The impact of for-profit care on Medicare's future can be inferred from this quote by economist David Blitzer: "The trends in Medicare are more modest than the cost increases we have seen in the private commercial sector." That's because Medicare, as a government program, is far more cost-efficient than the private health insurance system. (That difference makes a mockery of Republican proposals to end Medicare and replace it with a system of vouchers for private insurance.)
The AP article prominently features an alarmist quote from someone named Mary Johnson, who is described as a policy analyst for the "Senior Citizens League." "I don't know how to make it clear to the public," says Ms. Johnson, "but in my mind the sirens are going off."
The Senior Citizens' League does not present Ms. Johnson's professional qualifications on its website. And who is the Senior Citizens League? The only member of the organization with a national reputation is its apparent founder, former Republican Congressman David Funderburk. I hadn't heard of it before, but some quick Googling led to complaints like this one ("Notch octogenarians should beware of Social Security scam") and this one ("Got a letter requesting money from them. The letter is full of propaganda about Mexican immigrants taking away all social security benefits??!")
The League also fought against health reform which claims that it would create a "massive" Federal database that would make your medical records available to "millions of people" with "a complete lack of privacy and confidentiality" and would hit doctors and hospitals with "stiff penalties." That even earned a slap from PolitiFact, which has been known to defend conventionally-accepted misstatements on the subject of entitlements. According to its website the League's been on the right side of at least one issue, that of cost-of-living adjustments, but it's surprising to see alarmist words from such a little-known group given such prominence in a piece of this kind.
The AP article also quotes people with more obvious credentials, including economist Blitzer and Eric Kingson, a professor of social work at Syracuse University who co-chairs the Strengthen Social Security Campaign. (Conflict alert: I'm affiliated with that organization.) But these more qualified individuals aren't given the prominent display of the less-well-known Ms. Johnson.
The simplest, and by far the most popular, solution to Social Security's future revenue gap is to lift the payroll tax cap. Such a move would end any future doubts about its ability to pay benefits, would be politically popular, and would harmonize with the wealth inequity that is the source of that future shortfall.
Yet this solution goes unmentioned until the end of the article, and then only as the position taken by "advocates": "Kingson and other advocates say Social Security could be shored up by simply increasing the amount of wages subject to Social Security taxes -- an idea that most Republicans in Congress flatly oppose."
That makes it sound as if this were a matter of opinion, rather than one of fact, but it's not. Experts ranging from Ronald Reagan's Chief Actuary to economists with expertise in this area have confirmed that this would fully solve Social Security's long-term shortfall.
By contrast, consider the article's opening sentence: "An aging population and an economy that has been slow to rebound are straining the long-term finances of Social Security and Medicare." That sentence should have read "Growing wealth inequities and an economy slow to rebound ..." Near the end another sentence could have something like "The Senior Citizens League and other advocates say an aging workforce has contributed to the problem ..."
That would have been much more accurate. Unfortunately the AP reverses opinion and fact, presenting one as the other and vice versa. That will serve to reinforce widely-held (and, for the right, politically convenient) misconceptions about the program. Nevertheless, although it repeats far too many misconceptions and fails to provide the proper context, this article is an improvement from past misreporting on Social Security and Medicare.
We have a long way to go before we can be sure that our news outlets are giving people the facts and the context they need to understand what's happening to Medicare and a Social Security -- and what it means for them.
(NOTE: The above originally said that the AP article didn't mention lifting the payroll tax cap at all. It did, but presented its effects as if they were merely a matter of opinion. We have rewritten that section of this piece accordingly.)
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