Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry

[JDPriestly]

35. Cutting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare would mean the closing of many nursing homes

for seniors -- and disaster for the families of the helpless elderly with diseases like severe dementia and Alzheimers. It would take many middle aged people out of the workplace because they would have to stay home to take care of their aged parents.

This would be an utter disaster for the country causing misery you cannot imagine.

It would also affect some people who have to have hip surgery and need a fairly long convalescence and others with chronic diseases.

That would pretty much devastate the older generation.

Poorly educated American seniors, and especially older white women with low incomes have already LOST in terms of life expectancy in recent years.

"The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for-less-educated-whites-in-us-is-shrinking.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

Based on my experience with my peers and family, I believe that decline is due to the fact that Social Security increases have not kept up with the increases in costs of food, medication, fuel, electricity, water and all the other necessities that people who are poor and elderly pay for.

To cut the COLAs further will further decrease the life expectancy of seniors in America.

Why white female seniors? Just a theory, but it may be because fewer of them live with their extended family than do other seniors.