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If we assume that an average retiree collects benefits for 20 years, this implies an average cut in their benefits of 3 percent. Is that a big deal? Well, there are a lot of would-be Social Security cutters who are screaming bloody murder because President Obama wants to increase the tax rate on a portion of their income by a bit more than 3 percentage points. This means that if President Obama's proposal to increase taxes on the richest 2 percent is a big deal, then the plan to cut the Social Security COLA is also a big deal.
The corporate CEO crew is also considering a plan to raise the normal retirement age for Social Security to 69. And, they want to reduce the benefit formula for high income workers which, incredibly, they define as people who earn more than $40,000 a year.
Their main trick for Medicare is to raise the age of eligibility from 65 to 67. Apparently our CEO gang has not discovered that the health insurance market for older people is a disaster. They also continue to promote the misconception that the problem is Medicare and Medicaid.
These programs are actually much more efficient than private insurers. The real problem is our private sector health care system, which already costs more than twice as much per person as the average in other wealthy countries, with few obvious benefits in outcomes.
The scary budget projections that our CEOs like to tout assume that health care costs will exceed 20 percent of GDP in a decade. That would imply costs of more than $34,000 for a family of four in today's economy. And these costs are projected to keep growing through time.
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