
When the obvious answer was single payer nobody even brought it up. Cost taxes don’t you know.
December 16th, 2010 at 6:21 am |
“The same politicians who will go after the Affordable Care Act will sooner or later have Medicare and Social Security in their sights.”
The unfunded liability of SS/Medicare (assuming the government treated the benefits provided by these programs as unbreakable promises) is on the order of five to seven times annual GDP. Whether “politicians” have these programs “in their sights” or not, their cost will be crowding out everything else that “politicians have in their sights” and, one way or another, the existing implicit promises will be broken. Obamacare simply adds additional fuel to the fire, and hastens the day of reckoning, i.e., the day the bond market vigilantes push Treasury paper interest rates so high that the rest of the Federal budget is crowded out by the cost of Treasury borrowing.