per a quick google search, there are 8.2 million Americans on SS Disability. They most
likely did not have 30+ years of paying into the SS Fund. This is a form of welfare.
There are children that receive SS benefits, they have no work history. This is a form
of welfare.
There are spouses with no work history that receive SS benefits even though they never paid
into the SS fund. This is a form of welfare.
Those benefits are all available from an annuity bought from a private insurance company. You can buy term life insurance for yourself that pays benefits to spouse or spawn, die a year later, and the insurance pays off, even though the benefits they will pay are far more than the premium paid in. The few people left who work for a defined benefit pension have the option at retirement, of taking a pension for their own life only, or for the life of whoever lives longer, them or their spouse, even though the spouse never worked for the company.
Have you noticed this year’s entry in the low level drumbeat to restore the mandatory, unlimited. lifetime, unregulated cost, medical on car insurance, that helped make Michigan car insurance the most expensive in the country? The local news ran a piece last week: quadriplegic, from a car accident, was bragging about how he could live in his house, and the insurance paid for aides in the house all day and he could travel places and do things that, he admits, a lot of working people can’t afford. But now that the “reform” cut his gold plated services, that the rest of us were forced to pay for by law, down to the rate workman’s comp pays, he can’t do all that anymore. He had to move into an assisted living facility.
As stated, the only “problem” with SS and Medicare is that the private insurance industry can’t skim off every dollar dispersed by the programs.
Steve