Do You Know Someone Older than Social Security? Are You Older than Medicare?

Reflections on America's relatively young old-age safety nets

You may know someone alive today who’s older than Social Security. You might be older than Medicare. Some of my friends and relatives are. Like our young democracy, these benefits that many Americans rely on in their elder years exist because leaders in earlier eras created them. In this case, it wasn’t that long ago.

My grandfather was 11 when the stock market crashed in 1929. At 14, Pop started driving a truck to earn money for his family. I never asked him, but I expect his brothers picked up work where they could too. Amid the hardship of the Great Depression, which spiraled into destitution for many, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) signed Social Security into being.

It was August 14, 1935—less than 90 years ago.

FDR signing the Social Security Act in 1935. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Back then, Americans desperate for beans, heat, or shelter probably couldn’t envision living long enough to receive the promised payments. Thousands of the elderly had plunged into poverty when their savings melted like a snowflake in warm hands, and unemployment hovered at 20.1% (BLS). To provide more immediate relief, other provisions of the bill bolstered state unemployment and old-age assistance programs.

The intense frugality ingrained in my grandparents and their siblings during the 1930’s, and again after the U.S. joined World War II, stayed with them.

I can still picture the wrinkly dull glimmer of washed foil drying beside the draining rack in my great Aunt Hazel’s kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner. And the plastic covers on great Aunt Eileen’s and Uncle Bill’s weathered sofa. New furniture? Why, when this couch worked? They preferred kitchen-table gatherings anyway, swapping tales over forkfuls of coconut cream pie.

I knew FDR championed Social Security, but I didn’t realize that the Social Security Act was shaped by a report from the Committee on Economic Security which he established by Executive Order in 1934, and who, under the leadership of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a cabinet post, fulfilled their charge in less than a year. Compared to the arduous 19-year journey to pass major healthcare reform that began with President Bill Clinton, continued under President George W. Bush, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama, the speed with which the Social Security Act went from proposal to law boggles my mind.

What’s also remarkable is that when the Social Security Act emerged from legislative debates and negotiations, it didn’t squeak by on party lines. No. Its impressive margin included “yay” votes by the majority of Democrats and the majority of Republicans in both the House and Senate (SSA).

One of the compromises made to garner the necessary votes was leaving agricultural and domestic workers out of the program, an omission that disproportionately impacted Black Americans and other non-white workers. Although later amendments corrected this, in the interim it denied benefits to nearly half the workforce.

First dispersed as a lump sum, benefits shifted to lifetime monthly payments in 1940. My dad was born three years later. By the time he was eligible to receive benefits, the program covered agricultural and domestic workers, as well as spouses, survivors, and adults unable to work due to a disability, and had a built-in cost-of-living increase.

How lucky is it that my grandparents received Social Security—and that my parents, wife, and many friends and relatives do?

It’s disturbing to imagine what their elderhood would look like without it. Sixty-seven million Americans received payments under some component of Social Security's Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program last year (SSA). Many rely on these payments to make ends meet.

For my niece and nephew or their children to receive similar benefits, we’ll need to make changes to Social Security, but I don’t support privatization or agree with those who’d like to see it gone.

“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life,” FDR said at the signing, “but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age” (SSA).

I’m proud to live in a country where we care for each other and ourselves this way and have a government that facilitates this mutual caring. Yet as I reflect on the role this guaranteed progressive benefit program plays in my own planning, I recall the resentment in my grandfather’s voice when he’d criticize retirees he called “double dippers.”

Because Social Security is funded by workers’ and employers’ contributions, Pop didn’t attach the same stigma to it that he associated with public assistance. It struck him as unfair, however, if someone drew a pension from their former employer and Social Security. Mind you, he seemed to overlook the fact that his wife, who received a pension from her years as a high school cafeteria manager and a Social Security check, fell into this category.

If I live long enough to draw both a pension and Social Security, I’ll be a double dipper too.

As he did for my grandmother, Pop likely would have accepted this. But was it jealousy he felt toward double dippers, or a judgment that they were getting too much, more than their fair share? Did his feelings about this stem from his experiences during the Great Depression? I wish I’d asked. Whatever it was, I’m keenly aware of the potential to receive both. Pop’s remembered scrutiny heightens my sense of responsibility.

