The Dick Cheney's of the world and as we see here with the Rockerfeller's will be the only ones affording these transplants as was once the domain of anyone needing them with their Medicare or health insurance policies. These several years of Obama had Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals joining Republicans because they are far-right Republicans in ending our public interest Federal health policies and privatizing our Medicare and Medicaid reducing Medicare to simply PREVENTATIVE CARE ONLY. If you are still middle-class or affluent with enough disposable income to pay for silver or platinum health policies that will not be the case for long as these policies rise in rates and your wages fall to third world white collar global corporate campus rates.
The attitude of Wall Street and global corporate pols is this-----we allowed Americans to be the clinical trial participants in perfecting these procedures and now we will limit access to all hospital procedures to global health tourism----those wealthy enough to pay the highest rate.
Indeed, now they world's low-income are seeing global cartels abducting and harvesting organs for sale and in third world health care with no morals, ethics, or Rule of Law where health care is purely profit-maximization ----AS TODAY IN THE US------these cases will grow.
'99-year-old David Rockefeller Undergoes Sixth Heart Transplant – Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:'
99-year-old billionaire David Rockefeller has successfully undergone his sixth heart transplant surgery in the last 38 years.
The Truth:
A fake news website started the false report that David Rockefeller has had six heart transplant surgeries.
An article that appeared on the website World News Daily Report claimed that David Rockefeller, an heir to the billion-dollar Rockefeller estate, has had six heart transplants and two kidney transplants over the years:
“His first heart transplant occurred in 1976 after a dramatic car accident led him to suffer a heart attack. He was operated 24 hours later and up and jogging a week later.”
Within days, the fake news report was shared more than 130,000 times on social media. Many people believed that David Rockefeller had actually undergone his sixth heart transplant and argued about whether or not it was right for a rich, 100-year-old man to take a heart from a younger person in need.
But those people missed World News Day Report’s disclaimer. It says that the website is not “responsible for inaccurate information” and assumes “all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles.
This isn’t the first time that David Rockefeller’s health has been at the center of an online hoax, either. Just weeks earlier, a separate false report spread across social media that David Rockefeller had died:
“At about 11 a.m. ET on Tuesday (April 28, 2015), our beloved business man David Rockefeller passed away. David Rockefeller was born on June 12, 1915 in New York. He will be missed but not forgotten. Please show your sympathy and condolences by commenting on and liking this page.”
The debate about wealthy people “cutting in line” to receive an organ transplant isn’t a new one. In 2009, Steve Jobs was criticized after he traveled to Tennessee for a liver transplant on short notice, ABC News reports:
“Jobs couldn’t pay for an organ. Nor could he pay to cut the queue. But what someone with Jobs’ resources could do, according to liver transplant surgeons and ethicists, is to use money and mobility to improve the odds either by going to an area of the country where there are more organ donors, or by signing up at multiple transplant centers.”
Dick Cheney drew similar criticism when he underwent a heart transplant in 2013. Cheney had waited on a transplant list for 20 months before the surgery, but some argued that he was too old (71 at the time) to receive a donor’s heart.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, the non-profit that maintains the nationwide patient waiting list, often considers a patient’s ability to pay for a transplant when deciding where to place an available organ.
_____________________________________________
Above you see yet another article saying the article written about Rockerfeller and multiple heart transplants are false----Cheney has had multiple heart surgeries with the latest heart transplant and he is young to Rockerfeller's 99 years and heart transplants usually extend life by a decade or so. The point is this----first, citizens have no way of knowing what the super-rich are doing--all is done out of sight and we KNOW they will use whatever mechanism needed to get that procedure. The article on Cheney deliberately emphasizes Cheney waited on a heart transplant list like all the regular citizens but who believes he would not get that heart if needed? NO ONE.
The American people are being taken from the loop of HOLDING POWER ACCOUNTABLE JOURNALISM to that of propaganda written to hide what is really happening. That is the message of these articles. We do know this---99% of people will not be getting all those heart procedures and the 1% will do anything to get what they need for health care.
Since Rockerfeller lived through what was the development phase of heart transplant it is perfectly reasonable to assume he could have had earlier transplant procedures not successful bringing multiple attempts.
Below you see yet another article saying the article written about Rockerfeller and multiple heart transplants are false----Cheney has had multiple heart surgeries with the latest heart transplant and he is young to Rockerfeller's 99 years and heart transplants usually extend life by a decade or so. The point is this----first, citizens have no way of knowing what the super-rich are doing--all is done out of sight and we KNOW they will use whatever mechanism needed to get that procedure. The article on Cheney deliberately emphasizes Cheney waited on a heart transplant list like all the regular citizens but who believes he would not get that heart if needed? NO ONE.
The American people are being taken from the loop of HOLDING POWER ACCOUNTABLE JOURNALISM to that of propaganda written to hide what is really happening. That is the message of these articles. We do know this---99% of people will not be getting all those heart procedures and the 1% will do anything to get what they need for health care.
'Dick Cheney drew similar criticism when he underwent a heart transplant in 2013. Cheney had waited on a transplant list for 20 months before the surgery, but some argued that he was too old (71 at the time) to receive a donor’s heart'
Thursday, Nov 14, 2013 05:59 PM EDT
Dick Cheney: Even bigger monster than you thought
Listen to the man with a taxpayer-funded new heart wax indifferent to the life of his donor Joan Walsh SALON
Dick Cheney (Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)You’ve probably heard that Dick Cheney agrees with Bill Clinton about letting people who are losing private insurance keep their old plans, as President Obama repeatedly seemed to promise they could. That’s not surprising: Cheney is a troll who maligns the president whenever he can, and piling on with Clinton is a special kind of fun. Yes, it’s outrageous that a man who has enjoyed many millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded medical care doesn’t give a damn about the uninsured in our society, but that’s Dick Cheney.
Still, I was a little startled to hear the former vice president express total indifference to questions about his heart donor in a revealing interview on Politicking with Larry King (it airs Thursday night; here’s a clip). It’s a window into his utter entitlement and self-absorption, and he comes off as an even bigger monster than I’d thought. Most people would at least feign interest in the donor; Cheney can’t manage it.
When King asks if he knows the identity of the person whose heart keeps him alive, Cheney, who is promoting a book about his transplant experience, says no, and adds, “it hadn’t been a priority for me.” Then he goes on:
When I came out from under the anesthetic after the transplant, I was euphoric. I’d had–I’d been given the gift of additional lives, additional years of life. For the family of the donor, they’d just been [through] some terrible tragedy, they’d lost a family member. Can’t tell why, obviously, when you don’t know the details, but the way I think of it from a psychological standpoint is that it’s my new heart, not someone else’s old heart. And I always thank the donor, generically thank donors for the gift that I’ve been given, but I don’t spend time wondering who had it, what they’d done, what kind of person.
“It’s my new heart, not someone else’s old heart.”
Consider the complete self-centeredness of that statement, and the utter lack of empathy. I shouldn’t be surprised at that — war criminals and torture-promoters aren’t known for their empathy — but I was. Cheney’s so absorbed in his great good luck that he can’t help sharing: “My cardiologist told me at one point, ‘You know, Dick, the transplant is a spiritual experience, not just for the patient, but also for the team.'” What a generous guy, sharing that “spiritual experience” with his cardiology team! So: Cheney is happy to have a new heart, but doesn’t bother to “spend time wondering who had it, what they’d done, what kind of person.”
And his statement that it wasn’t a “priority” to learn about his heart donor revealingly echoes his explanation for getting five deferments from the Vietnam War: The notorious war hawk famously told the Washington Post: “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” Now he has other priorities than learning about his heart donor.
It’s certainly not compulsory to find out about the person who died so that you could live – who gave what Cheney called “the gift of life itself.” There may be valid psychological reasons not to. I don’t judge that decision. But I can’t get over the coldness required to express complete indifference to knowing about that person, and their family’s suffering.
Or could it be compassion? For a lot of people, the tragedy of a family member dying would be compounded, not lessened, by learning that their heart went to Cheney. Nah, there’s neither compassion nor self-awareness in the way Cheney talks about receiving “the gift of life,” from American taxpayers or from his mystery heart donor.
_________________________________________________
I went to great lengths during this Presidential and Mayoral 2016 election to educate as to progressive posing over who was a real BERNIE SANDERS LEFT-LEANING SOCIAL DEMOCRAT for just this issue. We will now have all those Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals PRETENDING FOR FEEL THE BERN----whether Ben Jealous of the NAACP----or Latino and white Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice organizations' around the nation and here in Baltimore all chime in that this OBAMA POLICY TO EXPAND SOCIAL SECURITY IS THE BERNIE SANDER'S PLAN AND IT IS NOT----IT IS THE OPPOSITE OF BERNIE'S SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY.
WE WILL HEAR THE WALL STREET 'LABOR AND JUSTICE' LEADERS CALLING OBAMA THE PROTECTOR OF SOCIAL SECURITY WHILE HE DISMANTLED AND PRIVATIZED IT AWAY FROM THE CITIZENS THESE LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS REPRESENT.
For those not knowing the story of SS Trust policy these several years----SS payments under Obama thanks to FED action received little if NO COLA increases for these several years. This was a first in the history of SS and it comes with losses to monthly benefits of hundreds of dollars. This is a lot to seniors already living simply. Second, Obama used Executive Order to install with the US Treasury a privatization of SS Trust my RA now probably ready to start moving payroll deductions for low-income employees directly into the stock market so no need for Wall Street global corporate pols to implode the now SS Trust in bond debt to get it to Wall Street----they have payroll taxes mainlined to Wall Street. They haven't made it mandatory yet but it is coming as our Federal Social Security is wiped out with $20 trillion in US Treasury debt in the coming bond market collapse. Old Federal SS imploded with bond market fraud----new privatized SS installed soon after.
What Wall Street neo-liberals claim to be expanded SS is different if you are right wing Clinton neo-liberals as Obama and Congress now is than if you are a left-leaning social Democrat as Bernie Sanders is. What Obama and this article calls raising the cap on $100,000 earners and up which is the left-leaning plan for expansion---is simply an attempt to generate ANY REVENUE TO SS since the entire middle/working class has been eliminated. They needed to raise this cap and this too will hit the stock market as privatized SS. Wall Street is simply identifying new payroll deductions to use as fodder in its complex financial instrument leverage schemes overseas. This is the first step towards an attack on the upper-middle/affluent class that had been directed at working/middle class workers. You can bet those $100,000 and above will never see these SS funds.
