Preventable Deaths and Social Security

You want to screw the government? Live as long as you can and collect Social Security. But make sure you're obese so you can put an extra strain on Medicare. I know it's hard to live long when you're obese, but if you put down the cigarettes and alcohol, you just might make it!

Factored into Social Security are the people who work their whole lives and pay into the system but due to self-inflicted lifestyle choices, die before collecting much or any of it. Add together all the deaths from the top preventable causes- smoking, obesity and alcohol being the top three- and then imagine if they lived. Imagine what that would do to Social Security if even just a half a million people a year lived to collect their benefits! Their premature deaths are factored into the system, which is why curbing the tobacco, alcohol or food industries in this country is more difficult than just changing social norms. It has much to do with how many people are voluntarily killing themselves before collecting their benefits.

If you are smoker, you work your whole life paying into a system that you will not live long enough to take advantage of. The government counts on that in their accounting, which makes the status quo a much more attractive option than outlawing a health menace and preventing premature deaths. This may also be a factor in the absence of Nicotine on the DEA's drug scheduling list. Because that is the main reason why cigarettes are still legal. Could you imagine what would happen if the DEA actually scheduled Nicotine as a drug? A dangerously addictive and lethal drug with no medicinal value? Cigarettes would be outlawed, smokers who stop smoking would live longer and Social Security would take a huge hit as all those people survive and collect their benefits. Just be thankful they can't outlaw eating your way to obesity, although Medicare could be saved by avoiding the added billions spent on treating self-inflicted diabetes.

There are those who say the government should butt out of people's lives and if people want to drink, smoke and eat themselves to death, why shouldn't they have the freedom to do so? Land of the free, home of the fat alcoholic smoker! Why not go all Libertarian and say that people should then be free to take any drugs or substances they want, not just those two legal taxable ones. You know, the ones that cause more harm and death than ALL other illegal drugs COMBINED? Or should it be the governments job to regulate all harmful and addictive substances, thereby not just saving people from their own self-inflicted demise but saving tax dollars spent on treating their self-inflicted maladies? Hmm, tough call. But look around our increasingly obese and unhealthy nation and you can see a problem with no easy answer. Let them abuse themselves and Medicare takes a huge hit. Save them so they'll live longer and Social Security takes a hit. Or just keep the status quo until something breaks and hope that future generations can fix it somehow. Hell, we've already pawned off huge debt on them; why not a national health crisis and some unsustainable entitlement programs?

Comments

[ctuck622]

I am diagnosed with hypogammaglobulinemia, a serious immune system disorder that prevents my body from fighting infections. Treatment is gammaglobulin infusion for the remainder of the patient"s life. It"s expensive, and I"m uninsured, not qualifying for Medicaid unless approved for Disability (if Medicaid even covers such treatment). The alternative is daily low-dose antibiotics, resulting in antibiotic immunity, of which I am already exhibiting signs, then death.

I have untreated neck, back, knees, and feet injuries and conditions. The SSA "quack" I was sent to forced my neck and lower back into impossible positions and ranges of motion causing further injury. I protested and spoke out against this to SSA.

As well, SSA tried to trick my allergist/immunologist, without whom I"d already be dead, into making derogatory statements about my "moods" and "mental state." He refused, and my demand to know why they had taken such an inappropriate action, as they already had the results of my "mental health exam," was ignored.

My e-mails to Paul Barnes, SSA Region 4 Commissioner, Florida"s SSA "honcho," James McHargue and Governor Crist, were only responded to with a letter denying benefits, in direct contradiction to SSA"s own "rules," that my "health problems" must "be expected to result in death," to which my allergist/immunologist clearly attested, lamely claiming I"m "being treated for my condition."

I wrote a scathing letter to Paul Barnes, Crist, and others, as SSA claims "the medical evidence shows I"m able to act in my own interest and remember and follow instructions," simply because I"m articulate, can write letters on my own behalf, repeat back two of four words after fifteen minutes, and explain what "don"t cry over spilt milk means!?" I pointed out in my letter that this simply means I AM NOT AN IDIOT.

This is how our government operates these days. If we dare speak out, they literally "kill" us.

Oh, and I"m virtually homeless, with only a Florida Retirement System income of $135.19 monthly.

[Shortyfuse]

And not a word about nuclear waste or industrial polution. I have to worry about your radio listening. Very Rush and bible thumping.
I do not smoke but it pisses me off that those that do have to pick up the bill for the education for dummies like you.
This is just a symptom of the stupid direction this generation is taking. Away form the big picture and into personal insult and single issue. Save me a buck wind bagging.
The real problem is your earning power. Adress that. Question the WTO. ( Oh no it would be too hard to take on a large ,powerful group like that. Better to attack and demonize old folks. ) You lazy coward
Shame on you. Go take your grandmother to lunch.
Social Security is the only tax money that is recycled here in America. Old folks pay their gas,electricity, medical and sometimes they are able to squeeze out enough to buy food.

