GBO NEWS: 17 Reporters Named Journalists in Aging Fellows; RAISE Act for 53 Million Caregivers; Older Women of Color; Will Congress Pass Older Workers Bureau?; Costs of Growing Older Tallied; Social Security Doomsayers Wrong Again; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Our 28th Year.
October 14, 2021 — Volume 28, Number 11
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. If you have difficulty getting to the full issue of GBONews with the links provided below, simply go to www.gbonews.org to read the latest or past editions. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. [pfkleyman@gmail.com]. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: Go Boldly Where No Nonagenarian Has Gone Before!
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: Journalists in Aging Fellows Program Selects 17 Reporters.
2. LEADS FROM LIZ: Liz Seegert returns with look into 2018’s “RAISE Act” and the continuing crisis for 53 million Family Caregivers.
3. GOOD SOURCES:
*** “Pushed to Retire and Keep Earning, Older Americans Face a Peculiar Vise,” by Teresa Ghilarducci and Christopher D. Cook, Los Angeles Times. (Could Congress Pass the Newly Introduced Older Worker’s Bureau?);
*** “Supporting the Economic Security and Health of Older Women of Color,” Issue Brief from Justice in Aging and the National Women’s Law Center;
*** Just in from the Commonwealth Fund: * How US eldercare stacks up to other countries (not so well);
* “The U.S. Can Lower Drug Prices Without Sacrificing Innovation,” Harvard Business Review;
* Studies Understated Net Household Savings from Health Coverage Expansions Under Debate in Congress.”
*** The Virtual AARP Global Conference, “Redefining Health: New Approaches for How We Live and Age,” Oct. 27 and 28.
4. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Dignity Therapy: Making the Last Words Count,” by Lola Butcher, Knowable Magazine;
*** “What’s Keeping Family Caregivers and the Long-Term Unemployed From Getting Hired,” by Kerry Hannon, PBS Next Avenue;
*** “Tallying the Cost of Growing Older,” by Paula Span, New York Times;
*** “Reluctant Localities Are Being Dragged Into Court to Fix Sidewalks for People With Disabilities,” by Maureen O’Hagan, Kaiser Health News;
*** “Social Security Doomsayers Are Wrong Again, But Reform Choices Loom,” by Mark Miller, Reuters
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** The Journalists in Aging Fellows Program Selected 17 reporters for the 12th Annual collaboration of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and Journalists Network on Generations, the publisher of GBONews.org, thus surpassing 200 reporting fellows over the years.
The Fellows have come from more than 150 news organizations, half from the general-audience press and half from ethnic, community or senior media in the United States. To date they have generated about 750 articles in English, with many translated from their original versions in Spanish, Chinese and other languages, most recently Bangla, on a wide span of subjects in aging. A continuously updated list of published fellowship stories since the program began is available at www.geron.org/journalistfellows.
The 2021-2022 “class” of New Fellows includes journalists from such widespread media outlets as the Washington Post, CNBC, The Guardian, Seattle Times, Khabar Magazine, Telemundo Oklahoma and Planet Detroit. Fellows’ story proposals cover a spectrum of issues in aging, such as environmental threats to Detroit’s seniors, homeless seniors in the nation’s capital, creative programs for older adults in the pandemic, and America’s flimsy arc into retirement.
Following is the list of this year’s New Fellows, whose proposed in-depth projects were chosen by a panel of journalists and gerontologists. In addition, the program will bring back 11 past Fellows to continue their coverage of issues in aging. We will announce them soon.
* Bobbi I. Booker, Your Philly Black News, Philadelphia. Project: Philadelphia’s senior community centers are located in low-income Black neighborhoods throughout the city: Three-part multimedia series.
* Ruben Castaneda, US News & World Report, Washington DC. Project: In-depth story to explain both why Latinos are dying at greater rates of COVID-19, and why their level of mortality is lower for other causes.
* Chelsea Cirruzzo, Axios DC, Washington, DC. Project: Investigative story on homeless seniors in the nation’s capital and with national perspective.
* Rukiya Colvin, Planet Detroit. Project: Air pollution, heatwaves, flooding: the triple threat that’s killing Detroit’s seniors.
* Paige Cornwell, The Seattle Times. Project: Long-form feature and photo package on rural aging in Washington State.
