LOL I am a social worker (child welfare).
Already called them.
Our local counselors are located in the Area Aging Office.
I called to get a run down on the process and will schedule an appointment after Thanksgiving!
Thanks!
My wife is currently receiving disability payments from Social Security, and I am maybe 8-10 years from retirement, so I am wondering about this as well.
You are supposed to sign up for at least Medicare Part A when you turn 65, which it sounds like Ellecram has done. Part A covers hospitalization, and usually has no premiums. You can delay signing up for Part B (doctor vists and things like that) if you are covered by other insurance. This is what we’ve done in my wife’s case. She was automatically enrolled in Medicare Part A when she was approved for disability, but we are delaying Part B while I’m still working and she’s covered by my health insurance.
I suspect that there may be changes to Social Security by the time I retire, but people have been talking about needing to do that for years, quite apart from Trump or Project 2025. I think (or perhaps hope) that even the most rabid of MAGA congresspeople and senators understand that eliminating either Social Security or Medicare completely would lead to huge anger and pain among their constituents, and they would balk at actually doing it. I say that, but who knows with some of those guys! I’m hoping that we won’t have to find out.
My hope is that they don’t get rid of Medicare Supplement plans. I fully intend to get one of those, not a Medicare Advantage plan, when I retire.
Best of luck to you.
Republicans since Reagan have been making the same empty threats.
Some sense of proportion is useful.
Thank you! Excellent summary.
I am planning on signing up for a supplemental plan myself. I might need to move and I travel a lot so the supplemental would be in my best interest.
I hope they are still available for you when you retire.
As of now, the university where I work has a “Retiree Health Plan,” which as far as I can tell is a Medicare Supplement Plan under another name. Assuming it’s still there when I retire, it should be easy to sign up for. The snag is that it only covers the retiree themselves, so we would have to purchase a separate plan for my wife.
My wife’s late mother had an Advantage plan, and it was a nightmare. Do not recommend, although I know that’s all that some people can afford.
Realize that all SS programs - including disability - help at least as many Rs as Ds. I am not sure how the Rs could stick it to the Ds re: SS w/o equally hurting their own.
SS solvency is a ridiculously easy fix. All it takes is some political will. (Well, maybe NOT that easy! ;)). If the Rs are unwilling to increase taxes - either by increasing the SS tax or the maximum earnings taxed, or introducing some form of means testing, the only option remaining is to raise the eligibility age.
Come to think of it, they COULD increase the SS tax rate, and simultaneously DECREASE the maximum earnings subject to SS withholding! That would allow them to shift even more wealth from the middle-lower classes to the wealthy. What an idea! Maybe I should write my congresscritter…
As others have said, there is bipartisan support for these programs from the voters. If legislation got serious, you’d see a ton of ads about it.
All of these elected Rs also want to stay in office and no way are they signing some unilateral bill that would gut things and get them thrown out. So they won’t do it, do very little, or try to enlist the Ds in bipartisanship.
Anyone who thinks the repubs won’t eliminate or cut these programs because it will hurt their own constituents hasn’t been paying attention.
They will absolutely try. And maybe succeed. And when their constituents start to howl theyll blame the Democrats for the problems. And their followers will 100% swallow that lie and continue to vote for their own destruction (amd ours).
Seriously, where the hell have you guys been for the last 20 years? I’m stunned that this is even a question for debate.
depending on your age–at least 55 (with work credits) up to 65–you can get SS while working, don’t know about Medicare
@mozchron, et al.
Sure, maybe.
We have a whole flurry of threads that amount to “I’m scared [this one thing] might change; will it?” All of which, including this one, are IMO stupid.
The only answer I can see is that now we are about to play a weird cross between ordinary US partisan politics and bureaucracy business-as-sorta-usual versus pure Calvinball.
If it goes to pure Calvinball, other than sunrise, nothing can be predicted about tomorrow for any of us on any day. Arbitrary and random shit can happen on any day and maybe be reversed again tomorrow. Lather rinse repeat. Complete unpredictability is the only predictable feature of the government / political landscape.
If it stays sorta like how it’s been, at least in broad outline, despite authoritarian leanings and RW-driven stinginess, life will mostly go on mostly the same for most of us, as long as we don’t get too worked up about worrying about other people’s problems.
