Entitlement Bankruptcy

One way to get readers' attention is to write about Social Security and Medicare going bankrupt. That's what Newsweek magazine found. A week after economist Robert Samuelson wrote on the subject, 57 percent of the letters to the editor were about his article.

He began: "When the trustees of Social Security and Medicare reported on the economic outlook for these programs, the news coverage was universally glum. The recession has made everything worse. Social Security, Medicare Face Insolvency Sooner, headlined The Wall Street Journal."

The numbers are indeed gloomy. Over the next 75 years, these programs will cost over $100 trillion, while dedicated taxes and premiums will total only $57 trillion.

Samuelson predicts (as do I) that there will be lots of rhetoric about the problem but no meaningful action. More than a decade ago, President Clinton warned: "We must save Social Security for the 21st century." Five years ago, President Bush traveled the nation telling us the system "on its current path is headed toward bankruptcy." Even President Obama has said: "What we have done is kicked the can down the road." Each president talks about the problem, but he and the Congress continually kick the can down the road.

Until these programs are totally bankrupt, I fear that government officials will do little if anything to fix them. In fact, expanding government-paid health care might even make the problem worse. Samuelson believes that at the very least it will aggravate medical inflation.

There are some concrete steps we can take now to make a difference. Frankly, we should have done them decades ago, but at least we can implement them now and start addressing the inevitable. We should gradually increase the eligibility age and gradually reduce benefits for wealthier recipients. Restructuring the current Medicare system would also be warranted.

We can deal with the structural problems with these programs now or wait until they go bankrupt. I vote for dealing with them now. I'm Kerby Anderson, and that's my point of view.