*Julie Fanselow, 3rd Act Magazine, Seattle, WA. Project: How creative professionals use the arts to help older people process their experiences amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
* Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, Rafu Shimpo, Los Angeles-based Japanese-English language newspaper. Project: Issues for incarcerated older people, with focus on Asians in the US intensified by the COVID pandemic.
* B. Denise Hawkins, Trice Edney News Wire (Black media news service), Centreville, VA. Project: Elements for a new model of nursing home care for Black elders.
* Tony Hicks, Bay City News Service, San Francisco. Project: Two stories on the dynamics of senior life in Contra Costa County, across the bay from San Francisco, one of California’s fastest aging, plus an analysis of the changing workforce and its impact in older workers.
* LaShawn Hudson, Producer/Reporter, WABE Public Radio’s “Closer Look with Rose Scott, Atlanta. Project: Multi-part series the public health nightmare at Arbor Terrace at Cascade and on pandemic disaster.
* Elissa S. Lee, Southern California News Group (Los Angeles Daily News, Orange County Register, others). Project:Caregivers for Older Adults from historically excluded communities in Southern California more exposed by the pandemic, including ethnic minorities, LGBTQ seniors and others.
* Ronnie Lovler, Gainesville (FL) Sun. Project: Contrasting white, elderly homogeneity of Florida’s huge community, The Villages, with racially, ethnically and generational mix of nearby Gainesville.
* Lavina Melwani, Khabar Magazine, New York, NY. Project: “Final Destination: Last Stop on the Indian Immigrant Journey in America,” on retirement options for the 4.8 million-strong Indian-American population in America.
* Annie Nova, CNBC, New York. Project: The myth of retirement in America, a three-part series on the US’s flimsy arc to retirement, and the underlined effects on savings of the pandemic.
* Michael Sainato, The Guardian, New York. Project: Workplace issues senior populations face in the US, including aging discrimination in hiring, how they’re treated in the workplace, and the increasing need of seniors to work past retirement age.
* Carly Stern, The Washington Post. Project: “What Women of Color Need to Know About Dementia:” Miseducation and delayed care contribute to poor outcomes for women of color with dementia.
* Ian Torres Santa Ana, Telemundo Oklahoma. Project: Trilogy on how COVID-19 affected Hispanic seniors: 1) the psychology of the isolation; 2) how a senior recreation center brings together Hispanic seniors around Latino culture; 3) and how service gaps left by the pandemic could be closed.
This year’s program is supported by funding from The Silver Century Foundation, RRF Foundation for Aging, The Commonwealth Fund, Archstone Foundation, and The John A. Hartford Foundation.
2. LEADS FROM LIZ
*** Why You Should Get Familiar with the RAISE Act
By Liz Seegert
Among many policy issues directly impacting aging and caregiving is one key piece of legislation to keep an eye on is the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support and Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act, which became law in January 2018. Why bring up a three year old law now?
The short answer is that most of the estimated 53 million family caregivers are in crisis. If the pandemic taught us nothing else, it showed how vital this informal network of relatives, friends, and neighbors — almost all unpaid — are to keeping older, frailer adults at home and out of institutional care. They need all the help and support they can get, as soon as possible. However, the government tends to operate with a different definition of “urgency.”
Experts have been meeting over the past few years to discuss strategies to support these caregivers. In late September, the Administration for Community Living (ACL), the agency leading the implementation of the RAISE Act and facilitating the work of the RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council, finally submitted its first report to Congress. ACL combines Administration on Aging (AoA) and the Administration on Disabilities (AoD).
The report describes the challenges faced by family caregivers and federal programs currently available to assist them, and it provides 26 recommendations for better says to support family caregivers. These recommendations will form the foundation of a national strategy to support family caregivers.
This goal is to identify specific actions that communities, providers, government, and others are and should take to recognize and support family caregivers, such as:
- Greater adoption of person- and family-centered care in all healthcare and long-term service and support settings, with the person and the family caregiver at the center of care teams;
- Assessment and service planning (including care transitions and coordination) involving care recipients and family caregivers;
- Information, education, training supports, referral, and care coordination;
- Respite options;
- Financial security and workplace issues.
