These Americans are terrified about the future - and they vote

By Brett Arends

Medicare and Social Security could be the keys to the presidential election

President Joe Biden in his latest budget bragged about the $137 billion in student loan debt that he "forgave" by executive fiat, averaging $37,000 per beneficiary.

Actually, nothing was "forgiven." The debt was merely transferred to you, the U.S. taxpayer.

Whether this freebie will make those 3.7 million student-loan-forgiveness beneficiaries more likely to turn up and vote for the president in November remains to be seen. It's also not clear what effect it might have on the young people excluded from the giveaway - such as those who never went to college and those who did and, er, paid off their loans themselves.

But the administration, like its pals in the media and advertising industries, remains obsessed with the youth vote. It surely cannot be long before it starts handing out free Taylor Swift concert tickets to under-30s, paid for by you and me. You think I'm kidding?

But if Team Biden actually wants to win November's election, it might want to pay more attention to the middle-aged or even the old.

Especially as they were the ones who bailed out the Democrats in 2022 and stopped the expected midterm "red wave" for the Republicans.

A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans in their 40s and 50s are now worried that Social Security and Medicare won't be there for them when they retire in a decade or two.

An astonishing 86% of those in their 40s say they are worried or extremely worried about whether they will be able to rely on Social Security, and 83% say the same about Medicare.

The numbers are almost as high among Americans in their 50s, even though they can expect to be eligible for both programs within about a decade.

The poll, from Gallup, also shows these fears have risen sharply just in the last couple of years. Among those ages 50 to 64, the number expressing fears about Medicare has rocketed 13 points, from 61% to 74%.

Fears about both programs are rising across all age brackets, but most of all among the middle-aged, the poll found. And they are the most at risk, because they are closest to retirement.

The numbers are especially astonishing because most Americans have no serious health-insurance plan for their senior years that doesn't rely on Medicare, and few will be able to retire in comfort without Social Security.

A cynic could say that the numbers are a triumph for the "resistance is useless" campaign.

But the poll isn't only about fears. A recent analysis by the U.S. Treasury found that there is effectively a $78 trillion hole in the accounts of America's retirement program. According to top Treasury calculations, that's the value in today's dollars of the extra money that will have to be found over the next 75 years to pay for Social Security and Medicare commitments. About two-thirds of that sum, or $53 trillion, is accounted for by Medicare.

Under the circumstances, you'd think the fate of Social Security and Medicare would be at the center of this year's presidential campaign.

Donald Trump says he will "never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare," though it's not clear how he will achieve that: The federal budget is already an ocean of red ink, and he wants to cut taxes further.

President Biden's proposals for Medicare include hiking the payroll tax that pays for the program by a third, from 3.8% to 5%, for those making more than $400,000 a year.

But curiously, nobody - neither Biden nor Trump - is suggesting scrapping the slow privatization of Medicare, even though this is wasting tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars a year. That's money that could be used to shore up the system without raising taxes by a dime.

Medicare Advantage, the privatized form of Medicare that cuts in a for-profit insurance company as a middleman, costs the U.S. taxpayer 22% more per beneficiary than regular Medicare, according to the government's nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

That will mean an extra $83 billion in 2024, MedPac says. Or, to put it in context, about 10% of the entire Medicare budget.

So, just to recap, we're blowing hundreds of billions of dollars on giveaways like student-loan bailouts and Medicare insurance middlemen while Medicare hurtles toward financial crisis. Americans over 40 are terrified.

What happens next? My guess is another pitch for the youth vote. Bring on the Taylor Swift tickets.

-Brett Arends

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06-08-24 1329ET

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