Medicare is Not a Welfare Program

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AARP Senior Vice President Joyce Rogers offered the following statement in response to President Obama's indication that he would support means-testing Medicare as part of a debt ceiling deal.

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with a membership that helps people 50+ have independence, choice and control in ways that are beneficial and affordable to them and society as a whole. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to either political campaigns or candidates.

AARP is focused on protecting Social Security and Medicare for the millions of beneficiaries who have paid into the systems over their working lives. Rogers' statement follows:

"Medicare is not a welfare program. Seniors pay into Medicare their entire working lives based on the promise that they'll have secure health coverage when they retire. Applying a means test for their earned benefits would erode the popular support that has sustained these programs for years and made them so effective in helping older households."

"The small minority of seniors who are wealthy also contributed more to these programs throughout their working lives, and continue to pay higher taxes in retirement to support them. Also, in contrast to plans for those under age 65, premiums for Medicare Part B and Part D already are pegged to income.

"We believe the right way to strengthen Medicare is to improve the quality and lower the cost of care throughout the health care system. Simply shifting the bill to seniors would be like squeezing one end of a balloon - it does nothing to improve health care quality or combat the real problem of rising costs."

Attribution/Source(s):

This quality-reviewed article relating to our AARP Insurance News section was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World due to its likely interest to our disability community readers. Though the content may have been edited for style, clarity, or length, the article "Medicare is Not a Welfare Program" was originally written by AARP, and published by Disabled-World.com on 2011/07/17 (Updated: 2022/02/09). Should you require further information or clarification, AARP can be contacted at aarp.org. Disabled World makes no warranties or representations in connection therewith.

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