Agenda for Seniors
April 21, 2019
Senior citizens are discriminated against by a number of unwise public policies.
People on Social Security lose benefits if they earn even a modest amount of wage income. Medicare is paying doctors the way it did in the last century—long before the existence of email or iPhones. Seniors are the only people in our society who can’t have a Health Savings Account—from which to pay bills not covered by health insurance.
Double taxation of senior savings is unfair. Forced withdrawal of senior citizen savings makes no economic sense. And millions of seniors lose out on Social Security and Medicare benefits they have worked and paid for because they can’t navigate the complexity of programs that are supposed to have been created for their benefit.
Here is what needs to be done.
Bring Social Security into the 21st Century. Roughly 90 percent of seniors begin collecting Social Security benefits before they reach the full retirement age. Yet if these folks get a new job or a part-time job and earn one dollar more than $17,640, they will lose 50 cents of Social Security benefits because of the earnings penalty. For a $20-an-hour employee, the tax kicks in after you work Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday.
