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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

What Do The Histories Of Social Security And Medicare Say About Their Future?

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Monday, April 25, 2011   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - As Congress considers the future of the Social Security and Medicare systems, it's worth taking a look at what the country was like without them. Mark Schmitt, a former editor of The American Prospect magazine and a long-time staff member for former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, says the programs transformed the lives of the elderly, bringing financial stability to one of the most vulnerable groups in the country.

Schmitt estimates that Social Security lifts half of all seniors out of poverty, where most of them were before it started.

"They had very much a kind of hand-to-mouth existence, not just in West Virginia, but all across the country. I think it's almost unimaginable to us."

Republicans have argued for changing the program by cutting benefits or investing Social Security tax revenues in Wall Street securities. Schmitt says Social Security benefits would be fully funded without any changes for 23 years, so such radical changes are not needed.

According to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, Social Security provides all the income for a quarter of the state's seniors.

Republicans in the House have voted to turn Medicare into a private voucher program. But according to the Center On Budget Policy and Priorities, that would mean seniors pay twice as much for half the coverage, in part because of insurance companies' overhead and profits.

Schmitt says private health insurance has never really worked for seniors.

"What was there before there was Medicare? Well, basically there was nothing. It was a very, very expensive proposition to buy any kind of health insurance for people who were over 65, and you were probably better off just bearing whatever costs you were going to bear on your own."

Schmitt calls the programs "social insurance." He says that, since so many people collect benefits, private insurance companies can't afford to cover them, which means the government has to.

"We are all going to retire, we are all going to have greater costs in our old age. Only by sharing those across all of society, sharing that risk across all of us, is it possible to create an insurance system against that."

According to the census, about 22 percent of all West Virginians are enrolled in Medicare, one of the highest rates in the country.


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