I took a look at some of the report’s recommendations in this blog post for the Association of Health Care Journalists. It may provide some helpful background for anyone reporting on family caregiver issues.
“Leads From Liz” is back after a year’s hiatus. Columnist Liz Seegert co-directs the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program and is program coordinator for GBONews.org’s parent, the Journalists Network on Generations. A New York-based freelance journalist, she is also editor of the Association of Health Care Journalists’ Core Topic section on Aging.
3. GOOD SOURCES
*** “Pushed to Retire and to Keep Earning, Older Americans Face a Peculiar Vise,” by Teresa Ghilarducci and Christopher D. Cook, Los Angeles Times (Sept. 27, 2021): “The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing recession have hit older workers especially hard. Today’s economy is simultaneously pushing out millions who were counting on their paychecks to survive, while trapping millions of others in jobs because they can’t afford to retire.”
The commentary continues, “These seemingly contradictory trends are part of a grim forecast for aging Americans. Older workers (defined as 55 and up) increasingly fear they won’t have a job well into their 60s. Even if they are still employed, that uncertainty undermines a person’s ability to negotiate their deserved pay and proper conditions, even after a lifetime of work.”
Ghilarducci, a noted author and economics professor on retirement issues, and Cook, a journalist and resident writer, both at the New School for Social Research in New York, cite research [https://tinyurl.com/76za9254] she and colleagues have done at the New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. It showed that “at least 1.7 million more older workers retired because of the pandemic recession than would have been expected without the downturn.” They add, “These trends are intensifying inequality: Economically precarious older workers are being pushed to retire at earlier ages while more privileged workers — especially those who can do their jobs remotely now — are able to delay retirement.”
The op-ed adds, “At the same time, countervailing trends are pressuring millions of elder workers to stay on the job to stave off poverty. Of the 6 million jobs expected to be added by 2029, 4.4 million will be filled by workers over 55, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 1995 to 2020, the share of these workers more than doubled, to nearly 25% from 12%.”
They go on, “As the Department of Labor puts it, ‘The economic downturn, shifting perceptions of retirement, increased workplace flexibility, and the aging of the baby boom generation are all contributing to people working longer.’ But the department’s list is incomplete: Eroding pensions are a major force compelling people to work longer.’
Ghilarducci and Cook urge the Department of Labor “to research, coordinate, educate and advocate for America’s growing elderly labor force.” In early October, a group of U.S. House Democrats introduced the Supporting Older Workers Act [https://tinyurl.com/6mdfb8pw] to try accomplishing exactly those goals.
This legislation would create an Older Workers Bureau, which, Ghilarducci and Cook write, would “identify, investigate and interpret this population’s concerns and coordinate federal and state policies to help them.” Like the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor, the proposed bureau would enhance employment opportunities and economic stability through policy development, research and reporting, and technical assistance.
*** “Supporting the Economic Security and Health of Older Women of Color,” Issue Brief from Justice in Aging and the National Women’s Law Center (September 2021): “Women of color confront systemic discrimination–on the basis of race, gender, and other characteristics like sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration or disability status–throughout their lives. It is important to understand that multiple and compounding forms of discrimination experienced over a lifetime can have a devastating impact on the economic security and health of older women of color. Without policies that specifically address the needs and well-being of older women of color, they will bear the burden of a lifetime of disparities.”
The authors of this well-researched five-page overview consolidated a range of data on key issues in health, income, housing, data collection and other primary concerns for aging women in ethnic or racial groups. For instance, “The gender wage gap alone can cause women to lose $400,000 over a 40-year career, with the lifetime loss of earnings for Black women totaling nearly $1 million, the lifetime earnings loss for Latinas exceeding $1.1 million. Lower earnings result in lower Social Security benefits.”
*** Just in from the Commonwealth Fund are several studies and articles packed with data and analyses on issues of American health and health policy. The Fund, which supports our Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, is among the most informative research foundations in the health and aging, and GBONews.org highly recommends their ongoing bulletins for reporters’ email stacks. Here are summaries of just a few of their recent releases.
* “Comparing Nations on Timeliness and Coordination of Health Care,” by Michelle McEvoy Doty, M.P.H, Ph.D., VP, Organizational Effectiveness, Survey Research and Evaluation, the Commonwealth Fund, (Oct. 4, 2021): “Findings from the 2021 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of Older Adults.”
