Social Policy - Please respond to the following Main Discussion Question Researc
ID: 422082 • Letter: S
Question
Social Policy - Please respond to the following Main Discussion Question
Research the current debates from the past 5 years about Social Security and Medicare. Identify one issue in the Social Security or Medicare debate and discuss two changes that would help address the issue you have identified.
Check out http://www.ssa.gov/ which is the Social Security Administration web page. It has a lot of interesting links. You can sign up for benefits, get SS statements, get replacement Social Security cards, apply for Medicare, and set up an online account to follow your benefits.
Here is the site for Medicare too: http://www.medicare.gov/
Take a look at the benefits offered by each program
Explanation / Answer
Both Social Security and Medicare are for people above certain age i.e 60 years. This is a general age of retirement for a normal man and this is the age where he needs physical, mental and financial support. I feel both of these programs have a very stringent qualification criteria which should be eased out a bit to provide advantage to everybody.
Also both are dependent on life expectancy and the benifits are passed on the nominees. Why not regularize it for everyone so that everybody gets treated equally and gets the benifit equally,
While social secuity provides very less amount of returns, medicare has a lot of our of pocket costs associated to it and you end up paying a lot more than what you forsee. Also, both of them do not cover plenty of medical conditions like those related to dental, vision and hearing where a person can end up spending a lot from the pocket even while being covered.