A piece on NPR's All Things Considered that aired last week did little to enlighten listeners about a major change known as "Chained CPI," proposed by the President for calculating future Social Security cost of living increases. NPR's he-said/she-said coverage likely left NPR-land listeners as confused as ever. Surely NPR can do better helping them understand what the fuss is all about.

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Re-Printed with permission of Columbia Journalism Review where this article originally appeared on April 11, 2016

For a massive change to Social Security, "he-said/she-said' reporting just doesn't cut it

By Trudy Lieberman

A piece on NPR's All Things Considered that aired last week did little to enlighten listeners about a major change to Social Security rolling rapidly down the pike, an issue that may ultimately find its way into next year's congressional races.

As those who follow this stuff have known for a while, the president's budget calls for a big change in the way cost of living benefits will be calculated for Social Security recipients (as well as those who receive other government benefits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, aimed at low income Americans). It's nickname: Chained CPI, for Consumer Price Index.

To review: The Chained CPI is a way to cut spending and raise revenue. It has been pushed hard by fiscal conservatives and the co-chairs of the president's deficit commission, former Wyoming Sen. Allen Simpson and former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles, as well as a small group of influential liberals who fear programs like Social Security could eventually crowd out spending on such things as poverty programs or infrastructure investment. Under Chained CPI, Social Security benefits would increase 0.3 percentage points less per year, on average, than under the current formula.

The problem? The slower increase in benefits compounds year after year, so that as a person gets older, the effect is greater. After 10 years, the cut amounts to three percent, and it continues to grow over time. That means the oldest of the old, who sometimes have used up most of their assets, will get the biggest hit. The advocacy group Social Security Works has estimated that the change could mean that an 85-year-old would have $1,139 a year less to live on--not an insignificant sum for people who may hav little money left at this stage of life. Here is a chart showing the loss of income the Chained CPI would bring

The change, on the other side of the ledger, saves the government gobs of money. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the new calculation method could produce $217 billion in savings over 10 years, with about $145 billion coming from cuts to Social Security and other benefits.

Until recently, the media have pretty much ignored the Chained CPI, and when they have done stories about it, they've mostly taken the view that it's a "technical adjustment"--a characterization NPR's Scott Horsley allowed the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, to make, without adequately explaining that it is, in fact, more than that. Overall, NPR's effort on this big development provided the classic "he said-she said" treatment--a framing that is ineffective for a story of this importance and complexity.

Horsley did note that Carney said the president would seek special protections for the oldest seniors. It would have been good for Horsley to tell his listeners exactly what that means. It's a "modest lump sum," as The Washington Post described it--Obama's proposal calls for a universal bump in benefits to the oldest beneficiaries. Still, Social Security advocates believe that you can only soften the blow so much, and that the new CPI would nonetheless hurt many low- and moderate-income people.

To some extent, NPR flirted with the "greedy geezer" meme about seniors and social benefits. Right after annoucing the president's new budget, the story reported that "there are already protests about it from seniors and others who oppose reductions in spending for Medicare and Social Security." That seemed to convey the notion the greedy geezers weren't about to give up anything. After noting the change would result in smaller Social Security adjustments, Horsley moved on to the critics--both pro-Chained CPI and anti-Chained CPI--who Horsley said "are giving lawmakers an earful."

On one side was Marc Goldwein, identified as from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that operates with money from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Peterson is a long-time critic of Social Security. Goldwein, who is often quoted on these matters, tried to make the wonk case for changing the CPI calculation, noting that the current calculation formula overstates the price increases that consumers actually pay, and "doesn't have the ability to measure the difference between an apple and an orange or a tangerine."

The critic from the other side was Max Richtman, who heads the advocacy group the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Horsley summed up Richtman's thinking, saying "if anything, he says, the current measure of inflation understates senior's costs, especially for things like healthcare." Richtman didn't do much to illuminate potential problems with the Chained CPI. The story became a political piece--with Richtman saying his members want no part in such a compromise, but without making the case why the Chained CPI might not be good for many of them. Nor did Richtman or Horsley take the story further and explain how that all of this is related to other parts of Obama's budget that will make them pay more for their healthcare, even with Medicare.