[brownearthling]

Wow- too bad being an asshole is not outlawed! Gennet was not attacking old folks, just bringing up an issue that most people don't mention, which is simply the correlation between how people treat themselves and the governments entitlement programs. This is not a Rush/Bible issue, this is an American issue. That the richest country in the world can't afford to take care of their least fortunate citizens is a shame enough. That people are too ignorant to realize that they are part of a larger picture is partially the fault of that fantastic education that we all are given in America. And yes, nuclear waste and pollution are huge problems but those problems are what Corporations are doing to people, not what people are doing to themselves. And that "real problem" of our earning power? That is something the government has mishandled, not individual taxpayers. This piece was about the very simple issue of people's self-abuse and its effects on entitlement programs. And for the record, I take my grandmother to lunch weekly and see the effects of all this so don't stand on your pedestal and point fingers. You sound like a bigger bag of wind than Rush, buddy. Maybe you should start smoking and save us the agony of you living a long life!

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think the wheels are gonna fall off of SSI
eventually, I have no delusions about ever
getting anything out of it, I have a high
degree of suspicion that my SSI payments went
to help buy some dictator in a 3rd world
country a clapped-out aircraft carrier, or
something...

[Herrington]

Actually what didn't go to the wealthy in the Bush tax break went to military contractors. Interesting development that the U.S. already owed the money that they rebated to the wealthy to the poor schmucks who had been paying the Reagan into Social Security trust fund for 30 years.

If Social Security is dead it is because the Republicans killed it, right in front of you.

What remains is to take the money back and let it fund the retirements of the people who put it there so that the system can become balanced again post boomers.

[snaggster]

Hey! You're not following the approved script.

It's bankrupt. It can't be fixed.

[Mormondude]

You left out race. Black people, particularly black men, are leaving SS and Medicare a veritable windfall.

The flip side is that black people, and particularly black men are getting utterly screwed by SS and Medicare. They get robbed blind for 50 years and never see a cent back from Uncle Sam.

And people wonder why black people have such a hard time rising out of poverty... It couldn't have anything to do with the huge number of regressive taxes foisted on them by the left, could it? Payroll taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes, cigarette taxes, lotteries, and on and on and on.

[snaggster]

I'm betting that few Black people will say that SS is why "black people have such a hard time rising out of poverty". Regressive taxes hit all poor people the same. Yet they have higher percentages. My money says they will zero in on something other than taxes to explain that outcome.

[ramal]

As both a cynic and a realist, I have always said that the government should encourage smoking and alcohol use at an early age to the general population. At this point, all drugs should be legalized and provided at cost to anyone who wants them. Six billion people is quite enough. We had better start doing something to slow this down or nature will start on it's on and that is never kind or pretty.

[Herrington]

So what is the problem Gennet? Is the problem that people die prematurely due to bald denial of the medical facts or that no amount of righteous indignation and preaching will change that? Is it a problem that civilization has lasted thousands of years while bearing the consequences of these afflictions of choice?

Should we have mandatory morning exercises like some utopian socialist vision? Should we relegate all semblance of vice to a congenital weakness that should be purged from society? Maybe if we stamp out the alcoholic gene we can make a better world. Maybe if we stamp out the homosexual gene the incidence of AIDS/HIV will approach zero. If we do not allow anyone over 25 to bear children it will greatly reduce the incidence of Downs Syndrome. Sickle cell anemia could be prevented if society would establish certain breeding limitations, breast cancer too, Alzheimer"s, and on and on.

Fascism is a slippery slope. And in the end we will have a super race of people who will still find fault with each others habits.

[boldtimer]

Hey, I paid into the system for 45 years but it's just an entitlement that those wonderful and kind people in Washington gave me out of the kindness of their hearts.

Just ignore the fact that if I had been accumulating interest on that money for 45 years, instead of funding your grandparent's current retirement, I would currently have a nice retirement nest egg of my own.

Finally, consider returning to that period before Social Security and Medicare when young people like you took care of their elderly parents for the remainder of their lives. That's right; mom and dad will be forced to live in your house and will require your 24 hour-a-day attention. You think your costs are high for healthcare coverage now, wait until you see how little coverage the insurance companies pay on the elderly.

But hey, this is your chance to pay back your parents for all those years they supported you. Don't want to pay ? Sorry, the courts have set precedent on this matter of whether the state or immediate family member's are responsible for their family members who are destitute. It's always the immediate family members who pay; your free ride is over !

[SamThornton]

I'm on SS, smoke like a chimney, and plan on bankrupting Medicare. I look on it as personal revenge on the SOBs that have been running the country during my lifetime.

[dadw5boys]

Well the noew studies out show that people with ALSHIMERS are the biggest problems.
It seems the study's are show that the people who have harmed other people a lot in thier life by cheating them out of money, property, or rights are hit the hardest with the disease.
Their conscious seems to brek down and they start having conservations in their minds condeming themselves for doing wrong to others.
Maybe they are prepareing to meet their maker and unsure of which way the hammer will fall.

[IronDragon]

Makes one wonder if (or hope that) Reagan suffered such a hellish passage to death for all his sins.