Ha ha. History.
Affordable Care?
- Thread starter babe
- Start date
Ha ha. History.
No.
You offered a title, but didn't really tell me what it was, or what it was designed to cover.
Waste is an inevitable component of human activity, whether governmental, corporate, or private. I don't defend it, I just accept it and recognize its universality.
As for "take their word", unless the "nothing since" refers to multiple years, it might not have been reported yet.
Then perhaps you should not argue what you do not know about.
SSA has the enitre earnings record of every person that has ever reported it to a state or IRS. If they are hiding it from them why would they share it now? SSA is already establishing a culture of take their word for it. So why not take their word for it that the wages reported are all they have? Seems very inconsistent.
Also, once again, your defense of "others are inefficient too" is a pathetic excuse at best. Well guys since other people suck at running other things we should accept what it as not strive to improve the program and run it in a more effecient responsible way.
Yes.
The link of poverty to suicide continues to be confirmed:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/suicidepoverty-link-is-reinforced-in-new-study-1592978.html
The link of being elderly to being in poverty, prior to SS/Medicare, is documented historical fact.
Sticking your fingers in your ears won't change facts.
I agree. That's what I didn't argue about the $255, I asked about it.
Employers also are required to report income. SSA doesn't have just the wage-earners word on wages, usually.
I have made no claim that we should not seek to improve SS. I heartily endorse any practical efforts to streamline it and make it more efficient. That's different from eliminating it.
Well if anyone would know that you would. Also do you know how much the average SSA check is? Try NOT being in poverty on that.
This Society is being turned into a society dependent on government for everything. I do not need government to provide for me. Why should be forced to pay into a system that is publicly admitted to being broken but they will not do anything to fix so that it is there for me?
I'm sure you'e right on that. Mine will probably be larger than most. It's a good thing the house will be paid off by them.
I appreciate the sentiment. The reality is, before SS/Medicare, seniors were the poorest group in the country. At the end of the day, most people don't save for the future. So, what do we allow to happen to them?
And yet here you are arguing against all the examples I have given you of poor stewardship. You have said, repeatedly, that its ok since others are ineffecient. No it is not ok. Not ok at all.
You want to fix SSA then here you go:
Eleminate the 255 Lump Sum Death Payment
Eliminate unecessary paperwork such as the SSA 821 under obvious cases such as the one I gave you.
Set a mandatory amount of cases that Law Judges have to hear per year at the hearing level
Allow local offices to put into pay simple retirement claims and the auxliary claims that follow such as those for spouses and minor kids.
Allow local offices to release back pay from retirement and disability claims.
Allow local offices to deny people appointments for disability claims for things such as pregnancy and broken arms.
Improve communication between the local offices and the processing centers (currently an antique system of email and faxes are all there really is)
Allow local offices to make an input indicating when treasury needs to go after an overpayment in a bank account.
Streamline ID needs so that they apply to all SSA applications and processes
Take SSA taxes from every dollar earned. No limit.
Truly make those funds untouchable as they were intended to be.
Allow guards to leave when the office is closed, public gone and building secure.
SSA is truly inconsistent with their processes. Alot of the precedents for my suggestions have already been set in SSA under the SSI program. They trust local offices with one program but not the other?
SaltyDawg
Well-Known Member
These are great suggestions. Except for allowing the guards to leave. I might prefer to have security there 24/7 to curb the data (identity) theft threat.
I'm on board with pretty much everything you suggested though.
Send it to your congressman and maybe someone will actually read it.
I think pretty much everyone is on board with improving social security. It's when people start talking about getting rid of it, or privatizing it, when people start to disagree.
Against what threat? Is there even one documented case of someone breaking into a SSA office after it was closed to steal personal info like social secuirty numbers, bank accounts and what not?
Can you find a study NOT done in Britain?
SaltyDawg
Well-Known Member
I don't know if there is a documented case of it happening at an SSA office, but there are countless documented cases of it happening at other businesses. My guess is it probably doesn't happen as often (or at all) at SSA offices because of the security.
Kind of like banks getting robbed all the time, but Fort Knox never gets robbed. Doesn't mean we need less security there, it just means the security there is doing a good job.
I for one want to just get rid of it. I don't want this monster in the "house".
I have had to "contribute" to it all my life, and the SSA sends me a statement every few years of what the benefits will be when I retire. I don't even want to retire. I have assets that I have acquired by being willing to save pretty frugally. If I had been able to apply the money "contributed" in my name, on the basis of my wages, according to my pay stubs, my kids would have a substantial secure future. The SSA isn't going to do anything for them, and they have just squandered everything they have taken.
