To Tell The Truth

Those of a certain age will know the television program reference in the title of this post. It seemed appropriate since I just watched President Obama on the tube being untruthful on the very serious subject of being a certain age.

He referred to his willingness to make adjustments to Medicare as part of an overall strategy to reduce spending. This sellout of seniors on his part has been fairly well reported over the last several weeks. And these reports, none of which has ever been denied, uniformly say that his intention is to raise the eligibility age from 65 to 67.

 Hold aside for a moment how awful, needless, and immoral it is to attack the social safety net for any reason, and ask if the proposed changes really would reduce costs. The answer is absolutely not.

Raising the Medicare eligibility age by two years will cause many seniors to watch helplessly as their fragile health declines, while they wait for the chance to receive needed care. Everyone can see the cruelty in this, but what is not as obvious is the false economy. The two year wait for care will not save the system money, it will cost more. Healthy seniors are not a cost burden no matter the eligibility age, but those with health problems, made to wait two years for treatment while the problems worsen, ultimately will present more difficult and expensive care issues. Of course, some will die during the two year wait, but probably not enough to offset the added costs of those who survive with greater infirmities for having delayed treatments.

So, if it's not even going to save us any money, why in the world should we sit by quietly while Obama and his Republican co-conspirators plot to kill off the old and ailing?

Yeah, I know, that's a pretty crass call to action, but I'm getting to where I'll try anything to encourage folks to notice that real people have very few real friends in all of this mess. I'm hoping all it takes is to tell the truth.