By Thomas F. Schaller|September 15, 2009
According to a Pew Research Center poll taken late last month, senior citizens are more worried than any other age cohort about the president's health care reform proposal.
Asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement, "I am concerned that the government is becoming too involved with health care," 53 percent of Americans 65 or older agreed, while 40 percent disagreed. For every other age group - and the country overall - more people disagreed than agreed, with the splits wider for each successively younger age cohort. Only 39 percent of Americans ages 18-29 agreed; 58 percent disagreed.
Well, now.
Senior citizens receive more government attention and money than any other age group. Social Security is the single largest federal government program. In fact, it's the largest government program in the history of the planet. (I should note here that some Social Security money goes to non-elderly people with disabilities.)
Medicare is another behemoth. Medicare spending in 2007 was $431 billion, more than half of all federal government expenditures on health care. That's right: The combined amount Washington spends on Medicaid for the poor, on the SCHIP program for children, and for health care benefits for veterans is less than what the treasury shells out for Medicare. Oh, and a 2006 Congressional Budget Office report estimates that 70 percent of Medicaid spending goes to "seniors and the disabled," not poor children and their parents.
So let's have a national debate about the government spending for health care, fine. But as we do, let's be clear about where - or rather, on whom - the government spends the bulk of its health care money: senior citizens.
Of course, elderly Americans have more expensive health care needs. And I can honestly say I've never met a single person who begrudges senior citizens the opportunity to live out their retirement years without enduring sickness or pain.
Nor, by the way, does President Barack Obama begrudge them. In fact, a significant chunk of his speech Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress was dedicated to allaying the concerns of seniors. No other group received attention.
"More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years," Mr. Obama said at a Saturday health care rally in Minnesota, as further assurance. "That is how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. That is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan. Not one dollar."