Bernie's and left-leaning SS expansion was to keep SS Trust Federal and out of the stock market AND remove the cap. This would have had the more wealthy workers adding to the Trust extending its longevity to end of this century AND OUT OF THE STOCK MARKET. Bernie and left-leaning SS recognizes Obama's and the FED attack on monthly payments through COLA and resets those monthly payments with adjustments in future COLA. Obama's does not. Bernie and left-leaning SS policy would address the $20 trillion US Treasury debt tied to our SS Trust in pushing this debt back at Wall Street since it is a massive bond market fraud protecting our SS Trust. Obama will not and an IMF/Wall Street/FED intervention will use existing SS Trust to augment US Treasury losses.
It is important for our immigrant citizens required to pay payroll taxes for SS and Medicare to understand low-wage workers will not see any of these funds----Medicare has been privatized and for low-wage earners it is basically Medicaid for All preventative care only.
As Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals work to end public health care moving access to only those able to afford higher and higher premiums----they are joining to raise the age to 70 for Social Security. Think about these two issues. The only thing extending American life expectancy was access to hospital procedures, PHARMA that kept disease vectors at bay. When Wall Street pols moved health care access to preventative care only they were starting the very fast decline in life expectancy in the US. Since many disease vectors hit in what is now middle-age----50-60 years old----that will now become the life expectancy of a super-majority of US citizens soon to be 99% of citizens. This will occur in one generation. So, who will be living until 70 years to access Social Security? Certainly not global corporate campus white collar and global factory sweat shop workers.
Obama’s Call to Expand Social Security Shows Sanders’ Clout
Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur
Mike Dorning mikedorning
June 3, 2016 — 5:00 AM EDT
President Barack Obama’s surprise call to expand Social Security highlights a populist shift in the U.S. political landscape that has been propelled by the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Just five years ago, Obama called for reducing future Social Security benefits -- an idea that at the time was in vogue for many Republicans and some Democrats, who treated it as a badge of fiscal responsibility.
No more. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, says Social Security benefits shouldn’t be cut -- a departure from other Republican leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Sanders, as part of his Democratic presidential campaign, has been calling for an expansion of benefits, and the party’s likely nominee, Hillary Clinton, took a similar position earlier this year. Obama joined the chorus on Wednesday.
"It is a much different universe today," said Warren Gunnels, policy director for the Sanders campaign. "Go back to 2011, when the debate was not whether Social Security would be cut, but how much it would be cut. Now the debate is not whether we’re going to expand Social Security but how much we’ll expand it."
Five years ago, Obama offered to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated to make them less generous as part of a "grand bargain" on taxes and spending with then-House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican. He officially abandoned the policy in his fiscal 2015 budget, then went further in a speech in Indiana on Wednesday in which he excoriated Republican economic policies and called for Social Security benefits to be expanded.
Obama never supported Social Security cuts and would only agree as part of a larger deal with Republicans, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday. It was included in Obama’s budget "to illustrate what impact that could have on our fiscal situation, but only as a larger part of a so-called grand bargain," Earnest said.
Sanders’s ‘Snowball’
Obama’s change of heart reflects changes in both the economy and politics. Budget deficits have plunged since 2012, reducing pressure to cut entitlement spending. A 2014 Federal Reserve survey published last year found that 42 percent of American workers earning under $40,000 a year, and a quarter earning between $40,000 and $100,000, have no retirement savings.
BECAUSE THE FED/WALL STREET COMMITTED MASSIVE AND SYSTEMIC FRAUD AGAINST ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS' SAVINGS AND ASSETS.
Years of partisan warfare have meanwhile killed appetite in both parties for painful political compromises.
Though Sanders is unlikely to win the Democratic presidential nomination, the emerging orthodoxy of his party calling for an expansion of Social Security owes as much to him as anyone.
In March 2015, as the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders pushed for a vote on an amendment by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren proposing expanded Social Security benefits. Forty-two Democrats voted for the amendment and only two were opposed.
"That certainly was a very significant moment," Gunnels said of the budget vote. "It really has been a drumbeat and a snowball that’s gotten much larger through the Sanders campaign and through these many years of grassroots efforts."
Two months later, when Sanders announced his presidential bid, he put the policy front and center. "Instead of cutting Social Security," he said, "we’re going to expand Social Security benefits."
In February, after months of pressure from Sanders and liberals in her party, Clinton followed his lead. "I won’t cut Social Security," she said on Twitter. "As always, I’ll defend it, & I’ll expand it."
Obama jumped aboard, unifying the party’s leadership behind the policy.
"It is time we finally made Social Security more generous and increase the benefits," he said, "so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they have earned."
‘Political Calculation’
Conservatives still wedded to the idea of cutting the program also credit Sanders.
"The Bernie Sanders campaign, from the free love generation to the free everything generation, has pushed everybody left. And the president’s gone right along with him," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who now leads the American Action Forum, a conservative advocacy group.
Endorsing expansion represents a "crass political calculation" by Obama, he said. Liberals were indeed overjoyed by Obama’s remarks, and his endorsement of a policy championed by Sanders may help unify his party after a divisive primary campaign.
"The program is not sustainable in its current form," Holtz-Eakin said. "Adding more benefits doesn’t do anything to help that."
While the Baby Boomer generation is expected to strain Social Security, the program is running a surplus and will have enough reserves in its current form to dole out full benefits until 2034, according to the 2015 report from its trustees.
Leftward Shift
Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, attributes the political shift leftward to two developments. First, the federal budget deficit has been nearly halved since 2011, from $1.3 trillion to a projected $544 billion in 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office, reflecting improvements in the economy.
"As soon as the short-term deficits came down, interest in dealing with the long-term problem sort of evaporated," said William Gale, director of the Brookings Institution’s Retirement Security Project and a former staff economist for Republican President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Second, Obama’s overtures to strike a deficit-reduction deal with Republicans were rebuffed in 2011 and again in 2013, leading him to be "more adventuresome" with his policies, Ornstein said.
The deal Republicans could have struck in 2011 "was an unbelievable deal politically for them," Ornstein said. But because they would not consent to tax increases, the talks went nowhere, he said.
In the months after Obama’s re-election, he extended Republicans an olive branch by including in his budget a proposal to reduce the growth of Social Security benefits by indexing them to a lower rate of inflation. After Republicans again spurned his overtures in 2013, Obama abandoned the proposal.
"It was time to go on offense," said Mike Darner, the executive director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which proposed a Social Security expansion ahead of the 2012 election. "It’s an issue that was ripe for this moment in time."
_____________________________________________
This article by Atlantic which used to be somewhat socially progressive but no more asks NO ONE KNOWS WHY WOMEN ARE DYING YOUNGER THAN THEIR MOTHERS when in fact we DO KNOW why women are dying younger than their mothers just as we know why men are dying younger than their fathers. It is the deepening poverty in the US with ending Welfare and global markets taking employment. Women have lost all gains in employment as did citizens of color from the 1960s civil rights and women rights era US Constitutional and Federal laws and rulings and as in all developing world poverty structures women are always at the bottom regarding all quality of life measures. While it has been the people of color and lower-wage women hit hardest since the CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA attack on the American workforce now it is middle-class women losing big time through Obama's terms. Each time this happens----women's health issues are left without access. While men of color are being told it is the violence in the street lowering their health outcomes it is more the inability to access health care since CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and now all men will fall into this decreasing lifespan.
IT IS BECAUSE OF CONTINUOUS ATTITUDES OF -----THIS IS HAPPENING TO SOMEONE ELSE THAT ALLOWS IT TO TAKE EVERYONE.
It has nothing to do with education attainment because people wiht Master's Degrees are now protesting because they cannot afford health care
“Life is different for women without a high-school degree than it was a few decades ago, and in most cases it’s a lot worse,” she said. “It’s really just a perfect storm.”
U.S. Women Are Dying Younger Than Their Mothers, and No One Knows Why
While advancements in medicine and technology have prolonged life expectancy and decreased premature deaths overall, women in parts of the country have been left behind.
(jessiejacobson/flickr)The Affordable Care Act took a major step toward implementation last Tuesday with the launch of the online insurance exchanges, limping across the finish line despite three years of Republican obstruction that culminated in this week’s 11th hour attempt to dismantle the law by shutting down the federal government.
It’s easy to forget, amid the hyper-partisan controversy, that the main purpose behind President Obama’s signature health-care reform law is not to curtail individual freedom or send senior citizens to death panels, but to give more Americans access to health insurance. Whether you think the Affordable Care Act is the right solution or a dangerous step toward tyranny, it’s hard to dispute that the U.S. health-care system is broken. More than 48 million people lack health insurance, and despite having the world’s highest levels of health-care spending per capita, the U.S. has some of the worst health outcomes among developed nations, lagging behind in key metrics like life expectancy, premature death rates, and death by treatable diseases, according to a July study in the Journal of the American Medicine Association.
For some Americans, the reality is far worse than the national statistics suggest. In particular, growing health disadvantages have disproportionately impacted women over the past three decades, especially those without a high-school diploma or who live in the South or West. In March, a study published by the University of Wisconsin researchers David Kindig and Erika Cheng found that in nearly half of U.S. counties, female mortality rates actually increased between 1992 and 2006, compared to just 3 percent of counties that saw male mortality increase over the same period.
“I was shocked, actually,” Kindig said. “So we went back and did the numbers again, and it came back the same. It’s overwhelming.”
Kindig’s findings were echoed in a July report from University of Washington researcher Chris Murray, which found that inequality in women’s health outcomes steadily increased between 1985 and 2010, with female life expectancy stagnating or declining in 45 percent of U.S. counties. Taken together, the two studies underscore a disturbing trend: While advancements in medicine and technology have prolonged U.S. life expectancy and decreased premature deaths overall, women in parts of the country have been left behind, and in some cases, they are dying younger than they were a generation before. The worst part is no one knows why.
(Health Affairs/The Population Institute, University of Wisconsin)The Kindig study does note strong relationships between county mortality rates and several cultural and socioeconomic indicators. In particular, location appears to have an outsized effect on mortality rates. Counties with rising female mortality rates, marked in red, paint a broad stroke across Appalachia and the Cotton Belt, moving across to the Ozarks and the Great Plains. The Northeast and the Southwest, on the other hand, have been largely untouched.
But it’s not clear how these geographical differences play a role in mortality, or why the effect would be so much greater on women than on men. “Clearly something is going on,” Kindig said. “It could be cultural, political, or environmental, but the truth is we don’t really know the answer.”
Other researchers have pointed out the correlation between education rates and declining female health outcomes. The most shocking study, published in August 2012 by the journal Health Affairs, found that life expectancy for white female high-school dropouts has fallen dramatically over the past 18 years. These women are now expected to die five years earlier than the generation before them—a radical decline that is virtually unheard of in the world of modern medicine. In fact, the only parallel is the spike in Russian male mortality after the fall of the Soviet Union, which has primarily been attributed to rising alcohol consumption and accidental death rates.
