Spotlight Getting Brighter on Reforming Social Security & Medicare - AMAC & CNBC
If there’s one positive thing the debt ceiling crisis is doing, it’s shining the light on how two large entitlement programs need big reforms. Lorie Konish of CNBC notes that rather than waiting for a big overhaul, more incremental changes can be made to these programs now. See this week’s Bipartisan Policy Center panel. On Medicare and Medicaid, many believe the government could do better by implementing additional background checks and confirming that providers are legitimate before paying them. On Social Security, the program is completely mismatched with demographics. Jim Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute states, “By building automatic adjustments into Social Security — such as for length of retirement, mortality estimates, fertility estimates and wage growth — the program could self-correct on a gradual basis, which would enable it to stay solvent.” This would allow Congress to avoid constantly having to face down tough but necessary political choices. Full article here.
The Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) believes Social Security must be preserved and modernized. This can be achieved without tax increases by slight modifications to cost of living adjustments and payments to the highest income beneficiaries plus gradually increasing the full (but not early) retirement age. AMAC’s plan also increases the threshold where benefits are taxed and then indexes for inflation, and the plan eliminates reducing people’s benefits for those choosing to work before full retirement age. AMAC is resolute in its mission that Social Security be preserved for current and successive generations and has gotten the attention of lawmakers in D.C., meeting with a great many congressional offices and their staffs over the past decade. See it here.