We were not wealthy, and my grandparents were less so.

My grandfather, of whom I've spoken on these boards with great love, had to spend his last year confined in a state hospital in spartan surroundings with minimal care, not knowing where he was or who anyone else was, because we couldn't afford anything else and keeping him at home was impossible. State hospitals are not state-of-the-art teaching hospitals; they served as holding pens in those days, a potter's grave for the living. But at least they fed him and kept him from wandering out in traffic. If there hadn't been facilities underwritten by the government, and medical assistance, I don't know what we would have done when his railroad pension was exhausted. I can't imagine what happens in families that are close to being indigent themselves.

My grandmother died of cancer. They can cure now what she had then, such have been the advances made by medicine.

Lyndon Johnson couldn't have known the costs of the program he championed, because his world was predicated on most people dying before they reached 75. To call him a liar because he couldn't see the future isn't fair. There are plenty of things he lied about without picking on him for trying to help people like my grandfather.

People now live much longer than they did, because of advances in diagnosis and pharmeceuticals. Something has to pay for the doctor visits and the drugs that feed this trend. Up to this point, that "something" for seniors and elderly on fixed incomes has been Medicare. All the children who know their grandparents into their teens and 20s because of this count in my eyes as a benefit, even though it doesn't show up on any spreadsheet.

Although I agree that the current structure will collapse under the pressure of a retiring Boom, I caution you to remember that your family and your neighborhood may not be representative of everyone's, or even of the majority's, experience. If you want to win this fight, you will have to look at the world through the eyes of those lives are different from yours, because they are the ones whose support you will need.

Regards--
Mary Anne