“It's unprecedented in American history to see a drop in life expectancy of such magnitude over such a short time period,” said Jay Olshansky, the lead author of the study. “I don't know why it happened so rapidly among this subgroup. Something is different for the lives of poor people today that is worse than it was before.”
Education alone does not explain why female high-school dropouts are so much worse off than they were two decades ago. But researchers have used it as a proxy to determine more significant socioeconomic indicators, like access to health care and income opportunities, as well as health behaviors like smoking and obesity. Smoking in particular appears to have had a significant impact on female mortality rates, as the health consequences of previous decades of tobacco use set in. Olshansky points out that female obesity and drug abuse have risen dramatically over the past two decades, and may also play a role in mortality rates.
Researchers are hopeful that the expansion of health-care coverage under the Affordable Care Act will help ameliorate some of the health risks for poor and uneducated women. But access to health insurance is only part of the puzzle—in fact, Kindig’s study found that medical care factors had no discernible impact on death rates at the county level. “Health care is far from the whole story,” Kindig told me. “More and more people are beginning to realize that the non-health-care factors are at least as important.”
In May, Jennifer Karas Montez, a social demographer who studies health inequalities, co-authored a study that was the first to investigate how quality of life might be playing a role in the early deaths of female high-school dropouts. Montez found that while smoking accounts for half of the decline in life expectancy among these women, whether or not a woman has a job is equally significant. “Women without a high-school degree have not made inroads in the labor force, especially in post-recession America,” Montez said in an interview. In fact, only one-third of women without a high-school diploma are employed, compared to half of their male counterparts, and nearly three-quarters of better-educated women. When they are employed, Montez said, it is usually in low-wage jobs that offer no benefits or flexibility. Smoking and other destructive behaviors, she added, may just be symptoms of the heightened stress and loneliness experienced by women who don’t graduate from high school.
“Life is different for women without a high-school degree than it was a few decades ago, and in most cases it’s a lot worse,” she said. “It’s really just a perfect storm.”
______________________________________
Below we see the Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal think tank BROOKINGS INSTITUTION posing progressive as if they care about these declining health issues when they were partnered with the Republican think tanks writing all this ending of public health in the US. We all knew decades ago the reforms of 1990s would lead to huge declines in life-expectancy for those low-income just as we knew these several years of Obama and Clinton neo-liberal policies that the middle-class was heading to poverty to join this statistic. We know today that the upper-middle and affluent class is soon to follow. Everyone in and no one out of third world extreme wealth vs extreme poverty.
As well, the poverty figures a Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal uses is not tied to LIVING WAGES first world quality of life but tied to what is second world heading to third world poverty data. So, Living Wage of $15 an hour means $30,000 a year earnings is the developed nation poverty line while Obama and Clinton neo-liberals leave it at $21,000. This means the REAL percentage of Americans living in poverty is far higher and the percentage of people dying prematurely is far higher than 46 million citizens. This is huge folks and with about 300, 000 citizens we are already close to half of Americans dying at third world life expectancies.
None of those 100 million and much more citizens will live to access their SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS AS THE AGE RISES FROM 65 TO 70 YEARS OLD. Well, if the Social Security Trust of $4 trillion has been JUKE BONDED INTO OBLIVION---we wouldn't want those pesky baby boomers and the next generation old enough to access that NON-EXISTENT SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST.
The Brookings Institute and global Johns Hopkins sit side by side in Washington DC as Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal /Bush neo-conservative public policy ----both behind the dismantling and privatization of all that is public health.
The Penalty for Poverty Should Not Be Death
03/09/2016 02:43 pm ET | Updated Mar 09, 2016
Yes, it is.
It’s also a tragedy. Forty-six million Americans live in poverty, including more than one child in five. These adults and children are experiencing a difficult life. They’re also more likely to face a premature death.
Despite advances in the health sciences, the situation is getting worse. According to the Brookings study, men in the bottom 10 percent of income born in 1920 were expected to live six years less than men in the top 10 percent. But for men born thirty years later, in 1950, that difference had risen to 14 years. The poorest group of women born in 1950 can expect to live 13 years less than their wealthy counterparts, up from 4.7 years for those born 30 years earlier.
In other words: Over three decades, the life expectancy gap between the richest and poorest among us has more than doubled for both men and women.
Every year that is taken from these Americans is a loss, not just for them, but for the people who care about them. It is one more year of grief and emptiness - for husbands and wives, children and grandchildren, neighborhoods and communities.
In a related finding, the Social Security Administration found that the life expectancy gap between 60-year-old men in the top and bottom halves of the income ladder grew from 1.2 years in the early 1970s to 5.8 years by 2001.
Some people point to smoking as a possible cause for this growing gap, since wealthier people are more likely to give up the habit, but the numbers show that this only accounts for a fifth to a third of the difference. Nor is it explained by obesity, since obesity rates aren’t that much different for wealthier and poorer Americans (31 percent of the poor and 27 percent of the wealthy were obese in 2010).
African-Americans have always fared worse than whites when it comes to longevity. And now an epidemic of so-called “deaths of despair” - including deaths from alcoholism, overdose and suicide - is shortening the life spans of economically struggling middle-aged white Americans with a high school education or less.
Overall life expectancy in the United States compares poorly to that of other wealthy countries, despite wealthy Americans’ long lifespans, because poor Americans fare so much worse than the average residents of other developed nations.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Canada is doing an excellent job of improving longevity in the very poorest urban neighborhoods, where a study showed that men experienced the biggest declines in deaths from heart disease between 1971 and 1996. And low-income residents of Toronto are more likely to survive cancer than low-income residents of Detroit.
The growing gap in life expectancy between rich and poor in the United States can be reversed, by doing what Canada and every other developed nation on earth has already done: providing healthcare to everyone as a basic human right. Among other things, that means addressing the political corruption that allows pharmaceutical companies to get away with charging $1000 per pill for life-saving medication. Drug prices in the United States are higher than any other country on earth, which makes it difficult for many lower-income people to take needed medications.
Social Security benefits, which are low in comparison to other advanced nations, should also be increased. Older and disabled Americans should not be forced to choose between an adequate diet, decent housing, or needed health care.
More broadly, a comprehensive economic program is needed to end the pervasive sense of hopelessness and dread that strikes individuals, families, and communities when there are no jobs to be had at livable wages.
Until these steps are taken, it’s likely that this nation’s growing inequalities in wealth and income will continue to give rise to the most unjust inequality of all: an inequality in life itself.
_______________________________________
Retirement was 62 now policies make people wait until 65----now these policies have been changed to making people wait until 70. Media and pols are sending out all kinds of propaganda about how the American people get bored in retirement -----that they live longer if they work-----and for some that may be true. There is nothing more life-extending than an active senior who stays engaged in community activities----athletic lifestyles, traveling and life-long learning activities. This is what made the US lifespan one of the longest in the developed world. Those bored with retirement are generally those having a self-identity of where they are at a professional level. Men have always been more inclined to that self-definition but as we know men adapted to the golf course and travel as well as women.
We are being bombarded with Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations telling us it is healthier to stay in the workplace.
Since global corporate campuses and global factories work human capital 15-18 hours a day under the worst of workplace conditions including toxic health exposure----is staying in the workplace really about longer life? Of course not---workers in International Economic Zones have their life expectancy decline DRAMATICALLY.
It means you will not be living to reach that Social Security age threshold. Yet all of the DNC and media outlets will claim OBAMA IS SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY!
Social Security’s real retirement age is 70
October 23, 2013, 10:35 AM ET
By Alicia H. Munnell
Social Security’s retirement age is 70. The simple fact is that monthly benefits are highest at age 70 and are reduced actuarially for each year they are claimed before age 70. This is a relatively new development, which may explain why Social Security’s retirement age is the best-kept secret in town. But I think it’s time we told folks. And then we need to clarify what all this talk about raising the so-called full retirement age really means. (These issues are covered in more detail in a new issue brief from the Center for Retirement Research.)
Currently workers can claim their benefits at any time between 62 and 70. But benefits claimed before age 70 are actuarially reduced. That is, benefits claimed at younger ages are lower by an amount that compensates for the fact that they start earlier and will be paid for more years. The goal is to ensure that, based on average life expectancy, people who take a lower benefit early would expect to receive about the same total amount in benefits over their lifetimes as those who wait for higher monthly benefits but start receiving them later. In other words, the claiming age affects monthly benefits but, on average, does not alter total benefits paid over the lifetime.
So, we have a benefit structure that pays full benefits at an age when most people have stopped working. We have set that age at 70. If you claim after 70, lifetime benefits decline, because monthly benefits are not increased for claiming after 70. If you claim before 70, your monthly benefit is significantly lower.
Most people don’t understand how much claiming early reduces monthly benefits. As the example in the table above shows, claiming at 62 instead of 70 cuts the monthly benefit almost in half, from $1,000 to $568. Given that Social Security is a particularly valuable type of income – inflation-adjusted and lasting for as long as you live – it generally makes sense to postpone claiming as long as possible to get the highest monthly amount, assuming you are in good health for your age.
If 70 is the age at which Social Security expects most people to retire and at which it pays the highest benefit, what is all this talk about the full retirement age?
Social Security’s full retirement age used to be a meaningful concept. Before 1972, maximum monthly Social Security benefits were paid at 65, and monthly benefits were not increased for claiming later. In 1972, Congress introduced a Delayed Retirement Credit, which increased benefits by 1% of the full retirement age benefit for each year of delay. The result was that those who retired later got a little bonus for delaying. But a 1% credit did not come close to compensating for the fact that late claimers had to wait and would get benefits over fewer years. In 1983, the adjustment was raised to 3% and that percentage was increased gradually to 8% in 2008. At this point, the adjustment provided by the Delayed Retirement Credit is actuarially fair – that is, it keeps lifetime benefits constant for those who claim after the full retirement age. In doing so, the Delayed Retirement Credit has rendered the full retirement age a largely meaningless concept. It does not describe the age when benefits are first available. That is age 62. It does not describe the age when monthly benefits are at their maximum. That is age 70. It really does not have any meaning in terms of an official retirement age.
This story does not completely wash because a number of specific Social Security provisions are linked to the full retirement age. An earnings test applies before age 66 (the current full retirement age) but not thereafter. Widow and spousal benefits are reduced if claimed before the full retirement age and not thereafter. Workers can claim spousal benefits after their full retirement age and then subsequently claim their own benefits.
But all these provisions are relatively small and do not undermine the basic fact that 70 is the age for full monthly benefits under Social Security. So then, what does it mean that the full retirement age has moved from 65 to 66 and is scheduled to move to 67 for workers born in 1960 or later? And what does it mean to increase the full retirement age beyond the 67 threshold already scheduled under current law? A topic for next time.