If NPR were really interested in discussing the Chained CPI, this was an opening to discuss one of its major controversies. The idea behind the proposed measure is to allow for the way people substitute cheaper goods and services when prices rise. As we've reported, that kind of calculation may not measure the cost of living with as much accuracy as its advocates promote. Healthcare is the biggest expense for many older persons. Half of all Medicare beneficiaries live on $22,000 or less and spend one-third of their household income on healthcare.

Furthermore, you can't easily substitute one medical procedure for another. If you need a heart bypass, you can't substitute a hernia operation the way someone can choose chicken instead of steak. Reporters would do well to go talk to some old people of modest means, and see where their money does go. They might be surprised.

Because of these spending patterns, the government has tinkered with developing a special cost-of-living index based on what seniors actually spend their money on. But neither the press nor the politicians have given that effort any prominence, and the government hasn't devoted enough resources to measuring and testing it. Which is also worth reporting.

So there you have it. Listeners in NPR-land may be as confused as ever about a change that maybe be moving beyond a Beltway story and into people's lives. Surely NPR can do better helping them understand what the fuss is all about.

Read previous articles by Trudy Lieberman at Columbia Journalism Review

Authors Bio:
Trudy Lieberman, a
journalist for more than 40 years, is a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review where she blogs about health care and retirement
at www.cjr.org. Her blogposts are at http://www.cjr.org/author/trudy-lieberman-1/
She is also a fellow at the Center for Advancing Health where she blogs about
health at http://www.preparedpatientforum.org/.   Her blog posts are at http://blog.preparedpatientforum.org/blog/category/author/trudy-lieberman/   Lieberman has had a long career at Consumer Reports specializing in
insurance, health care and health care financing.   She was also the director of the Center for
Consumer Health Choices at Consumers Union.  
She is a contributor to The Nation,
and has written a column about health and the marketplace for the Los Angeles Times.   Lieberman began her career as a consumer
writer for the Detroit Free Press
where her reporting became a model for consumer writers across the country.

She has won 26 national and
regional reporting awards and other honors, including two National Magazine
Awards, 10 National Press Club Awards, five Society of Professional Journalists
Deadline Club Awards, a John J. McCloy Fellowship to study health care in
Germany, a Joan Shorenstein Fellowship from Harvard University to study media
coverage of medical technology, an honorary doctorate of humane letters from
the University of Nebraska, and two Fulbright Fellowships---a senior scholar
award to study health care in Japan and a senior specialist award to
participate in training conferences in the United Kingdom for European health
journalists.   She is the author of five
books including Slanting the Story the Forces That Shape the News and
the Consumer Reports Guide to Health Services for Seniors, which was
named by Library Journal as one of
the best consumer health books for 2000.

Lieberman is an adjunct associate
professor of public health at City University of New York where she teaches
courses on the media's influence on public health.   She was director of the health and medical
reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism, City University of New
York, has taught media ethics in the Science, Health and Environmental
Reporting Program at New York University, and has been an adjunct professor of
journalism at Columbia University.   In
2006, she was a Beamer-Schneider SAGES Fellow at Case Western Reserve
University where she taught courses on media ethics and the ethics of health
care delivery.   In 2007, she was
appointed the James H. Ottaway visiting journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz
where she taught a course on the media and the marketplace.   In 2011, Lieberman was named the Soderlund
Visiting Professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the
University of Nebraska where she taught public affairs reporting.

Lieberman served five years as the
president of the Association of Health Care Journalists, a professional
organization of over 1300 journalists who cover health and medicine, and
continues to serve on the board of directors as immediate past president.   She is currently a national advisory council
member of the California Health Benefits Review Program.   She has served on the board of directors for
the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the Medicare Rights Center, and
Village Care of New York.   Lieberman
appears on many panels and lectures widely on health care in the U.S.   She holds a B.S. with distinction from the
University of Nebraska and earned a certificate in business and economics
journalism from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism where she
was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in 1976-77.

She can be reached at trudy.lieberman@gmail.com
and can be followed on Twitter at trudy_lieberman.