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HANDS OFF OUR SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE BENEFITS

Tell your elected officials to leave benefits alone that you've paid for out of every paycheck!

With more than 1.5 million baby boomers a year signing up for Medicare, the program's future is one of the most important economic issues for anyone now 50 or older. .



Projected Medicare costs over 75 years are about 25 percent lower because of provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (the "Affordable Care Act" or ACA). Most of the ACA-related cost saving is attributable to a reduction in the annual payment updates for most Medicare services (other than physicians? services and drugs) by total economy multifactor productivity growth, which is projected to average 1.1 percent per year.



The problem with Medicare began when the government split it up into parts. This needs to be changed. Medicare benefits should be the same, across the board, as they were originally.

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As for Social Security it is far from bankrupt. As of April 2011, there was a $2.6 Trillion surplus. The government needs to keep their hands off of this surplus, and not abuse these funds, as done during the Bush administration, when George W. Bush "borrowed" the surplus in social security funds, but never paid it back. This money belongs to the taxpayers, who have paid for it. The surplus funds in Social Security has been building up since the 1983 amendments and is intended to help absorb the retirement of the baby boomers. This surplus is invested in US Treasury securities that are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. According to the Social Security Trustees 2010 report, Social Security can pay full benefits until 2037.



Throughout its 75 year history, Social Security has provided critical economic security to millions of retirees, families, children and the disabled. Social Security is paid for by the dedicated contributions of workers and their employers, has administrative costs of less than one percent, and since it cannot borrow to fund its operations, Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.



I am instructing my elected officials, and the President of the United States, to keep hands off of my Social Security and Medicare benefits that I have paid for out of every paycheck for decades. They are not "entitlements", we paid for them!