_____________________________________________
The UK has been about a decade ahead of the US in all these ONE WORLD global corporate tribunal rule taking the developed nations to third world colonial status because UK does not have the US Constitutional protections and a Bill of Rights handing power to the people. So, Wall Street global neo-liberals THATCHER AND BLAIR were able to install all these colonial policies faster than REAGAN CLINTON neo-liberals in the US. If we look to where UK is today in public policy we can see where the US will be in public policy because the old world European and England rich are the 1% taking the US to colonial status.
The UK is a mess. It's citizens have these several years looked to live as in Charles Dicken's days of Robber Baron Industrialist 1800s. What is most striking is London is now basically immigrant majority-----taking this poverty to third world slums. So, it is not surprising that the US life expectancy has been on that level of Baltimore's underserved communities----30 years less than the affluent communities.
When our Congressional, Maryland Assembly, and Baltimore City pols running as Democrats pose progressive---this is the goal of all policies they installed over these few decades and will be these coming years.
Of course it is women now seeing the fastest declines as we are losing our positions in the workplace and heading more and more into poverty. Is lowering the life expectancy of Democratic voters REALLY on the Democratic platform? Of course not but then Wall Street global corporate Clinton/Obama neo-liberals are far-right wing.
All that dismantling of the UK's strong national public health system----------
'Middleton said he agreed that “inadequate social care and inadequate investment in preventive care for vulnerable older people” explained the findings'.
THAT'S WHY WALL STREET WANTS THOSE CLINTON/OBAMA GLOBAL CORPORATE PLAYERS TO WIN EACH ELECTION!
‘Significant decline’ in UK life expectancy, health officials warned
Published time: 13 Jan, 2015 14:56
Get short URL
Reuters/Luke MacGregor / Reuters
Public Health England confirms there has been a fall in life expectancy, particularly among older women. Critics blame unhealthy lifestyles, government cuts to social care budgets and worsening GP and hospital care.
TagsHealth, UK, Biology, Medicine, ScienceHealth officials are currently investigating a “significant decline” in life expectancy across the country.
An email sent to Public Health England by Darwen Council's director of public health, Dominic Harrison, said: “The council had seen a sustained reduction in life expectancy.”
He said reductions in life expectancy such as this are “extremely unusual.”
Figures suggest a women's life expectancy, which stood at 85, has fallen in recent years.
The email, sent before Christmas and seen by the Health Service Journal, said: “In Blackburn and Darwen there have been reductions for both men and women, as well as some signs of a reduction in life expectancy for men at 65.”
The email was described as an “alert” and calls for a national review to analyse “the causes and developing local/national recovery plans.”
Speaking to RT, health policy expert and founding partner at Incisive Health Mike Birtwistle said: “The reasons for the decline are complex, we need to improve the way we support older people, who have complex needs.”
According to the Office for National Statistics, death rates in the UK in 2013 increased by 1.5 percent on the previous year. The most common reason for those deaths was cancer. Some 29 percent of registered deaths were linked to the disease.
Macmillan Cancer Support has confirmed that three-quarters of newly diagnosed cancers occur in people aged 60 or over. They say living an unhealthy lifestyle will “rapidly increase the risk” of developing the disease.
Critics argue that men and women in the UK need to work on living a better lifestyle to live for longer.
The Labour Party urged the public to “take better care of their health” because the NHS “won't be able to do everything.”
Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham believes people in the UK need to “take more care of themselves” and be responsible for their own health.
He will announce plans on Thursday with the aim of getting half of the country to live a more active lifestyle.
“People will have to take more responsibility for their own health,” Burnham told the MailOnline.
“The NHS won't be able to do everything. It's maybe a message that people haven't heard from Labour always,” he said.
As the country adjusts to an aging population and rising health costs, Burnham believes this is the most “cost-effective” way people can take “the keys to their own health.”
The vice president of the Faculty of Public Health, Dr John Middleton, said a decline in life expectancy at any age is “a matter of concern and should be investigated.”
Middleton said he agreed that “inadequate social care and inadequate investment in preventive care for vulnerable older people” explained the findings.
____________________________________________
This article does not address the REAL issues around life expectancy because the Wall Street Journal would not tell us International Economic Zones have created a huge decline in health and longevity wherever they are but they do expose the inconsistency in life-expectancy data. While US life expectancy numbers may not be declining rapidly that has more to do with the increasing percentage of younger citizens and immigrants now making up our population pool. If you look at US city longevity stats they say for example NYC or Baltimore is seeing rising longevity when this is simply the movement of working class and poor out of cities and more affluent citizens into cities. The NYC hyper-rich will of course have longer lives. What all this does not reflect is the damage soon to be done via US International Economic Zones and global corporate campuses and global factories. You can look hard for articles on live spans in Asian International Economic Zones but health data created there is generally done by WHO----the World Health Organization which is not inclined to tell us what living in an environmentally devastated and toxic chemical exposure workplace does to lifespan. The Chinese have always been at the top of longevity with simple living----small farmer agrarian food sources. As these structures were broken and people we sent to global factories we saw health data change. WHO will focus on that 1% of Chinese wealthy class and their life expectancy saying health and life expectancy is increasing. In reality Chinese health and longevity is in crisis.
The Chinese International Economic Zones over these few decades have only pulled in what is a small percentage of China's 1.35 billion citizens much to the dismay of global Wall Street. Thomas Friedman-----chief cheerleader for global neo-liberalism is optimistic that China will now pull more and more of its own citizens into expanding International Economic Zone structures and indeed it will----those national politburo 1% BILLIONAIRES are keen on Wall Street naked capitalism.
Think how in a matter of only 3 decades the conditions in Chinese International Economic Zones have taken the environment to one where people cannot breathe---they have all the symptoms of hyper-competitive stress as with heart disease and the small matter of citizen suicides soaring. Chinese citizens forced to live near toxic waste dumps as is happening in San Francisco are the ones waiting to get jobs inside these factories where workers are exposed daily to direct contact to these same toxic chemicals.
THE LIFE EXPECTANCY IN CHINA MAY STILL LOOK HIGH AS THE PERCENTAGES OF THOSE AFFECTED BY INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES ARE GROWING AND OFTEN NOT REPORTED.
In 2010 Americans were reading of Chinese factory workers and their workplace injuries/public health crises and jumping from factory windows to their death to escape the enslavement. The news reports very quickly stopped coming and were replaced by the American press telling us this was isolated and global corporations were cleaning up their act. What I was reading was Chinese government officials sending out directives to NOT ALLOW ANY NEWS OF HEALTH OR SUICIDE DATA LEAVE THE COUNTRY. They censured all communications out of China. A WHO under Wall Street global corporate neo-liberalism is the opposite of a WHO under what was a socially progressive and human rights social Democracy so be aware the stats we are reading are more likely hiding the effects of bad policy
----The Trouble With Ranking Life-Expectancy Numbers
By
Carl Bialik
Aug 27, 2007 11:49 am ET
A widely reprinted recent Associated Press story painted a dire picture of the U.S. health-care system. Headlined “U.S. Slipping Down Life Expectancy Rankings,” the article reported the U.S. had fallen to 42nd in the world in life expectancy in 2004, down from 11th two decades earlier.
The Caribbean island of Montserrat ranks ahead of the U.S. in a recent AP ranking of countries by life expectancy. Montserrat’s population has declined by more than 50% to fewer than 5,000 people since its Soufriere Hills volcano, pictured here in 2004, activated in 1995 prompting an exodus. (AP photo)The story isn’t quite so simple. Multiple data sources confirm that the U.S. has slipped in these rankings since the 1980s. But the United Nations and the U.N.’s World Health Organization, which each maintain their own life-expectancy numbers, have the U.S. ranking higher overall.
Among the complicating factors: The AP’s international data source, the U.S. Census Bureau, includes nearly 30 more places in its rankings than are covered by the U.N. and the WHO. Many of these places are territories or small parts of other countries. Nonetheless, the AP’s article began, “Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.”
Seven of the places ranking ahead of the U.S. in 2004 had a population under 50,000, including Montserrat and San Marino, while another 10 had populations under 500,000, including the U.S. Virgin Islands and Andorra. (Andorra topped the ranking with a life expectancy of 83.5 years.) Such places have so few deaths each year that their mortality numbers are subject to big swings. Meanwhile, 18 of the 41 places ranked ahead of the U.S. by just a year or less, a small difference.
Comparing the latest data with two decades ago also obscures that the U.S.’s ranking hasn’t budged much in recent years — it was 41st in 1997, by the AP’s ranking method. (And keep in mind, as I wrote in a recent post, that life expectancy is more complicated than the popular perception that it predicts how long someone born today is likely to survive.)
Other life-expectancy trackers show the U.S. ranking higher, thanks in part to the absence of dozens of territories that aren’t independent countries. The U.N., which hews closely to its list of 192 member states for its data collection and reports life expectancy over five-year periods, shows the U.S. at 35th in 2000-2005, down from 31st in 1995-2000 and 17th in 1980-1985. The U.S. ranked 31st in the WHO’s 2005 numbers.
The Census’s own data included far fewer countries in the 1980s (just 133 in 1984, compared with 222 in 2005), which helps account for the U.S.’s big decline from 11th in that decade. (This caveat wasn’t mentioned until the 18th paragraph of the AP story).
There are other differences between the data sets. Each agency has its own statistical models and supplements data supplied by countries, where available, with its own considered judgment. This can result in some discrepancies — not so much for the U.S. and other large countries with reliable health statistics, but for some nations alongside the big ones near the top of the rankings. The WHO, for instance, shows a shorter life expectancy for Albania (by about five years) and Andorra (three years), and a longer one for Monaco (two years) than does the Census Bureau.
“We wouldn’t pay too much attention to [life-expectancy data from] Andorra and Monaco,” Mie Inoue, a Geneva-based WHO statistician involved in producing the agency’s life expectancy numbers, told me. “There are very few deaths, so there are lots of fluctuations, so the result wouldn’t be very reliable.” Added Thomas McDevitt, chief of the population studies branch within the Census Bureau’s population division, “For small areas, constructing life tables is a challenge.”
The Associated Press combined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s domestic figures with the Census Bureau’s world numbers (explained here). “I combined the most accurate U.S. numbers available with the most accurate numbers available for the rest of the world,” Stephen Ohlemacher, author of the AP article, told me. “Several researchers recommended this strategy, and several others agreed it was the best way to get the most complete and up-to-date numbers for the U.S. and the world.”
Asked why he included places that aren’t countries, some of which are very small, he replied, “I relied on the Census Bureau’s expertise on these issues.” Of the non-countries, Mr. Ohlemacher added, “I believe that many of those areas are listed separately because their demographic characteristics are different than the rest of the country. Think Hong Kong and China.”