How does eldercare in this richest of all nations stack up to other countries? Yes, we all know the answer is not so well, but how unwell, exactly? The latest international survey by the Commonwealth Fund presents “a mixed picture of U.S. health system performance as the COVID-19 pandemic continues: US seniors are more likely than their counterparts in other wealthy countries to experience economic hardship as a result of the pandemic, with Latino/Hispanic and Black seniors most affected. Nearly four in 10 older Latino/Hispanic adults and one in three older Black adults said they used up their savings or lost a job or source of income because of COVID-19, compared to 14 percent of older white adults.”
Commonwealth surveyed adults age 65+ between March and June 2021, to gauge “how well US seniors fare relative to older adults in 10 other high-income countries.” (See “About This Survey.) They found, “Despite the near-universal coverage Medicare provides, U.S. older adults have comparatively high out-of-pocket health expenses and are much more likely to forgo care because of cost than are their counterparts in the other survey countries.”
* “The U.S. Can Lower Drug Prices Without Sacrificing Innovation,” by David Blumenthal, MD, and colleagues, Harvard Business Review (Oct. 1, 2021): Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, and his co-authors, assert, “With Congress considering legislation to allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices, large pharmaceutical companies are once again waging a campaign that contends that doing so would seriously harm the development of breakthrough drugs. This is not true. Smaller companies now account for the lion’s share of such breakthroughs. The key to supporting drug innovation is to increase NIH funding of the efforts that gives rise to these new companies, cut the costs and accelerate the speed of clinical trials, and reform patent law.”
* “Studies Understated Net Household Savings from Health Coverage Expansions Under Debate in Congress,” (Oct. 5, 2021): According to this Commonwealth Fund bulletin, the US public would get far more bang for their tax bucks from programs Congress is now debating under President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, with many more lives saved: “These include provisions that would make the premium subsidies in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) permanent and, in the 12 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid, provide poor residents with access to subsidized coverage.”
The Fund’s study, The Coverage and Cost Effects of Key Health Insurance Reforms Being Considered by Congress, by Jessica Banthin and colleagues at the Urban Institute, “found that the two provisions would lower the number of uninsured Americans by 7 million. They would also save people billions in health care spending. However, the researchers have since found their estimates understated those savings. That is because they did not apply the cost-sharing subsidies that reduce deductibles and copays for people newly enrolling in marketplace plans, even though the federal cost of providing those subsidies is included in their estimates of federal spending.
The revised estimates mean that households would see net savings of $8.2 billion in 2022 under the two reforms, instead of the original estimate of $1.8 billion, and that the increase in out-of-pocket spending would fall to $0.6 billion from $7.0 billion. There is no change in the estimated $8.8 billion drop in household spending on premiums.”
It goes on, “A previous study, Filling the Gap in States That Have Not Expanded Medicaid Eligibility, by Urban Institute researcher John Holahan and colleagues, made a similar error, overstating by $1.4 billion to $6.4 billion how much more people would spend out of pocket under three different approaches to filling the Medicaid coverage gap. Both issue briefs have been revised.”
*** The Virtual AARP Global Conference, Oct. 27 and 28, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET, will have the theme, “Redefining Health: New Approaches for How We Live and Age.” It will include such luminaries as
- Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization
- António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations
- Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, Surgeon, Writer & Public Health Leader
- Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization
- Dr. Henry Ting, Chief Health Officer, Delta Air Lines
- Jo Ann Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer, AARP
- Laura L. Carstensen, Founding Director, Stanford Center on Longevity
- Richard Lui, MSNBC News Anchor and Caregiver.
Journalists may register HERE. For press further information, contact Olivia Brooks Allan, phone: 212-268-8500; email: oallan@landmarkventures.com.
4. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Dignity Therapy: Making the Last Words Count,” [ https://tinyurl.com/sk72z8v2 ] by Lola Butcher, Knowable Magazine (Oct. 4, 2021): “Guided conversations with the terminally ill are popular with patients, families and doctors who’ve experienced them. But are they truly beneficial? Researchers are looking beneath the anecdotal appeal.”