Within the next few years, our government will be telling us we all have to accept less than has been promised. OB is going to be disappointed in the "return" when our government's program of printing fake money becomes obvious. This policy of spending everything available is the ruin of our nation, and we will pay for it with the loss of value of our printied money, especially compared to the prices we pay for the necessities of life. Our taxes are going to be going up pretty steep, and the "benefits" we've been promised will not be actually delivered.
In my lifetime, I have seen people accept less and less over the years as "reasonable" wages, "adeqiate" housing, and "good" health care. It is only the advances in materials and technologies that has sustained us above absolute destitution. Our government has not been a driver in that, but an obstructionary force. I don't even give our educational institutions credit there, as we are en masse being "trained to the task" instead of encouraged to be more innovative.
I outright call OB on the falsehood that elderly folks of even the twenties had it worse than now. Before Social Security, we had country doctors who made house calls. .. . . yes they were peddling "medicines" that didn't do much, but nobody was actually not getting the care that their skills and knowledge afforded. I remember having a family physician who had served our family and community for decades, who was still working in his seventies. He kept going for some years after, into my teens. My grandfather lived to 103, and didn't have any problem going to a hospital in his nineties, getting the treatment he needed, and coming home to live an independent life for the last ten years in his own home. He didn't even know what "insurance" was. Doctors told him up front the charge, and he paid it. Maybe a lot of people didn't go to doctors at all, or something like that, but no one was being turned away. Community hospitals got some equipment from the taxpayer dollar/government deficit spending even then, but people gave money to hospitals. We had significant instutions operated by the Catholic orders, the Mormon Church, and other community-minded charitable/serving organizations.
Under the "ACA" there is going to be rationed care. . . . they will call it "cost-effective" decisions. It won't be your decision. You are going to pay more for less care, and that is the big lie in the ACA.
Will people like it? maybe. They won't have any choice, they might think without it they would have absolutely no hope. Like the SSA, it is just a lie. The government cannot give anyone "security" or "care". It takes people to do those things, and people have done it forever, and will do it when the government can't pay.
The people who are in power with the government will use their power to enrich themselves, not care for you.
No, I'm saying they are examples that are similar to the poor stewardship you see from any other human activity (including self-management of funds), and that they weren't directly on-point to the question I asked.
I fully acknowledge the examples you provided exist and your portrayal is accurate to the degree I can rely on your say-so, and I trust your say-so above that of the average poster. I think a lot of your ideas, carefully implemented, sound pretty good. I have no doubt you know more on the topic of where the inefficiencies occur than I.
Possibly. Why? Is there some fundamental human difference that means impoverished people are less likely to commit suicide in the USA?
Call me out on that all you want. The historical record will not change.
Fair enough but I see that as even more reason to fix what we can. On this one topic you are making a safe bet.
The "history" as conveyed by succeeding generations of schoolteachers does change. Sorta tautological fact there, but let's see, is it worth getting some history textbooks from the twenties and thirties, and compare what is said there with some contemporary textbooks?
I think the thesis you are trying to maintain is something like this: People just didn't get any care beore the government programs fixed everything.
I, however, am talking about something else: It used to be affordable, in terms of people being able to pay for it, without going bankrupt and losing their homes. And we could choose within the range of treatments we could afford. And most people could get something in the ballpark of current state of the art care. It is only with the advent of our supposedly wonderful government programs that people now are going to pay for it through direct taxes whether we need care or not, and now if we want care, we have to let some bureaucrats decide whether we really need it or not, and we're going to be sitting and waiting for them to decide. And for the old useless geezers who no longer can work, "society" is going to decide their care is not cost-effective.
What I do see as a pretty strong positive across history is that medical care has improved through research, and technological developments including materials and products that are now available, and overall understanding of how to treat our maladies. I think the government involvement in that is a mixed bag. Yes some advanced have been financed by government expenditure and research, but there is a set of limiting or negative impacts as well, principally in decreasing the range of choices we are allowed to pursue.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Lol hilarious how the right is constantly rewriting history. So now the old, disabled, and poor had it good during the Great Depression? Wow.
Damn you FDR!!! Hoover was doing such a great job and you had to ruin it!
Damn you FDR!!! Hoover was doing such a great job and you had to ruin it!