What do you think? What should be included and excluded from such rankings? Are differences of a year or less significant? What’s the best way to compare the health of different countries? Please let me know in the comments.
The attitude of Wall Street and global corporate pols is this-----we allowed Americans to be the clinical trial participants in perfecting these procedures and now we will limit access to all hospital procedures to global health tourism----those wealthy enough to pay the highest rate.
Indeed, now they world's low-income are seeing global cartels abducting and harvesting organs for sale and in third world health care with no morals, ethics, or Rule of Law where health care is purely profit-maximization ----AS TODAY IN THE US------these cases will grow.
'99-year-old David Rockefeller Undergoes Sixth Heart Transplant – Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:'
99-year-old billionaire David Rockefeller has successfully undergone his sixth heart transplant surgery in the last 38 years.
The Truth:
A fake news website started the false report that David Rockefeller has had six heart transplant surgeries.
An article that appeared on the website World News Daily Report claimed that David Rockefeller, an heir to the billion-dollar Rockefeller estate, has had six heart transplants and two kidney transplants over the years:
“His first heart transplant occurred in 1976 after a dramatic car accident led him to suffer a heart attack. He was operated 24 hours later and up and jogging a week later.”
Within days, the fake news report was shared more than 130,000 times on social media. Many people believed that David Rockefeller had actually undergone his sixth heart transplant and argued about whether or not it was right for a rich, 100-year-old man to take a heart from a younger person in need.
But those people missed World News Day Report’s disclaimer. It says that the website is not “responsible for inaccurate information” and assumes “all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles.
This isn’t the first time that David Rockefeller’s health has been at the center of an online hoax, either. Just weeks earlier, a separate false report spread across social media that David Rockefeller had died:
“At about 11 a.m. ET on Tuesday (April 28, 2015), our beloved business man David Rockefeller passed away. David Rockefeller was born on June 12, 1915 in New York. He will be missed but not forgotten. Please show your sympathy and condolences by commenting on and liking this page.”
The debate about wealthy people “cutting in line” to receive an organ transplant isn’t a new one. In 2009, Steve Jobs was criticized after he traveled to Tennessee for a liver transplant on short notice, ABC News reports:
“Jobs couldn’t pay for an organ. Nor could he pay to cut the queue. But what someone with Jobs’ resources could do, according to liver transplant surgeons and ethicists, is to use money and mobility to improve the odds either by going to an area of the country where there are more organ donors, or by signing up at multiple transplant centers.”
Dick Cheney drew similar criticism when he underwent a heart transplant in 2013. Cheney had waited on a transplant list for 20 months before the surgery, but some argued that he was too old (71 at the time) to receive a donor’s heart.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, the non-profit that maintains the nationwide patient waiting list, often considers a patient’s ability to pay for a transplant when deciding where to place an available organ.
_____________________________________________
Above you see yet another article saying the article written about Rockerfeller and multiple heart transplants are false----Cheney has had multiple heart surgeries with the latest heart transplant and he is young to Rockerfeller's 99 years and heart transplants usually extend life by a decade or so. The point is this----first, citizens have no way of knowing what the super-rich are doing--all is done out of sight and we KNOW they will use whatever mechanism needed to get that procedure. The article on Cheney deliberately emphasizes Cheney waited on a heart transplant list like all the regular citizens but who believes he would not get that heart if needed? NO ONE.
The American people are being taken from the loop of HOLDING POWER ACCOUNTABLE JOURNALISM to that of propaganda written to hide what is really happening. That is the message of these articles. We do know this---99% of people will not be getting all those heart procedures and the 1% will do anything to get what they need for health care.
Since Rockerfeller lived through what was the development phase of heart transplant it is perfectly reasonable to assume he could have had earlier transplant procedures not successful bringing multiple attempts.
Below you see yet another article saying the article written about Rockerfeller and multiple heart transplants are false----Cheney has had multiple heart surgeries with the latest heart transplant and he is young to Rockerfeller's 99 years and heart transplants usually extend life by a decade or so. The point is this----first, citizens have no way of knowing what the super-rich are doing--all is done out of sight and we KNOW they will use whatever mechanism needed to get that procedure. The article on Cheney deliberately emphasizes Cheney waited on a heart transplant list like all the regular citizens but who believes he would not get that heart if needed? NO ONE.
The American people are being taken from the loop of HOLDING POWER ACCOUNTABLE JOURNALISM to that of propaganda written to hide what is really happening. That is the message of these articles. We do know this---99% of people will not be getting all those heart procedures and the 1% will do anything to get what they need for health care.
'Dick Cheney drew similar criticism when he underwent a heart transplant in 2013. Cheney had waited on a transplant list for 20 months before the surgery, but some argued that he was too old (71 at the time) to receive a donor’s heart'
Thursday, Nov 14, 2013 05:59 PM EDT
Dick Cheney: Even bigger monster than you thought
Listen to the man with a taxpayer-funded new heart wax indifferent to the life of his donor Joan Walsh SALON
Dick Cheney (Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)You’ve probably heard that Dick Cheney agrees with Bill Clinton about letting people who are losing private insurance keep their old plans, as President Obama repeatedly seemed to promise they could. That’s not surprising: Cheney is a troll who maligns the president whenever he can, and piling on with Clinton is a special kind of fun. Yes, it’s outrageous that a man who has enjoyed many millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded medical care doesn’t give a damn about the uninsured in our society, but that’s Dick Cheney.
Still, I was a little startled to hear the former vice president express total indifference to questions about his heart donor in a revealing interview on Politicking with Larry King (it airs Thursday night; here’s a clip). It’s a window into his utter entitlement and self-absorption, and he comes off as an even bigger monster than I’d thought. Most people would at least feign interest in the donor; Cheney can’t manage it.
When King asks if he knows the identity of the person whose heart keeps him alive, Cheney, who is promoting a book about his transplant experience, says no, and adds, “it hadn’t been a priority for me.” Then he goes on:
When I came out from under the anesthetic after the transplant, I was euphoric. I’d had–I’d been given the gift of additional lives, additional years of life. For the family of the donor, they’d just been [through] some terrible tragedy, they’d lost a family member. Can’t tell why, obviously, when you don’t know the details, but the way I think of it from a psychological standpoint is that it’s my new heart, not someone else’s old heart. And I always thank the donor, generically thank donors for the gift that I’ve been given, but I don’t spend time wondering who had it, what they’d done, what kind of person.
“It’s my new heart, not someone else’s old heart.”
Consider the complete self-centeredness of that statement, and the utter lack of empathy. I shouldn’t be surprised at that — war criminals and torture-promoters aren’t known for their empathy — but I was. Cheney’s so absorbed in his great good luck that he can’t help sharing: “My cardiologist told me at one point, ‘You know, Dick, the transplant is a spiritual experience, not just for the patient, but also for the team.'” What a generous guy, sharing that “spiritual experience” with his cardiology team! So: Cheney is happy to have a new heart, but doesn’t bother to “spend time wondering who had it, what they’d done, what kind of person.”
And his statement that it wasn’t a “priority” to learn about his heart donor revealingly echoes his explanation for getting five deferments from the Vietnam War: The notorious war hawk famously told the Washington Post: “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” Now he has other priorities than learning about his heart donor.
It’s certainly not compulsory to find out about the person who died so that you could live – who gave what Cheney called “the gift of life itself.” There may be valid psychological reasons not to. I don’t judge that decision. But I can’t get over the coldness required to express complete indifference to knowing about that person, and their family’s suffering.
Or could it be compassion? For a lot of people, the tragedy of a family member dying would be compounded, not lessened, by learning that their heart went to Cheney. Nah, there’s neither compassion nor self-awareness in the way Cheney talks about receiving “the gift of life,” from American taxpayers or from his mystery heart donor.
_________________________________________________
I went to great lengths during this Presidential and Mayoral 2016 election to educate as to progressive posing over who was a real BERNIE SANDERS LEFT-LEANING SOCIAL DEMOCRAT for just this issue. We will now have all those Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals PRETENDING FOR FEEL THE BERN----whether Ben Jealous of the NAACP----or Latino and white Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice organizations' around the nation and here in Baltimore all chime in that this OBAMA POLICY TO EXPAND SOCIAL SECURITY IS THE BERNIE SANDER'S PLAN AND IT IS NOT----IT IS THE OPPOSITE OF BERNIE'S SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY.
WE WILL HEAR THE WALL STREET 'LABOR AND JUSTICE' LEADERS CALLING OBAMA THE PROTECTOR OF SOCIAL SECURITY WHILE HE DISMANTLED AND PRIVATIZED IT AWAY FROM THE CITIZENS THESE LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS REPRESENT.
For those not knowing the story of SS Trust policy these several years----SS payments under Obama thanks to FED action received little if NO COLA increases for these several years. This was a first in the history of SS and it comes with losses to monthly benefits of hundreds of dollars. This is a lot to seniors already living simply. Second, Obama used Executive Order to install with the US Treasury a privatization of SS Trust my RA now probably ready to start moving payroll deductions for low-income employees directly into the stock market so no need for Wall Street global corporate pols to implode the now SS Trust in bond debt to get it to Wall Street----they have payroll taxes mainlined to Wall Street. They haven't made it mandatory yet but it is coming as our Federal Social Security is wiped out with $20 trillion in US Treasury debt in the coming bond market collapse. Old Federal SS imploded with bond market fraud----new privatized SS installed soon after.
What Wall Street neo-liberals claim to be expanded SS is different if you are right wing Clinton neo-liberals as Obama and Congress now is than if you are a left-leaning social Democrat as Bernie Sanders is. What Obama and this article calls raising the cap on $100,000 earners and up which is the left-leaning plan for expansion---is simply an attempt to generate ANY REVENUE TO SS since the entire middle/working class has been eliminated. They needed to raise this cap and this too will hit the stock market as privatized SS. Wall Street is simply identifying new payroll deductions to use as fodder in its complex financial instrument leverage schemes overseas. This is the first step towards an attack on the upper-middle/affluent class that had been directed at working/middle class workers. You can bet those $100,000 and above will never see these SS funds.
Bernie's and left-leaning SS expansion was to keep SS Trust Federal and out of the stock market AND remove the cap. This would have had the more wealthy workers adding to the Trust extending its longevity to end of this century AND OUT OF THE STOCK MARKET. Bernie and left-leaning SS recognizes Obama's and the FED attack on monthly payments through COLA and resets those monthly payments with adjustments in future COLA. Obama's does not. Bernie and left-leaning SS policy would address the $20 trillion US Treasury debt tied to our SS Trust in pushing this debt back at Wall Street since it is a massive bond market fraud protecting our SS Trust. Obama will not and an IMF/Wall Street/FED intervention will use existing SS Trust to augment US Treasury losses.
