Seniors under attack on many fronts
By Heather Cottin
Washington and Wall Street are campaigning
relentlessly to loot seniors in the United States. Since most
workers will live to be seniors someday, this full court press
is really an attack on every worker.
President George W. Bush and his supporters have never
ceased their campaign against Social Security, the one social
program that has helped to keep millions of seniors out of
poverty.
Backed by right-wing and libertarian think tanks, the Bush
administration claims the Social Security system is
under-funded and doomed to fail in its present form.
Although establishment institutions such as the Brookings
Institute have demo nstrated the mendacity of this prediction,
conservatives continue to press for reforms that would "allow"
workers to place their Social Security taxes in a "personal
retirement account." Some of the money could then be invested
by the private sector in the stock market.
In other words, the capitalists want to get their hands on
the billions of dollars generated by the Social Security
system.
A model of Bush's proposal was created in Sweden in the
1990s and went into effect in 2000. A recent report showed that
Swedish workers lost between 30 and 40 percent of the money
they were forced to place in the system in the first two years
of the program. The money didn't actually disappear. As with
any loss in the stock market, capitalists got it.
And the United States isn't Sweden. In addition to Social
Security, Sweden has a "guaranteed pension" that provides a
minimum income above the poverty line to anyone with little or
no private pension income. ("Retirement Lessons From Sweden,"
New York Times, Feb 5)
In the U.S. only one employee in four has a pension
guaranteed by an employer. (Boston Globe, May 15, 2002)
The plan to swindle money from every worker who pays into
Social Security is one method the capitalists and their
government stooges have come up with. They don't have their
hands on that dough yet.
But the ruling class is plundering seniors right now.
Most major corporations have cut back company-paid health
benefits for retirees, forcing many older workers to bear the
bulk of health-care costs themselves. James Norby, president of
the National Retiree Legislative Network, said companies have
stopped paying health benefits to people who have been retired
for 15 or 20 years.
This is the wave of the future, says Uwe Reinhardt, a health
economist at Prince ton University. "Twenty years from now, no
company will offer retiree health care."
The results are devastating for retired workers. TXU, a
Fortune 500 company, forces retirees to come up with 60 percent
of their health premiums. For Elise Bolt--forced to take early
retirement--medical insurance costs went from $100 a month to
$725. Another retiree's health premium went to $2,066 on Jan.
1, dwarfing his $1,276 monthly pension. (New York Times, Feb.
3)
Some companies are already eliminating retiree health
benefits--especially prescription drug coverage. They didn't
even wait for the Medicare drug discount cards to begin next
June. The cards will provide discounts of 10 to 25 percent from
retail prices on many drugs.
The drug program is as bogus as the rest of the new Medicare
law, which is about privatizing Medicare, charging people "more
money for less health care and taking away the core guarantees
of Medi care," according to Diane Archer of the Medicare Rights
Center.
Even Medicare's administrators admit the new drug cards are
confusing. A New York City pharmacist said, "The reimbursements
are very poor"--a signal that pharmacies may soon try to
wriggle out of accepting the discount cards.
But drug companies are ecstatic. "The government expects to
spend $1.8 trillion on drugs over the next 10 years," said Alan
Spielman, general manager of federal programs at Medco Health
Solutions, a big pharmacy benefit manager. "It is a major
growth opportunity for us." (New York Times, Feb. 6)
Meanwhile, poverty among seniors is growing. According to
the Census Bureau, 16 percent of elderly women and 9 percent of
elderly men live below the official poverty line. For elderly
Blacks the rate is 33 percent and Latinos 22 percent.
Reprinted from the Feb. 19, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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