Disability and OASDI "out there"

John K. Taber jktaber at tacni.net
Thu Jun 21 07:35:11 PDT 2001


"Max Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net> wrote:

<< The brunt of the privatization campaign will be on retirement. I suspect they will leave disability and survivors alone for the time being. The carve-out proposed by Bush and others typically is small enough to leave the full 'SDI' of OASDI alone. Naturally, once they break the back of the program with retirement, they will go after 'SDI'.

My impression is that the disability component is the best, in the sense of most economical, part of Soc Sec., compared to the cost of private insurance. It would be worth it for someone (hint) to do a little comparison shopping and do a piece explaining the relative cost of buying disability insurance privately and individually vs. thru Soc Sec., even for healthy people. Naturally, the cost of DI for older, less healthy people is probably prohibitive, and for the disabled it's probably astronomical.
>>

I dunno, Max. At your level I'm sure you got it right, but on Usenet I detect a tendency to sacrifice the disabled just so long as us retirees get ours. The feeling is, that little extra "diverted" from SS taxes to the disabled Trust Fund, would solve the retiree's so-called shortfall if only it were kept where it "belonged."

I hate to put things crudely, but that's Usenet.

I feel that we should emphasize solidarity to help defeat any attempt to divide us along lines of selfishness.

-- John K. Taber



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