Along with other aims for Social Security in 1935, some predicted that, over time, it would reduce the unemployment rate by allowing older workers to retire, thus making more jobs available for younger workers. The longer I stay in my job, the longer younger librarians must wait to apply for it and the longer our school’s budget must fund the salary of a veteran educator instead of one with less experience. To what extent does reaching full Social Security eligibility create a responsibility to retire if you’re financially able to do so?

For many of us, that financial ability rests, in part, on qualifying for Medicare. Signed into law on July 30, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson, another generation of Americans had died before this coverage joined Social Security to strengthen our nation’s old-age safety net.

Before its creation, retirees not covered by their former employer’s insurance and unable to afford private coverage, often due to preexisting conditions, were on their own. If they fell and broke a hip, or needed heart surgery or chemotherapy, some drained their savings or lost their home. Some turned to family or friends. Others didn’t seek care at all or declined treatments because they couldn’t afford them.

Medicare reduced negative outcomes for those 65 and older. But until the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect, younger Americans with pre-existing conditions faced similar challenges.

How many lives were cut short because people couldn’t access affordable healthcare? One of the poems for your pocket this week, “Pre-Existing Conditions,” provides a glimpse into one family’s loss that occurred between the ACA’s signing in 2010 and when coverage began in 2014.

Now Americans under 65, including those with pre-existing conditions, can access plans in the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) healthcare marketplace. My colleagues who’ve retired before 65 and couldn’t hop onto a spouse’s plan have found that coverage through the ACA is more affordable than staying on our school’s plan. However, it’s still a significant expense, so many pick up a part-time job to pay their healthcare premiums. I’ll need to do that too if I retire before 65.

Social Security benefits enabled some people to retire. Medicare’s passage made it possible for more to do so. I was born not long after we’d stretched both safety nets across the chasm of elder years fraught with economic hardship. Now this combination allows many to retire from both full and part-time work in their mid-to-late sixties, freeing up those jobs for other workers and likely contributing to better employment rates than we’d have otherwise.

Yet Medicare isn’t a cure-all for seniors’ healthcare woes. There are folks whose prescriptions or treatments fall into coverage gaps, particularly if they can’t afford a supplemental insurance plan. Despite its imperfections, I’m grateful for Medicare.

How can we keep these safety nets intact as our life expectancy increases and the ratio of active workers to retired workers shifts?

I’ve heard proposals to privatize Social Security and suggestions about raising the Social Security age, the Social Security tax, or both. But here’s a detail I’d missed. I bet Pop didn’t know it either. He would’ve been pissed.

If a person’s wages exceed the taxable maximum ($168,600 in 2024), no Social Security tax is collected on any income over that (SSA). There’s no such limit on the Medicare tax. Each year, about six percent of workers hit the taxation ceiling for Social Security (SSA). For some, this only happens in their last few wage-earning years. After they reach their taxable limit, their paychecks in the remaining weeks or months of those years are larger because they’re free of this tax.

People whose income far exceeds $168,600 stop paying Social Security taxes on their wages as early as January. Ninety-four percent of Americans pay them all year long. Workers with higher wages also often have more investments than those with lower incomes, and earnings on those investments are already excluded from Social Security taxation. I wonder what Pop would have called these folks. As we grapple with how to secure our old-age safety nets for future generations, I hope that changes to the Social Security taxation cap will be considered.

There are also millionaires who’ve paid Social Security tax on their wages for enough years to qualify for benefits. Payments totaling over 1.4 billion dollars were made to 47,535 millionaires in 2010. In that same year, the median annual income for Social Security recipients 65 and older was $26,000 (Face the Facts USA). Pop would have had a name for these millionaires too.

There’s been debate about changing this. In the meantime, perhaps we could add a section to the enrollment form that invites people to help preserve Social Security by opting out of receiving benefits if they don’t need them. How many Americans might say yes if someone asked?

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This post marks the three-month anniversary of Furrow and Fire. Thank you for helping me reach my goal of 50+ subscribers by this milestone! From this point forward, I’ll slow the frequency of my posts to every other Thursday, so you’ll receive the next one on the evening of Thursday, May 2nd. This pace will be more sustainable while I continue working full-time and maintaining my other commitments.

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Here are two poems for your pocket this week: “Pre-Existing Conditions” by Debra Marquart (published in 2012 between the ACA’s passage and when related healthcare coverage went into effect) and “How You Know” by Joe Mills. If you didn’t participate in Poem in Your Pocket Day today, pick your own day between now and April 30 to carry a favorite poem close to you. Happy National Poetry Month!

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