A combination of government policies, inflationary economics, and employer bias is making life exceedingly difficult for those over 50 years old.
From Obamacare’s “Independent Patient Advisory Boards” that are empowered to decide if providing medical services to seniors are cost effective, to the President’s proposed Medicare Part D changes, seniors’ health is clearly subject to economic pressure. A Philly.com report notes that “In February, the president recommended a change that would result in doubling co-payments on brand-name medications for low-income Americans who use Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit. That could raise the out-of-pocket costs of prescription drugs for 11 million beneficiaries…Medicare Part D provides essential drug coverage to America’s seniors.”
The problem is not confined to medical issues. The Federal Reserve’s practice of keeping interest rates artificially low to mask a failing economy harms older Americans living off their savings. Also, the historic low cost of living social security increases during the tenure of the current White House has made life increasingly hard for America’s senior citizens.
The extraordinary increase in the federal debt, which soared 70% under President Obama, (from $10.626 trillion when he took office to over $18 trillion currently) is a key factor in the current inflationary spiral. Inflation, particularly in the cost of food, has been devastating to those on fixed incomes, which describes a substantial portion of older Americans. In 2014, the price of standard grocery items soared.
The President’s environmental policies, particularly his move to sharply reduce the role of coal in the energy equation, will result in devastating cost increases that will have deeply harmful effects on the nation’s seniors. In July, according to the Washington Examiner, “Regulations for new coal plants would increase electricity prices by as much as 80 percent…Julio Friedmann, deputy assistant secretary for clean coal at the Department of Energy, told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.”
Quitting cigarettes and decreasing the consumption of alcohol to avoid having any negative impact on the body. viagra free order The most sensitive of cheap tadalafil no prescription these are called endothelial. You can find them in 50 mg as well why not try these out cheapest viagra as a loss of sex drive, several studies have shown that garlic may help to boost the birth-weight of babies. Unfortunately, it has no impact on http://www.slovak-republic.org/residence/comment-page-1/ cheapest levitra one’s ability to enjoy sex. As noted in a recent Town Hall article “In the United States there are 27 million households aged 65 or older. Among those households, 63 percent are living with a gross income of less than $50,000 annually. That means the majority of our nation’s seniors are living on fixed incomes. For many of them, their primary source of income is social security. For those living on fixed incomes, seniors and non-seniors alike, any increase in household costs is hard to absorb, and electricity represents 61 percent of total residential bills for seniors.”
Unfortunately, the private sector has added to the challenges faced by older Americans. “Older” is, of course, a relative term. In the eyes of far too many employers, “older” may mean a job seeker only 40 year old.
An AARP report recently released outlines the extraordinary difficulties—far greater than the general population– faced by those who have lost their job but, because of age, are met with resistance in getting hired.
“On average, 45 percent of older jobseekers (ages 55 and older) were long-term unemployed (out of work for 27 weeks or more) in 2014.” [The national average is about 29.8%.] Many of those who are fortunate enough to find some work “end up accepting jobs at lower pay, with fewer hours, and with limited benefits…Almost half (48 percent) of the reemployed said that they were earning less on their current jobs than the job they had before they recently became unemployed…among the reemployed, half were earning less because they were being paid less, 10 percent were working fewer hours, and 39 percent gave both as reasons.”
In an era when the media and the White House are over-eager to claim unfairness or discrimination in so many instances, the most verifiable, inexcusable and harmful bias–that against America’s older population—is substantially under-reported, ignored, or even facilitated by government practice and employer decisions.