Butcher writes, “These end-of-life conversations are important, says Deborah Carr, a sociologist at Boston University who studies well-being in the last stages of life and explored the topic in the 2019 Annual Review of Sociology. A key need of people who know they are dying is tending to relationships with people who are important to them. This includes “being able to communicate their wishes to family and ensuring that their loved ones are able to say goodbye without regret.”
The story goes on, “And the closer we get to death, the more we need to understand what our lives have amounted to, says Kenneth J. Doka, senior vice president for grief programs for Hospice Foundation of America. ‘As people reach the end of life, they want to look back and say, My life counted. My life mattered. My life had value, had some importance, in whatever way they define it,’ Doka says. ‘I think dignity therapy speaks to that need to find meaning in life and does it in a very structured and very successful way.’”
*** “What’s Keeping Family Caregivers and the Long-Term Unemployed From Getting Hired,” by Kerry Hannon, PBS Next Avenue (Sept. 30, 2021): She reports that the study “Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent,” by Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work and the consulting firm Accenture, estimates there are more than 27 million ‘hidden workers’ in America, who are unemployed, underemployed or working part-time and eager to get hired for full-time jobs. “The problem is they’re ‘hidden” from most employers who’d benefit from hiring them,” Hannon notes.
The study authors wrote, “The irony that companies consistently bemoan their inability to find talent while millions remain on the fringes of the workforce led us to seek an explanation.” They surveyed 8,000 hidden workers, plus 2,250 executives in the US, the UK and Germany. A primary findings, Hannon summarizes: “Job applicants’ resumés are too often going into an electronic black hole, ghosted by potential employers. This is especially true for job seekers who are 50-plus and ones who’ve taken time out of the workforce due to family caregiving responsibilities. Nearly two in 10 employed family caregivers had to quit their jobs due to caregiving commitments, according to the new Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers national survey, ‘Working While Caring.’“
Hannon goes on that “a whopping 88% of US hidden workers” surveyed for the report blamed employers’ hiring practices for discarding their applications out of hand, even though they were qualified perform the jobs well. But they didn’t fit the computer-programmed criteria in the job descriptions.
The piece explains, “Automated-hiring technology known as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are rejecting countless people from job consideration.” The report notes that more than 90% of employers surveyed use this screening software. One reason: ATS spit out applications showing resumé gaps, such as for periods of childcare and eldercare.
“According to the study, this practice results in more than 10 million workers from even being asked to interview with a human being,” Hannon writes. According to one sources she quotes, “Currently, 49% of the long-term unemployed in America are age 45 or older.”
Hannon writes that the “Hidden Workers” report concludes that companies purposefully hiring hidden workers “report being 36% less likely to face talent and skills shortages compared to companies that do not hire hidden workers.”
*** “Tallying the Cost of Growing Older,” by Paula Span, New York Times (Oct. 5, 2021): Dek: “Researchers have been studying how much care American adults will require as they age, and for how long.” In her ongoing “New Old Age” column, Span proffers an important overview and perspective on US eldercare.
She explains, “For years, researchers have tried to calculate what proportion of the aging population will need such extensive care. ‘Becoming frail and needing help with basic personal care is probably the greatest financial risk people face at older ages,’ said Richard Johnson, the economist who directs the Program on Retirement Policy at the Urban Institute.
A 2019 study he undertook for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, for example, found that over their lifetimes, about 70 percent of older adults will need help from family caregivers or paid aides or some combination, in their own homes or in long-term care facilities. . . . But such analyses often don’t distinguish between short rehab stays, perhaps after a knee replacement, and the years of round-the-clock care that is required for someone with deepening dementia.”
Alicia Munnell told Span, “Even if you need a lot of care, if it’s for a short period, it’s not that big a deal.” Recent work by Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and a former US Treasury official, and her colleagues explored how much help older Americans will need and for how long.
Although, Span writes, “Policy types perpetually lament Americans’ inadequate retirement savings . . . . Retirees can also overestimate their need for care, lowering their quality of life with unnecessary scrimping. ‘I think that’s actually a bigger risk than the more conventional idea of taking an around-the-world cruise and then ending up with nothing,’ Munnell said.”
