This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Melissa Mitchell, who is retiring soon as Office Manager for the John Locke Foundation.
RALEIGH — As I enter the land of retirement, I will not, as some have suggested, be sitting in a rocking chair watching birds, nor will I be bored. I have a very long bucket list, and sitting in a rocking chair or being bored are not items on that list.
Along with entering retirement land, I am also entering the realm of Social Security and Medicare. Wow! What an eyeopener. To use a loose Nancy Pelosi analogy, you have to enroll in Social Security and Medicare to know what is in them.
Just as I made the decision to enter this realm, President Obama announced that my SS check might not arrive if Congress did not reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling. Like many people, I have had SS and Medicare taxes confiscated from my paychecks since I was a teenager. Of course, they are now called contributions. I prefer “confiscated” because I never had a choice in the matter.
Unfortunately for many senior citizens who rely on SS benefits, President Obama’s announcement was frightening. Frankly, I found it irritating and nothing more than ridiculous political speak designed to scare older people in order to get what the president wanted.
Remembering all of those contributions they made, SS and Medicare recipients — through no fault of their own (except for maybe voting for liberal career politicians who have totally mismanaged all those contributions) — are now put into the category of receiving gifts, rather than benefits that they truly deserve. This attitude is establishing a new class war between younger workers and retirees.
As I watched “Fox and Friends” one morning, the show featured a young man who was touting the idea that senior citizens needed to be prepared to sacrifice for the good of the country and to save these “benefits” for future generations. Now they are benefits! As I listened, I was astonished at what this 30-something was stating. First, if he thinks people who receive just SS benefits are living a life of luxury on those benefits, he does not know anyone who is receiving them.
Second, and most importantly, all 30- to 40-year-olds know that the SS system is going broke, and they have the opportunity to prepare for their retirement years and not rely on SS retirement funds. Even with the ups and downs within the stock market, they will gain far more financial security through investment in a 401(k) or an IRA, rather than relying on SS.
Now a word about the Social Security Administration and its employees. Of the four people who have handled my husband’s and my benefits sign-up, three have been outstanding and one just all right. They provided understandable information and worked to provide the maximum benefits possible and deserved, not benefits to which we are entitled. A retiree would never guess that the administration is in financial trouble.
Try not taking SS benefits: it is just not possible. You must start taking benefits at age 70. After visiting this page, you know that you will need some help. They also encourage everyone not to delay and to start taking benefits as soon as you are eligible.
But then there is Medicare. The only thing that comes faster than your Medicare card are offers for supplemental insurance from AARP, an organization I refuse to join after reading this Karen McMahan article.
Part A of Medicare is fairly straightforward, but Part B is a bureaucratic maze. If you decide to keep private insurance and then lose that private insurance, it becomes a nightmare to file for Medicare Part B. There is a window of several months in which you can sign up for Part B after signing up for Part A. Miss that window, and you can apply only in January of the following year and will not receive Medicare Part B benefits until July of that year. You may also have to pay a late enrollment penalty. Recipients also pay a premium for Part B, but who can tell what that amount is?
But there is hope. There is a silent cavalry lurking in the background, and it is not the Tea Party. It is the retiring baby boomers. Just as they retire and are introduced to the convoluted Medicare edicts, they also will encounter another insidious government edict, Obamacare’s IPAB or Independent Payment Advisory Board, which many are rightly calling a death panel.
In the May 9 Weekly Standard article “The Real Mediscare: Obama’s rationing is the thing to worry about,” Mark Hemingway points out the pitfalls of this board. The board is appointed by the president and will be tasked with cutting Medicare costs. “Any decision IPAB makes about [cutting] Medicare spending automatically becomes law. To override IPAB requires a three-fifths majority in the Senate, a high legislative hurdle,” writes Hemingway. He further notes that there is no “administrative process allowing citizens to challenge the board’s decisions.”
When retiring baby boomers find out what is in Medicare, there will be changes. Baby boomers will be a far different group of seniors than ones from previous generations. They watch C-SPAN, they are computer-savvy, and they know how to gather information. They know how to download bills being proposed in Congress, and they are not hesitant about calling Congress to complain.
Every politician knows seniors are one of the largest voting blocs. Witness how President Obama immediately said that SS checks might not arrive in order gain the upper hand in debt negotiations. I don’t think President Obama and Congress realize the impact that this new group of retirees will have in this country. There will be no slipping little items in bills during midnight sessions.
For the life of me, after seeing what a complicated maze Medicare is, and how financially unsustainable both SS and Medicare are, why would anyone — especially senior citizens — support ObamaCare? So it is off to retirement land. I will miss all of my Locke colleagues and all of our faithful Locke supporters.