It is important for our immigrant citizens required to pay payroll taxes for SS and Medicare to understand low-wage workers will not see any of these funds----Medicare has been privatized and for low-wage earners it is basically Medicaid for All preventative care only.
As Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals work to end public health care moving access to only those able to afford higher and higher premiums----they are joining to raise the age to 70 for Social Security. Think about these two issues. The only thing extending American life expectancy was access to hospital procedures, PHARMA that kept disease vectors at bay. When Wall Street pols moved health care access to preventative care only they were starting the very fast decline in life expectancy in the US. Since many disease vectors hit in what is now middle-age----50-60 years old----that will now become the life expectancy of a super-majority of US citizens soon to be 99% of citizens. This will occur in one generation. So, who will be living until 70 years to access Social Security? Certainly not global corporate campus white collar and global factory sweat shop workers.
Obama’s Call to Expand Social Security Shows Sanders’ Clout
Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur
Mike Dorning mikedorning
June 3, 2016 — 5:00 AM EDT
President Barack Obama’s surprise call to expand Social Security highlights a populist shift in the U.S. political landscape that has been propelled by the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Just five years ago, Obama called for reducing future Social Security benefits -- an idea that at the time was in vogue for many Republicans and some Democrats, who treated it as a badge of fiscal responsibility.
No more. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, says Social Security benefits shouldn’t be cut -- a departure from other Republican leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Sanders, as part of his Democratic presidential campaign, has been calling for an expansion of benefits, and the party’s likely nominee, Hillary Clinton, took a similar position earlier this year. Obama joined the chorus on Wednesday.
"It is a much different universe today," said Warren Gunnels, policy director for the Sanders campaign. "Go back to 2011, when the debate was not whether Social Security would be cut, but how much it would be cut. Now the debate is not whether we’re going to expand Social Security but how much we’ll expand it."
Five years ago, Obama offered to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated to make them less generous as part of a "grand bargain" on taxes and spending with then-House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican. He officially abandoned the policy in his fiscal 2015 budget, then went further in a speech in Indiana on Wednesday in which he excoriated Republican economic policies and called for Social Security benefits to be expanded.
Obama never supported Social Security cuts and would only agree as part of a larger deal with Republicans, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday. It was included in Obama’s budget "to illustrate what impact that could have on our fiscal situation, but only as a larger part of a so-called grand bargain," Earnest said.
Sanders’s ‘Snowball’
Obama’s change of heart reflects changes in both the economy and politics. Budget deficits have plunged since 2012, reducing pressure to cut entitlement spending. A 2014 Federal Reserve survey published last year found that 42 percent of American workers earning under $40,000 a year, and a quarter earning between $40,000 and $100,000, have no retirement savings.
BECAUSE THE FED/WALL STREET COMMITTED MASSIVE AND SYSTEMIC FRAUD AGAINST ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS' SAVINGS AND ASSETS.
Years of partisan warfare have meanwhile killed appetite in both parties for painful political compromises.
Though Sanders is unlikely to win the Democratic presidential nomination, the emerging orthodoxy of his party calling for an expansion of Social Security owes as much to him as anyone.
In March 2015, as the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders pushed for a vote on an amendment by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren proposing expanded Social Security benefits. Forty-two Democrats voted for the amendment and only two were opposed.
"That certainly was a very significant moment," Gunnels said of the budget vote. "It really has been a drumbeat and a snowball that’s gotten much larger through the Sanders campaign and through these many years of grassroots efforts."
Two months later, when Sanders announced his presidential bid, he put the policy front and center. "Instead of cutting Social Security," he said, "we’re going to expand Social Security benefits."
In February, after months of pressure from Sanders and liberals in her party, Clinton followed his lead. "I won’t cut Social Security," she said on Twitter. "As always, I’ll defend it, & I’ll expand it."
Obama jumped aboard, unifying the party’s leadership behind the policy.
"It is time we finally made Social Security more generous and increase the benefits," he said, "so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they have earned."
‘Political Calculation’
Conservatives still wedded to the idea of cutting the program also credit Sanders.
"The Bernie Sanders campaign, from the free love generation to the free everything generation, has pushed everybody left. And the president’s gone right along with him," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who now leads the American Action Forum, a conservative advocacy group.
Endorsing expansion represents a "crass political calculation" by Obama, he said. Liberals were indeed overjoyed by Obama’s remarks, and his endorsement of a policy championed by Sanders may help unify his party after a divisive primary campaign.
"The program is not sustainable in its current form," Holtz-Eakin said. "Adding more benefits doesn’t do anything to help that."
While the Baby Boomer generation is expected to strain Social Security, the program is running a surplus and will have enough reserves in its current form to dole out full benefits until 2034, according to the 2015 report from its trustees.
Leftward Shift
Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, attributes the political shift leftward to two developments. First, the federal budget deficit has been nearly halved since 2011, from $1.3 trillion to a projected $544 billion in 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office, reflecting improvements in the economy.
"As soon as the short-term deficits came down, interest in dealing with the long-term problem sort of evaporated," said William Gale, director of the Brookings Institution’s Retirement Security Project and a former staff economist for Republican President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Second, Obama’s overtures to strike a deficit-reduction deal with Republicans were rebuffed in 2011 and again in 2013, leading him to be "more adventuresome" with his policies, Ornstein said.
The deal Republicans could have struck in 2011 "was an unbelievable deal politically for them," Ornstein said. But because they would not consent to tax increases, the talks went nowhere, he said.
In the months after Obama’s re-election, he extended Republicans an olive branch by including in his budget a proposal to reduce the growth of Social Security benefits by indexing them to a lower rate of inflation. After Republicans again spurned his overtures in 2013, Obama abandoned the proposal.
"It was time to go on offense," said Mike Darner, the executive director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which proposed a Social Security expansion ahead of the 2012 election. "It’s an issue that was ripe for this moment in time."
_____________________________________________
This article by Atlantic which used to be somewhat socially progressive but no more asks NO ONE KNOWS WHY WOMEN ARE DYING YOUNGER THAN THEIR MOTHERS when in fact we DO KNOW why women are dying younger than their mothers just as we know why men are dying younger than their fathers. It is the deepening poverty in the US with ending Welfare and global markets taking employment. Women have lost all gains in employment as did citizens of color from the 1960s civil rights and women rights era US Constitutional and Federal laws and rulings and as in all developing world poverty structures women are always at the bottom regarding all quality of life measures. While it has been the people of color and lower-wage women hit hardest since the CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA attack on the American workforce now it is middle-class women losing big time through Obama's terms. Each time this happens----women's health issues are left without access. While men of color are being told it is the violence in the street lowering their health outcomes it is more the inability to access health care since CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and now all men will fall into this decreasing lifespan.
IT IS BECAUSE OF CONTINUOUS ATTITUDES OF -----THIS IS HAPPENING TO SOMEONE ELSE THAT ALLOWS IT TO TAKE EVERYONE.
It has nothing to do with education attainment because people wiht Master's Degrees are now protesting because they cannot afford health care
“Life is different for women without a high-school degree than it was a few decades ago, and in most cases it’s a lot worse,” she said. “It’s really just a perfect storm.”
U.S. Women Are Dying Younger Than Their Mothers, and No One Knows Why
While advancements in medicine and technology have prolonged life expectancy and decreased premature deaths overall, women in parts of the country have been left behind.
- Grace Wyler
- Oct 7, 2013
- Health
(jessiejacobson/flickr)The Affordable Care Act took a major step toward implementation last Tuesday with the launch of the online insurance exchanges, limping across the finish line despite three years of Republican obstruction that culminated in this week’s 11th hour attempt to dismantle the law by shutting down the federal government.
It’s easy to forget, amid the hyper-partisan controversy, that the main purpose behind President Obama’s signature health-care reform law is not to curtail individual freedom or send senior citizens to death panels, but to give more Americans access to health insurance. Whether you think the Affordable Care Act is the right solution or a dangerous step toward tyranny, it’s hard to dispute that the U.S. health-care system is broken. More than 48 million people lack health insurance, and despite having the world’s highest levels of health-care spending per capita, the U.S. has some of the worst health outcomes among developed nations, lagging behind in key metrics like life expectancy, premature death rates, and death by treatable diseases, according to a July study in the Journal of the American Medicine Association.
For some Americans, the reality is far worse than the national statistics suggest. In particular, growing health disadvantages have disproportionately impacted women over the past three decades, especially those without a high-school diploma or who live in the South or West. In March, a study published by the University of Wisconsin researchers David Kindig and Erika Cheng found that in nearly half of U.S. counties, female mortality rates actually increased between 1992 and 2006, compared to just 3 percent of counties that saw male mortality increase over the same period.
“I was shocked, actually,” Kindig said. “So we went back and did the numbers again, and it came back the same. It’s overwhelming.”
Kindig’s findings were echoed in a July report from University of Washington researcher Chris Murray, which found that inequality in women’s health outcomes steadily increased between 1985 and 2010, with female life expectancy stagnating or declining in 45 percent of U.S. counties. Taken together, the two studies underscore a disturbing trend: While advancements in medicine and technology have prolonged U.S. life expectancy and decreased premature deaths overall, women in parts of the country have been left behind, and in some cases, they are dying younger than they were a generation before. The worst part is no one knows why.
(Health Affairs/The Population Institute, University of Wisconsin)The Kindig study does note strong relationships between county mortality rates and several cultural and socioeconomic indicators. In particular, location appears to have an outsized effect on mortality rates. Counties with rising female mortality rates, marked in red, paint a broad stroke across Appalachia and the Cotton Belt, moving across to the Ozarks and the Great Plains. The Northeast and the Southwest, on the other hand, have been largely untouched.
But it’s not clear how these geographical differences play a role in mortality, or why the effect would be so much greater on women than on men. “Clearly something is going on,” Kindig said. “It could be cultural, political, or environmental, but the truth is we don’t really know the answer.”
Other researchers have pointed out the correlation between education rates and declining female health outcomes. The most shocking study, published in August 2012 by the journal Health Affairs, found that life expectancy for white female high-school dropouts has fallen dramatically over the past 18 years. These women are now expected to die five years earlier than the generation before them—a radical decline that is virtually unheard of in the world of modern medicine. In fact, the only parallel is the spike in Russian male mortality after the fall of the Soviet Union, which has primarily been attributed to rising alcohol consumption and accidental death rates.
“It's unprecedented in American history to see a drop in life expectancy of such magnitude over such a short time period,” said Jay Olshansky, the lead author of the study. “I don't know why it happened so rapidly among this subgroup. Something is different for the lives of poor people today that is worse than it was before.”
