On this week’s episode of Capitol Gains, anchor Madison Mills, Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul, and Senior Columnist Rick Newman talk with Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Kerry Hannon about the future of the Social Security and whether or not the program could change or go away under the Trump administration. Hannon also breaks down the importance of Medicare and how the privatization of it could have costly impacts on Americans.
To hear more of Hannon’s thoughts, listen to the full episode of Capitol Gains here.
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This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff
I just want to start on social security. Is it over?
Great question, Matty. It is you know what, like yourself, my mailbox has been flooded with questions about social security. Should I start claiming right now? I mean, is it okay to still wait until I'm age 70, which we always tell people to do if they can. And frankly, I mean, I don't know. That would be the best answer because things are in such flux, but if you look at the chaos going on at Social Security Administration right now, you got to say something's gonna fall through the cracks here. And so I'm concerned about it. I think that's the overall feeling. It's hard to shake this at the foundations completely make it fall down, but I do think we're gonna see some changes. I will say one thing that just happened this week that's making me crazy is they're taking away the option for people to call into social security to make changes or to start their their benefit process. And for people who live in the country and rural areas or or don't have a computer or smartphone and they don't have internet service, this is a huge problem because couple that with them closing like 76 field offices around the country. And this is a real burden for people who, you know, will not be have access and have to drive miles and miles and hours to get to a Social Security office if you can get an appointment, and it takes about a month. And if we even go to the phone service right now, I have a friend yesterday, he was on for two hours on the call. So if you think about this, I think getting access to your Social Security account is gonna be quite tricky for people, uh, moving forward, particularly seniors in rural areas.
Hey Carrie, you follow a lot more than Social Security. There's also, of course, Medicare, the health program for retirees, and then Medicaid, the health program for lower income Americans, including and disabled people. Um, that's a huge bucket. So for people who are concerned, um, like how would you prioritize among those three programs the things to be watching for?
Well, number one, um, Medicare, we're gonna see an increased push to privatize Medicare to move, well, you know, push further into Medicare Advantage, which has already taken over the lion's share of where people enroll. So
I just interrupt here. Just briefly explain what that is, and would that necessarily be bad?
privatizing Medicare to have more private Medicare Advantage. Here's the thing, on many levels it seems glossy and fun, right? You get vision, you get all these different things and bells and whistles, vision care, dental care that traditional Medicare doesn't offer you, and it's cost effective from the beginning. But what happens is you have to go to doctors within their network. So if you have a doctor you've been going to for 20 years or you need a specialist for something that's out of network, this becomes quite problematic for people. And there can be delays and getting approvals. And so not being able to get access to the specialists you need as you age and so forth becomes something that can be quite costly for people ultimately, and when they have to step out of network in order to get the care they need. So we've seen some big problems with the Medicare Advantage arena in the last year or two. Um, lots of attention has been paid for to this, and we see some providers stepping out of Medicare Advantage this year. So I think there's it's tricky to privatize this because right now, people have an option to get out of Medicare Advantage and move back to traditional Medicare, but that's not an easy thing to do either. So I do think what concerns me is the level of healthcare that Medicare, traditional Medicare is, in my opinion, one of the best things going. And so Medicare Advantage, it seems there's lots of flashy ads on television and lots of insurers make a lot of money off of it, but I don't think for individuals, it's necessarily the best.