The future will be somewhere between those two poles. That is all that anyone can reliably say today. Or even on Feb 1 2025 after our first week-ish in the Brave New World.
Good post. I can easily imagine that many R persons/groups feel they would profit from a system with SOME rules and predictability - albeit rules that help them (and hurt those they disfavor). I could imagine any additional benefit they might derive from complete anarchy (is there a better word?) would be offset by significant costs.
If I remember correctly, you work for a government agency. You should check on whether they provide health insurance for retirees- I not only will keep my current retiree health insurance when I become Medicare eligible , it will function as a supplement and all my Medicare premiums will be reimbursed.
Agreed.
The fatcats and businesses want stability. The only changes they want to see are fewer regulations and lower headline tax rates. Plus far less tax enforcement. The baseline white supremacists want semi-anarchy, or at least the freedom to have the Proud Boyz become an untouchable paramilitary force while the official police turn a blind eye.
All that is ordinary Fascist Corporatist stuff that’s happened in every country that’s had a RW authoritarian populist turn.
Now trump himself is the real Calvinball instigator. Random shit pops into his head and spews out of his face. If the cult of personality gets to the point where nobody in the inner circle dares say “Boss, that’s not a really great idea …”, and he starts governing by decree based on whatever triggers his applause-o-meter the most, then we get Calvinball. While Congress and SCOTUS are reduced to RW rubber-stamps chanting “'Murricah. F*** Yeah!! What he said!!1!” all in unison.
Whatever form and destination our descent takes, it will take a couple years to fully emerge.
Medicare: The supplemental plans will be affected first. The Advantage plans are already set up to make a lot of money for insurance companies, and less care for you. Trump is not going to touch those.
There are some barriers to using social security funds for general gov’t progams. It will take more than 2 years (2026 election) to gut soc sec. Plan to vote.
Some Republicans have been foaming at the mouth for a long time to get rid of Social Security, so I think it really is in jeopardy. They don’t care about what it will do to people who need that money. I’m worried, because I have about ten more years until retirement, and I’ll don’t have enough in other retirement accounts to live on. I don’t know if they can legally refuse to pay back people who have paid into Social Security for decades, but they’ll try whenever they get a chance.
We hear a fair bit about Medicare Advantage. What we don’t hear much of, but what wouldn’t surprise me if it made a cameo appearance in Trump II is …
True privatization of Social Security – ie, instead of the trust fund sitting in Treasury securities – it gets dumped into the American stock markets.
Which would be an unprecedented cash infusion for Corporate America and its shareholders, and … would be like taking Grandma’s insulin money to Vegas for the weekend.
And with a bullish market? Trump would be a freaking hero. And with the inevitable protracted bear market? Starving seniors in the street – their homes bought up at fire-sale prices by the institutional investors who – as per usual – profit on the way up and on the way down.
Medicare and Social Security fall into the bucket of “mandatory” budget expenditures; that is, they are effectively pre-authorized to whatever level required to sustain their services without Congressional budget approval, presidential signature, or a continuing resolution. To alter this would require a major act of Congress (not a simple vote but a complete disestablishment of these systems) which would be hugely unpopular with large blocks of highly motivated voters independent of specific political alignment. The government would basically have to collapse for Medicare and Social Security to be abolished.
Yeah, there has been a lot of talk-talk about cutting ‘entitlements’ for decades but these systems were set up explicitly to be above the fray of political winds. There is a lot of shit-fuckery that the GOP can do to the public with regard to government services in many ways but these programs are more untouchable than the military budget.
Stranger
If they don’t fuck with SS, I personally won’t be affected all that much. Food and gas prices are going to plummet, so I’m good!
Thank you for this. I am getting ready to retire next year and have been a little concerned about how stable these systems will be. I simply can’t work too much longer.
I studied the Social Security system in graduate school and we use some of these programs where I work (child welfare) but the fiscal department handles the nuts and bolts. I am now trying to look at these programs from personal perspective and that’s a bit different.
Yeah, this isn’t to say that these programs aren’t hard to navigate and can be made more difficult by trying to dismiss or drive out staff, but they can’t just be wiped off the slate by executive order or simple vote of Congress.
Stranger