Education alone does not explain why female high-school dropouts are so much worse off than they were two decades ago. But researchers have used it as a proxy to determine more significant socioeconomic indicators, like access to health care and income opportunities, as well as health behaviors like smoking and obesity. Smoking in particular appears to have had a significant impact on female mortality rates, as the health consequences of previous decades of tobacco use set in. Olshansky points out that female obesity and drug abuse have risen dramatically over the past two decades, and may also play a role in mortality rates.
Researchers are hopeful that the expansion of health-care coverage under the Affordable Care Act will help ameliorate some of the health risks for poor and uneducated women. But access to health insurance is only part of the puzzle—in fact, Kindig’s study found that medical care factors had no discernible impact on death rates at the county level. “Health care is far from the whole story,” Kindig told me. “More and more people are beginning to realize that the non-health-care factors are at least as important.”
In May, Jennifer Karas Montez, a social demographer who studies health inequalities, co-authored a study that was the first to investigate how quality of life might be playing a role in the early deaths of female high-school dropouts. Montez found that while smoking accounts for half of the decline in life expectancy among these women, whether or not a woman has a job is equally significant. “Women without a high-school degree have not made inroads in the labor force, especially in post-recession America,” Montez said in an interview. In fact, only one-third of women without a high-school diploma are employed, compared to half of their male counterparts, and nearly three-quarters of better-educated women. When they are employed, Montez said, it is usually in low-wage jobs that offer no benefits or flexibility. Smoking and other destructive behaviors, she added, may just be symptoms of the heightened stress and loneliness experienced by women who don’t graduate from high school.
“Life is different for women without a high-school degree than it was a few decades ago, and in most cases it’s a lot worse,” she said. “It’s really just a perfect storm.”
______________________________________
Below we see the Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal think tank BROOKINGS INSTITUTION posing progressive as if they care about these declining health issues when they were partnered with the Republican think tanks writing all this ending of public health in the US. We all knew decades ago the reforms of 1990s would lead to huge declines in life-expectancy for those low-income just as we knew these several years of Obama and Clinton neo-liberal policies that the middle-class was heading to poverty to join this statistic. We know today that the upper-middle and affluent class is soon to follow. Everyone in and no one out of third world extreme wealth vs extreme poverty.
As well, the poverty figures a Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal uses is not tied to LIVING WAGES first world quality of life but tied to what is second world heading to third world poverty data. So, Living Wage of $15 an hour means $30,000 a year earnings is the developed nation poverty line while Obama and Clinton neo-liberals leave it at $21,000. This means the REAL percentage of Americans living in poverty is far higher and the percentage of people dying prematurely is far higher than 46 million citizens. This is huge folks and with about 300, 000 citizens we are already close to half of Americans dying at third world life expectancies.
None of those 100 million and much more citizens will live to access their SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS AS THE AGE RISES FROM 65 TO 70 YEARS OLD. Well, if the Social Security Trust of $4 trillion has been JUKE BONDED INTO OBLIVION---we wouldn't want those pesky baby boomers and the next generation old enough to access that NON-EXISTENT SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST.
The Brookings Institute and global Johns Hopkins sit side by side in Washington DC as Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal /Bush neo-conservative public policy ----both behind the dismantling and privatization of all that is public health.
The Penalty for Poverty Should Not Be Death
03/09/2016 02:43 pm ET | Updated Mar 09, 2016
- Richard (RJ) Eskow Writer/Editor, Bernie 2016
Yes, it is.
It’s also a tragedy. Forty-six million Americans live in poverty, including more than one child in five. These adults and children are experiencing a difficult life. They’re also more likely to face a premature death.
Despite advances in the health sciences, the situation is getting worse. According to the Brookings study, men in the bottom 10 percent of income born in 1920 were expected to live six years less than men in the top 10 percent. But for men born thirty years later, in 1950, that difference had risen to 14 years. The poorest group of women born in 1950 can expect to live 13 years less than their wealthy counterparts, up from 4.7 years for those born 30 years earlier.
In other words: Over three decades, the life expectancy gap between the richest and poorest among us has more than doubled for both men and women.
Every year that is taken from these Americans is a loss, not just for them, but for the people who care about them. It is one more year of grief and emptiness - for husbands and wives, children and grandchildren, neighborhoods and communities.
In a related finding, the Social Security Administration found that the life expectancy gap between 60-year-old men in the top and bottom halves of the income ladder grew from 1.2 years in the early 1970s to 5.8 years by 2001.
Some people point to smoking as a possible cause for this growing gap, since wealthier people are more likely to give up the habit, but the numbers show that this only accounts for a fifth to a third of the difference. Nor is it explained by obesity, since obesity rates aren’t that much different for wealthier and poorer Americans (31 percent of the poor and 27 percent of the wealthy were obese in 2010).
African-Americans have always fared worse than whites when it comes to longevity. And now an epidemic of so-called “deaths of despair” - including deaths from alcoholism, overdose and suicide - is shortening the life spans of economically struggling middle-aged white Americans with a high school education or less.
Overall life expectancy in the United States compares poorly to that of other wealthy countries, despite wealthy Americans’ long lifespans, because poor Americans fare so much worse than the average residents of other developed nations.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Canada is doing an excellent job of improving longevity in the very poorest urban neighborhoods, where a study showed that men experienced the biggest declines in deaths from heart disease between 1971 and 1996. And low-income residents of Toronto are more likely to survive cancer than low-income residents of Detroit.
The growing gap in life expectancy between rich and poor in the United States can be reversed, by doing what Canada and every other developed nation on earth has already done: providing healthcare to everyone as a basic human right. Among other things, that means addressing the political corruption that allows pharmaceutical companies to get away with charging $1000 per pill for life-saving medication. Drug prices in the United States are higher than any other country on earth, which makes it difficult for many lower-income people to take needed medications.
Social Security benefits, which are low in comparison to other advanced nations, should also be increased. Older and disabled Americans should not be forced to choose between an adequate diet, decent housing, or needed health care.
More broadly, a comprehensive economic program is needed to end the pervasive sense of hopelessness and dread that strikes individuals, families, and communities when there are no jobs to be had at livable wages.
Until these steps are taken, it’s likely that this nation’s growing inequalities in wealth and income will continue to give rise to the most unjust inequality of all: an inequality in life itself.
_______________________________________
Retirement was 62 now policies make people wait until 65----now these policies have been changed to making people wait until 70. Media and pols are sending out all kinds of propaganda about how the American people get bored in retirement -----that they live longer if they work-----and for some that may be true. There is nothing more life-extending than an active senior who stays engaged in community activities----athletic lifestyles, traveling and life-long learning activities. This is what made the US lifespan one of the longest in the developed world. Those bored with retirement are generally those having a self-identity of where they are at a professional level. Men have always been more inclined to that self-definition but as we know men adapted to the golf course and travel as well as women.
We are being bombarded with Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations telling us it is healthier to stay in the workplace.
Since global corporate campuses and global factories work human capital 15-18 hours a day under the worst of workplace conditions including toxic health exposure----is staying in the workplace really about longer life? Of course not---workers in International Economic Zones have their life expectancy decline DRAMATICALLY.
It means you will not be living to reach that Social Security age threshold. Yet all of the DNC and media outlets will claim OBAMA IS SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY!
Social Security’s real retirement age is 70
October 23, 2013, 10:35 AM ET
By Alicia H. Munnell
Social Security’s retirement age is 70. The simple fact is that monthly benefits are highest at age 70 and are reduced actuarially for each year they are claimed before age 70. This is a relatively new development, which may explain why Social Security’s retirement age is the best-kept secret in town. But I think it’s time we told folks. And then we need to clarify what all this talk about raising the so-called full retirement age really means. (These issues are covered in more detail in a new issue brief from the Center for Retirement Research.)
Currently workers can claim their benefits at any time between 62 and 70. But benefits claimed before age 70 are actuarially reduced. That is, benefits claimed at younger ages are lower by an amount that compensates for the fact that they start earlier and will be paid for more years. The goal is to ensure that, based on average life expectancy, people who take a lower benefit early would expect to receive about the same total amount in benefits over their lifetimes as those who wait for higher monthly benefits but start receiving them later. In other words, the claiming age affects monthly benefits but, on average, does not alter total benefits paid over the lifetime.
So, we have a benefit structure that pays full benefits at an age when most people have stopped working. We have set that age at 70. If you claim after 70, lifetime benefits decline, because monthly benefits are not increased for claiming after 70. If you claim before 70, your monthly benefit is significantly lower.
Most people don’t understand how much claiming early reduces monthly benefits. As the example in the table above shows, claiming at 62 instead of 70 cuts the monthly benefit almost in half, from $1,000 to $568. Given that Social Security is a particularly valuable type of income – inflation-adjusted and lasting for as long as you live – it generally makes sense to postpone claiming as long as possible to get the highest monthly amount, assuming you are in good health for your age.
If 70 is the age at which Social Security expects most people to retire and at which it pays the highest benefit, what is all this talk about the full retirement age?
Social Security’s full retirement age used to be a meaningful concept. Before 1972, maximum monthly Social Security benefits were paid at 65, and monthly benefits were not increased for claiming later. In 1972, Congress introduced a Delayed Retirement Credit, which increased benefits by 1% of the full retirement age benefit for each year of delay. The result was that those who retired later got a little bonus for delaying. But a 1% credit did not come close to compensating for the fact that late claimers had to wait and would get benefits over fewer years. In 1983, the adjustment was raised to 3% and that percentage was increased gradually to 8% in 2008. At this point, the adjustment provided by the Delayed Retirement Credit is actuarially fair – that is, it keeps lifetime benefits constant for those who claim after the full retirement age. In doing so, the Delayed Retirement Credit has rendered the full retirement age a largely meaningless concept. It does not describe the age when benefits are first available. That is age 62. It does not describe the age when monthly benefits are at their maximum. That is age 70. It really does not have any meaning in terms of an official retirement age.
This story does not completely wash because a number of specific Social Security provisions are linked to the full retirement age. An earnings test applies before age 66 (the current full retirement age) but not thereafter. Widow and spousal benefits are reduced if claimed before the full retirement age and not thereafter. Workers can claim spousal benefits after their full retirement age and then subsequently claim their own benefits.
But all these provisions are relatively small and do not undermine the basic fact that 70 is the age for full monthly benefits under Social Security. So then, what does it mean that the full retirement age has moved from 65 to 66 and is scheduled to move to 67 for workers born in 1960 or later? And what does it mean to increase the full retirement age beyond the 67 threshold already scheduled under current law? A topic for next time.
