Social Security and Medicare are machines designed to keep people who have contributed greatly to this society from suffering needlessly when they can least afford to. Regardless of whatever problems they may have, and they do have problems, the opposition for them comes from two sources:

One, they are expensive, and those who feel they are not benefiting fully from them do not wish to help pay for it.

Two, people who are too old or too sick to be working and no longer have to will not compete with others for scarce jobs, so it will tend to keep salaries up.

You are right about one thing. Reforms will have to come slowly for them to work at all. And the reforms must not go for one group at the expense of another, they must distributed demographically, which is really another way of saying the same thing. Any loss of benefits must be pro-rated, perhaps weighed somewhat to the younger, because they have time to make plans. Drawing the line at precisely the lower boundary of the Boomer generation is the way to create an artificial divide to incite generational conflict. You're a bright boy TB, don't tell me that never occurred to you.