There's something about the phrase "entitlement programs" that seems to belittle those programs even before discussions of their merits or liabilities begin. The phrase has acquired a ring that seems to leave out of account that programs like Social Security and Medicare are built on money put in by their recipients. True, the programs need occasional adjustments because of changing demographics. But they are vital to all society, not just their immediate beneficiaries.
They're vital, for example, to the families of those beneficiaries. In 1989, this reporter's mother, whose estate consisted of little more than her bungalow in Florida, died of cancer after three years of treatment. Later we received the final bills in a stack totaling $50,000—the $50,000 stamped over with the welcome word "Paid."
Paid by Medicare—so at no point had we been forced to choose between our mortgage, our children's college education and treatment for my mother. Our money went to feed other sectors of society—a bank, a college—not just the hospital, the labs, the drug companies. Multiply us by millions and think how much money would be sucked from the rest of the economy by medical expenses if it weren't for Medicare.
During Medicare's 43 years in existence, average life expectancy has increased from 70 to 77.4 years, due mostly, of course, to new medicines and medical technology. But those advances would not have been so widely available if it hadn't been for Medicare, which surely played its own part in lengthening life expectancy; studies show, for example, that Medicare patients with diabetes and heart ailments have better outcomes than people over 61 but not yet 65, the age when Medicare clicks in.
And before Medicare existed, 29 percent of people aged 65 and over were poor. Under Medicare the number fell to 10 percent. How many people Medicare saved from illness and death indirectly by protecting them from poverty is unknown. So are the costs their children or others would have borne for their medical care, or for their support if they had been bankrupted by illness. Those are questions we as individuals and as a society don't want to learn the answers to the hard way.
