I have been writing this column since 1997. So this will be my 27th year of helping people to better understand all the intricacies of the various Social Security programs. But I was recently reminded that I’ve been doing that a long longer.
While cleaning out my desk, I discovered a folder of newspaper columns I wrote way back in the 1980s while working at the Social Security office in Boise, Idaho. I had forgotten about the fact that during most of the four years I worked in that office, I wrote a weekly Social Security column for the local Boise newspaper.
In reviewing those columns, I learned that most of them covered the same topics I’m still writing about today. (As I’ve explained many times in this column, despite the fact that conventional wisdom has it that government rules are changing all the time, the Social Security rules and regulations we have now are essentially the same ones I was writing about in the 1980s.)
But I found one column that touched on a subject I really haven’t covered too often. I think the points I made in that column I wrote in 1984 still apply today. So here is that old column:
“Back in about 1975, a couple years after I was hired by the Social Security Administration to work in one of their local field offices in a small town in the farm country of central Illinois, I was assigned to clean out an office storeroom. As part of that effort, I came across a stash of yellowing public information materials: things such as old pamphlets and brochures dating back to the early days of the program.
‘There were also some dusty 16-millimeter movie reels that contained public information films intended to be used as educational materials to supplement speeches or other presentations that SSA public affairs employees would make to various community groups and organizations.
“Luckily, I also found an old movie projector in this storeroom. I was pleased with that because I really wanted to watch some of the old PR films, mostly because of a fascination I had developed early in my career with the history of Social Security. But I must admit I also figured I might get a bit of a chuckle out of the old fashioned film techniques and maybe the hackneyed messages the movies would contain.
“I wasn’t disappointed in either case when I watched a film called ‘Welcome to Medicare—1966.’ It was a movie produced by the SSA to introduce the American people to the then brand-new Medicare program. It told the story of an aging farm couple from Iowa. The husband, probably in his late 60s, had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. After learning that her husband would be OK, but would require extensive hospitalization that quickly used up what little health insurance and savings they had, there was a scene in which his wife was talking to the doctors. She said something such as this: ‘I want you to make sure Elmer gets the best care possible. And don’t worry, I’m going to go home and sell the farm so that we will be able to pay all of these hospital expenses.’
“And then we got to the Medicare pitch. One of the doctors tells her: ‘Oh, you won’t have to concern yourself with that, Mildred, for you see the government has a brand-new program called Medicare, and it’s going to pay most of Elmer’s bills. You’ll just have to pay a small deductible out of your own pocket and that’s all. So you‘ll be able to keep the farm, and once we get Elmer up and around again, he can go back to raising those fine hogs of his.’ Mildred had the last line in the movie: ‘Thank God for the government and this wonderful new Medicare program!’ Fade to black.
“And it just so happened that the very evening following my storeroom cleaning stint and viewing the old Medicare movie, I was watching TV at home with my wife. A commercial came on promoting a Medicare supplement plan. It featured several obviously well-to-do men playing golf. As a guy was getting ready to putt, one of his colleagues asked about his recent gallbladder surgery. ‘Oh, I’m doing just great,’ he said, ‘but I tell you, I’m kind of ticked off because that darn government Medicare program stiffed me with part of the bill. Why, I had to pay $100 out of my own pocket!’ And that led to a pitch from one of the other golfers for the Medicare supplement plan that would have picked up those extra expenses not paid by Medicare.
“I know both the old movie and the TV commercial I watched were fiction. But I think their messages did reflect the tenor of the times. And here is what struck me. I was amazed at how people’s expectations of their government had changed so dramatically in just 10 years. In 1965, we had an old woman who was willing to sell the farm in order to pay her husband’s hospital bill. And 10 years later, we had a rich guy on a golf course griping because the government was forcing him to cough up a measly hundred bucks out of his own pocket to pay for his hospital stay!”
So that was the column I wrote 40 years ago. What struck me then was how our expectations of government assistance had changed so much in so short a time. And as I think about the kinds of comments I hear from many people today, I’m even more intrigued. Here is what I mean.
There are many millions of people in this country who claim they want smaller government and fewer benefits and services from that government. But if my emails are any indication, what so many of these people are actually saying is this: “I deserve the benefits I’m getting. In fact, I should get more. But THOSE PEOPLE over there sure don’t deserve anything!”
For example, one woman wrote griping about Social Security benefits paid to “illegal aliens” (which, by the way, is absolutely untrue). But at the same time, she complained that she wasn’t able to collect benefits from her ex-husband’s record because she had remarried. She wanted benefits from both her husbands’ records in addition to her own generous retirement benefit.
Another woman, who said that divorced women should not qualify for Social Security spousal benefits at all, was miffed because after her husband died, she only got the difference between her benefit and his in the form of widow’s benefits. She said she should continue to get his full Social Security check even after he died.
And a guy whose email went into a long rant claiming Social Security spousal benefits should never be paid to “women who never worked a day in their lives” was convinced he was being cheated out of Social Security because “everybody I know gets more than me.”
And so it goes. When it comes to how we view benefits and services from the federal government, 2024 isn’t really very different from 1984.