_____________________________________________
The UK has been about a decade ahead of the US in all these ONE WORLD global corporate tribunal rule taking the developed nations to third world colonial status because UK does not have the US Constitutional protections and a Bill of Rights handing power to the people. So, Wall Street global neo-liberals THATCHER AND BLAIR were able to install all these colonial policies faster than REAGAN CLINTON neo-liberals in the US. If we look to where UK is today in public policy we can see where the US will be in public policy because the old world European and England rich are the 1% taking the US to colonial status.
The UK is a mess. It's citizens have these several years looked to live as in Charles Dicken's days of Robber Baron Industrialist 1800s. What is most striking is London is now basically immigrant majority-----taking this poverty to third world slums. So, it is not surprising that the US life expectancy has been on that level of Baltimore's underserved communities----30 years less than the affluent communities.
When our Congressional, Maryland Assembly, and Baltimore City pols running as Democrats pose progressive---this is the goal of all policies they installed over these few decades and will be these coming years.
Of course it is women now seeing the fastest declines as we are losing our positions in the workplace and heading more and more into poverty. Is lowering the life expectancy of Democratic voters REALLY on the Democratic platform? Of course not but then Wall Street global corporate Clinton/Obama neo-liberals are far-right wing.
All that dismantling of the UK's strong national public health system----------
'Middleton said he agreed that “inadequate social care and inadequate investment in preventive care for vulnerable older people” explained the findings'.
THAT'S WHY WALL STREET WANTS THOSE CLINTON/OBAMA GLOBAL CORPORATE PLAYERS TO WIN EACH ELECTION!
‘Significant decline’ in UK life expectancy, health officials warned
Published time: 13 Jan, 2015 14:56
Get short URL
Reuters/Luke MacGregor / Reuters
Public Health England confirms there has been a fall in life expectancy, particularly among older women. Critics blame unhealthy lifestyles, government cuts to social care budgets and worsening GP and hospital care.
TagsHealth, UK, Biology, Medicine, ScienceHealth officials are currently investigating a “significant decline” in life expectancy across the country.
An email sent to Public Health England by Darwen Council's director of public health, Dominic Harrison, said: “The council had seen a sustained reduction in life expectancy.”
He said reductions in life expectancy such as this are “extremely unusual.”
Figures suggest a women's life expectancy, which stood at 85, has fallen in recent years.
The email, sent before Christmas and seen by the Health Service Journal, said: “In Blackburn and Darwen there have been reductions for both men and women, as well as some signs of a reduction in life expectancy for men at 65.”
The email was described as an “alert” and calls for a national review to analyse “the causes and developing local/national recovery plans.”
Speaking to RT, health policy expert and founding partner at Incisive Health Mike Birtwistle said: “The reasons for the decline are complex, we need to improve the way we support older people, who have complex needs.”
According to the Office for National Statistics, death rates in the UK in 2013 increased by 1.5 percent on the previous year. The most common reason for those deaths was cancer. Some 29 percent of registered deaths were linked to the disease.
Macmillan Cancer Support has confirmed that three-quarters of newly diagnosed cancers occur in people aged 60 or over. They say living an unhealthy lifestyle will “rapidly increase the risk” of developing the disease.
Critics argue that men and women in the UK need to work on living a better lifestyle to live for longer.
The Labour Party urged the public to “take better care of their health” because the NHS “won't be able to do everything.”
Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham believes people in the UK need to “take more care of themselves” and be responsible for their own health.
He will announce plans on Thursday with the aim of getting half of the country to live a more active lifestyle.
“People will have to take more responsibility for their own health,” Burnham told the MailOnline.
“The NHS won't be able to do everything. It's maybe a message that people haven't heard from Labour always,” he said.
As the country adjusts to an aging population and rising health costs, Burnham believes this is the most “cost-effective” way people can take “the keys to their own health.”
The vice president of the Faculty of Public Health, Dr John Middleton, said a decline in life expectancy at any age is “a matter of concern and should be investigated.”
Middleton said he agreed that “inadequate social care and inadequate investment in preventive care for vulnerable older people” explained the findings.
____________________________________________
This article does not address the REAL issues around life expectancy because the Wall Street Journal would not tell us International Economic Zones have created a huge decline in health and longevity wherever they are but they do expose the inconsistency in life-expectancy data. While US life expectancy numbers may not be declining rapidly that has more to do with the increasing percentage of younger citizens and immigrants now making up our population pool. If you look at US city longevity stats they say for example NYC or Baltimore is seeing rising longevity when this is simply the movement of working class and poor out of cities and more affluent citizens into cities. The NYC hyper-rich will of course have longer lives. What all this does not reflect is the damage soon to be done via US International Economic Zones and global corporate campuses and global factories. You can look hard for articles on live spans in Asian International Economic Zones but health data created there is generally done by WHO----the World Health Organization which is not inclined to tell us what living in an environmentally devastated and toxic chemical exposure workplace does to lifespan. The Chinese have always been at the top of longevity with simple living----small farmer agrarian food sources. As these structures were broken and people we sent to global factories we saw health data change. WHO will focus on that 1% of Chinese wealthy class and their life expectancy saying health and life expectancy is increasing. In reality Chinese health and longevity is in crisis.
The Chinese International Economic Zones over these few decades have only pulled in what is a small percentage of China's 1.35 billion citizens much to the dismay of global Wall Street. Thomas Friedman-----chief cheerleader for global neo-liberalism is optimistic that China will now pull more and more of its own citizens into expanding International Economic Zone structures and indeed it will----those national politburo 1% BILLIONAIRES are keen on Wall Street naked capitalism.
Think how in a matter of only 3 decades the conditions in Chinese International Economic Zones have taken the environment to one where people cannot breathe---they have all the symptoms of hyper-competitive stress as with heart disease and the small matter of citizen suicides soaring. Chinese citizens forced to live near toxic waste dumps as is happening in San Francisco are the ones waiting to get jobs inside these factories where workers are exposed daily to direct contact to these same toxic chemicals.
THE LIFE EXPECTANCY IN CHINA MAY STILL LOOK HIGH AS THE PERCENTAGES OF THOSE AFFECTED BY INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES ARE GROWING AND OFTEN NOT REPORTED.
In 2010 Americans were reading of Chinese factory workers and their workplace injuries/public health crises and jumping from factory windows to their death to escape the enslavement. The news reports very quickly stopped coming and were replaced by the American press telling us this was isolated and global corporations were cleaning up their act. What I was reading was Chinese government officials sending out directives to NOT ALLOW ANY NEWS OF HEALTH OR SUICIDE DATA LEAVE THE COUNTRY. They censured all communications out of China. A WHO under Wall Street global corporate neo-liberalism is the opposite of a WHO under what was a socially progressive and human rights social Democracy so be aware the stats we are reading are more likely hiding the effects of bad policy
----The Trouble With Ranking Life-Expectancy Numbers
By
Carl Bialik
Aug 27, 2007 11:49 am ET
A widely reprinted recent Associated Press story painted a dire picture of the U.S. health-care system. Headlined “U.S. Slipping Down Life Expectancy Rankings,” the article reported the U.S. had fallen to 42nd in the world in life expectancy in 2004, down from 11th two decades earlier.
The Caribbean island of Montserrat ranks ahead of the U.S. in a recent AP ranking of countries by life expectancy. Montserrat’s population has declined by more than 50% to fewer than 5,000 people since its Soufriere Hills volcano, pictured here in 2004, activated in 1995 prompting an exodus. (AP photo)The story isn’t quite so simple. Multiple data sources confirm that the U.S. has slipped in these rankings since the 1980s. But the United Nations and the U.N.’s World Health Organization, which each maintain their own life-expectancy numbers, have the U.S. ranking higher overall.
Among the complicating factors: The AP’s international data source, the U.S. Census Bureau, includes nearly 30 more places in its rankings than are covered by the U.N. and the WHO. Many of these places are territories or small parts of other countries. Nonetheless, the AP’s article began, “Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.”
Seven of the places ranking ahead of the U.S. in 2004 had a population under 50,000, including Montserrat and San Marino, while another 10 had populations under 500,000, including the U.S. Virgin Islands and Andorra. (Andorra topped the ranking with a life expectancy of 83.5 years.) Such places have so few deaths each year that their mortality numbers are subject to big swings. Meanwhile, 18 of the 41 places ranked ahead of the U.S. by just a year or less, a small difference.
Comparing the latest data with two decades ago also obscures that the U.S.’s ranking hasn’t budged much in recent years — it was 41st in 1997, by the AP’s ranking method. (And keep in mind, as I wrote in a recent post, that life expectancy is more complicated than the popular perception that it predicts how long someone born today is likely to survive.)
Other life-expectancy trackers show the U.S. ranking higher, thanks in part to the absence of dozens of territories that aren’t independent countries. The U.N., which hews closely to its list of 192 member states for its data collection and reports life expectancy over five-year periods, shows the U.S. at 35th in 2000-2005, down from 31st in 1995-2000 and 17th in 1980-1985. The U.S. ranked 31st in the WHO’s 2005 numbers.
The Census’s own data included far fewer countries in the 1980s (just 133 in 1984, compared with 222 in 2005), which helps account for the U.S.’s big decline from 11th in that decade. (This caveat wasn’t mentioned until the 18th paragraph of the AP story).
There are other differences between the data sets. Each agency has its own statistical models and supplements data supplied by countries, where available, with its own considered judgment. This can result in some discrepancies — not so much for the U.S. and other large countries with reliable health statistics, but for some nations alongside the big ones near the top of the rankings. The WHO, for instance, shows a shorter life expectancy for Albania (by about five years) and Andorra (three years), and a longer one for Monaco (two years) than does the Census Bureau.
“We wouldn’t pay too much attention to [life-expectancy data from] Andorra and Monaco,” Mie Inoue, a Geneva-based WHO statistician involved in producing the agency’s life expectancy numbers, told me. “There are very few deaths, so there are lots of fluctuations, so the result wouldn’t be very reliable.” Added Thomas McDevitt, chief of the population studies branch within the Census Bureau’s population division, “For small areas, constructing life tables is a challenge.”
The Associated Press combined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s domestic figures with the Census Bureau’s world numbers (explained here). “I combined the most accurate U.S. numbers available with the most accurate numbers available for the rest of the world,” Stephen Ohlemacher, author of the AP article, told me. “Several researchers recommended this strategy, and several others agreed it was the best way to get the most complete and up-to-date numbers for the U.S. and the world.”
Asked why he included places that aren’t countries, some of which are very small, he replied, “I relied on the Census Bureau’s expertise on these issues.” Of the non-countries, Mr. Ohlemacher added, “I believe that many of those areas are listed separately because their demographic characteristics are different than the rest of the country. Think Hong Kong and China.”
What do you think? What should be included and excluded from such rankings? Are differences of a year or less significant? What’s the best way to compare the health of different countries? Please let me know in the comments.
RSS Feed
