Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in a fight for his political life in Nevada. His opponent, Sharron Angle, is running on a platform of privatizing Social Security and Medicare, neither of which make any sense to anyone who has a 401(k) or private health insurance.
Privatizing Social Security would mean putting that money in the financial market, which is currently so schizophrenic that I take comfort in knowing I can’t take any money out for at least 20 years. Maybe it’ll be better by then. But to transfer all my Social Security money over to that market means I could lose as much as I’ve lost in the past two years.
I have good, conservative investments, but I lost 40% of it when the market crashed. I’ve regained a good bit of that, but not enough to regain contributions made since the crash.
That is no way to manage Social Security.
On the Medicare front, I have said long and loudly that the VA has one of the most efficient health care systems in the world. They went from sub-standard to being world-class. My health insurance costs about $700 a month. The VA provides comparable or better care every day.
Instead of privatizing Medicare, take the VA model and run with it. It’s a very good model, and provides a better path than the alternative suggested by Ms. Angle.
While she paints Mr. Reid as a radical, she’s the real one. She's a tea-party girl who hasn’t thought through what her proposed agenda would do to her proposed constituents. It’s typical reactionary bile.
I have to wonder which knee is jerking harder: the right or the left.
My guess is that it’s the right one. And in this case, right is wrong.
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