Targeting Seniors
by Jeffrey Folks
Issue 137 - August 5, 2009

During the campaign Barack Obama repeated his pledge again and again that seniors making less than $50,000 would not pay one penny in taxes. Not one penny! he proclaimed again and again as he toured the state of Florida, where many seniors reside. Not one penny! he told reporters as he campaigned from California to Maine.

Not one word has been spoken about that promise since election night, despite the fact that, according to current tax law, seniors with incomes of $49,999 would pay $6,038 in federal tax for 2009. It is outrageous that the candidate who offered a solemn promise to seniors, many of them living only on Social Security and modest pensions, should ignore his promise as soon as he has gained their votes.

What is even more outrageous is the fact that not only is the president not lowering taxes, he has set in motion a slew of new taxes, fees, and price increases that will affect everyone but that will have a disproportionate effect on seniors. Obama’s new taxes and fees are so numerous that it would require hundreds of pages simply to list them. They have been buried in every stimulus bill, omnibus spending measure, executive order, and budget proposal coming out of the administration. One of Obama's first actions as president was to raise the cost of Medicare advantage plans by $85-$100 per month by reducing the federal reimbursement for those plans. This price increase will, of course, be passed on to seniors, yet this cost increase was never reported as a tax per se. Indeed, it was hardly reported at all in the national media. But it will soon begin to show up on the bills that seniors pay.

More important, and more ominous, are the president’s frequent statements about wringing savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Barack Obama is not an individual known for offering specifics as to how he will “fix” things, but what he actually means by Medicare cost savings is denial of treatment, especially to seniors who face life-threatening illnesses. We may assume that the president’s accountants are hard at work figuring out how to save billions by allowing senior citizens to die a few months earlier than they otherwise might.

Obama has even bragged about how much he will save by rationing medical care, although his figures shift wildly from $300 to $600 billion or more over ten years, depending upon how many treatments and drug therapies are denied. What Obama doesn’t talk about—does he even care?—is that each of these denials will entail some degree of pain, discomfort, or shortened life expectancy.

I doubt if very many of Obama’s young policy wonks have spent much time visiting nursing homes or assisted living centers, or even talking with seniors in person about their medical care concerns. I do not see very many senior citizens among those invited to attend the president’s “town hall” infomercials.

Most recently, the president's unilateral decision to cut Medicare payments to specialists will, according to be Alfred Bove, head of the American College of Surgeons, have a detrimental impact on the quality and availability of care. So it is not just cost; it's the quality of life and, indeed, the duration of life that will be affected.

It’s not just new taxes and Medicare cuts that put a burden on seniors. The president's new ethanol program proposes to raise the ethanol content of gasoline from 10 to 15% would not only to make fuel more expensive but also raise the price of food and other necessities. Price increases on essential commodities and services like food, energy, and utilities harm seniors disproportionately because a larger portion of their budget goes to pay for these necessities.

Tucked into the cap and trade bill passed by the House of Representatives is a provision that would require every home in America to conduct an energy survey and to retrofit the house for energy efficiency before resale. Once an expensive energy appraisal has been conducted, the home will have to be brought up to standard before it could be sold. Nothing has been said about mitigating the cost of this energy retrofitting for seniors, yet seniors who are living on fixed incomes will find this tough to bear.

The president seems to have no inkling of the realities of life outside of the privileged enclaves of the political elite. He continues to pile on with one tax increase and regulation after another. Having promised not to raise taxes on seniors, Obama seems intent on stripping elderly Americans of everything they have, even their threatening lives.

Dr. Jeffrey Folks taught for thirty years in universities in Europe, America, and Japan. He has published nine books and over a hundred articles on American culture and politics in national journals and newspapers. He is currently writing on issues in American literature, media, family, and education.

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