Her team found that 17 percent of 65-year-olds will need no long-term care. “Almost one-quarter will develop severe needs, requiring many hours of help for more than three years. Most older people will fall between those poles, with 22 percent having only minimal needs. The largest group, 38 percent, can expect moderate needs — like support while they recover from a heart attack, after which they can again function independently.” Unsurprisingly, they found that lower-educated people without a high school diploma, and Black and Latinx seniors “are more apt than older white people to develop moderate or severe needs.”
With uneven state-federal Medicaid coverage and only 10 percent of Americans holding very limited and expensive private long-term-care insurance policies, Span discusses efforts by some states to “start on the kind of safety net that the Netherlands, Germany and South Korea already provide.” Span concludes, “American families still bear the greatest brunt of responsibility for elder care.”
*** “Reluctant Localities Are Being Dragged Into Court to Fix Sidewalks for People With Disabilities,” by Maureen O’Hagan, Kaiser Health News, (Oct. 13, 2021): “From her Baltimore dining room, Susan Goodlaxson can see her neighbor gardening across the street. But while other neighbors stop to chat, Goodlaxson just watches from the window. She uses a wheelchair, and there isn’t a single curb ramp on her block.
If the 66-year-old wanted to join, she’d have to jump her wheelchair down the 7½-inch curb and risk a fall. Ditto if she wanted to wheel over to the library, [avoiding] rampless curbs and broken sidewalks.”
O’Hagan reports, “Since 1990, the Americans With Disabilities Act has required governmental entities to provide people with disabilities access to programs and services enjoyed by their nondisabled peers. That includes sidewalks and curb ramps that make it possible to safely cross the street.”
She found that, “In Baltimore, just 1.3% of curb ramps meet federal standards, according to the city’s own figures. In Oregon, about 9% of corners maintained by the state transportation department are compliant. San Jose, California, counted 27,621 corners with faulty or nonexistent curb ramps. Boston estimates fewer than half of its curb ramps are compliant. . . In recent years, there’s been a flurry of class-action lawsuits, including one filed against Baltimore in June, with Goodlaxson among the plaintiffs.”
The story touches on a range of problems and lawsuits in Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, New York and other locations.
Most recently, she writes, “In August, the Senate defeated an amendment by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) to a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that would have required state and local entities to describe how they would use federal dollars to improve accessibility for people with disabilities and for underserved communities. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) called Duckworth’s amendment “politically correct virtue signaling” and argued that transit agencies don’t need that kind of federal oversight.”
*** “Social Security Doomsayers Are Wrong Again, But Reform Choices Loom,” by Mark Miller, Reuters (Sept. 16,2021): Miller’s column provides an authoritative overview of the recurring “Groundhog Day” bad dream over the fate of Social Security. Taking off from the program’s most recent government report on the program’s fiscal health, he writes, “Not surprisingly, that was met with a slew of doomsday forecasts from pundits and media. Social Security will soon be insolvent! Insolvency is coming years earlier than we thought! Benefit cuts are a real possibility!”
Miller yawns, “These panicky predictions appear every year when the trustees overseeing Social Security issue their report on the financial health of the program, and this year was no exception. The pandemic-induced recession of 2020 added a new twist, since many forecasters were predicting before the report was released that COVID-19 would dramatically worsen the financial outlook for Social Security. Guess what: it didn’t happen. But the U.S. Congress does need to address a long-range imbalance in Social Security finances – and lawmakers should expand benefits in a targeted way while they are at it.”
He states, “Make no mistake, depletion of the trust funds in 2034 is an outcome to be avoided. At that point, absent action by Congress, a draconian, across-the-board benefit cut would be imposed on everyone – current and future retirees alike – of roughly 20%. But solutions are available.”
Miller stresses, “If we take action sooner, averting trust-fund exhaustion is the place to start, but Congress also should use targeted benefit expansion as a way to address the rising income inequality, racial and gender gaps that plague retirement security. The aim should be to boost the amount of preretirement income that Social Security replaces, especially for lower- and middle-income households that rely on the program most.” That is, improve workers’ ability to earn and save.
“Reforming the program sooner than later would allow for a more thoughtful debate and discussion about possible solutions. And perhaps – just perhaps – action would extinguish the demagoguery that has fueled so much worry among the public about Social Security’s future,” Miller writes ever so hopefully. Thoughtful debate, demagoguery extinguished: The new American Dream?
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2021 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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