Social Security

Security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you. It's your phone number. Using relatively simple techniques, this duo can use your cellphone number to figure out your name, where you live and work, where you travel and when you sleep. They could even listen to your voice messages and personal phone calls — if they wanted to. "It's really interesting to watch a phone number turn into a person's life," DePetrillo said.

WASHINGTON - The federal government projected Friday that Medicare's main trust fund would not run in the red until 2026, two years later than projected last year, in part because of slower growth in healthcare costs. Prospects for the Social Security retirement program, meanwhile, remain largely unchanged from last year. The program's main trust fund, which provides assistance to about 46 million retirees and their relatives, will be unable to pay full benefits starting in 2035, according to an annual report from the board of trustees that oversees the nation's major entitlement programs.

I'm an 84-year-old man on Social Security with original Medicare and Mutual of Omaha gap insurance. My insurance premium was raised from $262 to $363 a month, a 39% jump. After all my monthly expenses, I have just $240 left. What can I do in the event of another increase in my premiums? If you've had your current Medicare supplement plan for years, it's not surprising that you've seen your costs steadily rise, says Steve Zaleznick, senior Medicare advisor at PlanPrescriber, a Maynard, Mass.-based online provider of Medicare education and plan comparison tools.

Re "Cable TV, the right way," Opinion, May 23 Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says he's a certifiable sports nut and could never go without ESPN, so he wants to make it less expensive. In fact, he's willing to go up against "well-paid lobbyists" and seems to favor more regulation of the cable TV industry to keep the American people from being "ripped off. " Frankly, I find all this a bit self-serving, but then I've noticed that the problems with the best chance of being addressed are those that directly affect members of Congress.

Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady on Thursday rejected a proposal to reduce Medicare catastrophic health insurance premiums that congressional analysts expect will generate a bigger surplus than is needed. Brady, in a letter to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), said the insurance program "is literally in its first few months of life" and the Bush Administration wants to be sure it is not left with insufficient reserves. The new insurance program, approved by Congress last year, provides extended coverage for the costs of hospital and medical care and drug benefits.

Everybody loves lists. Most of those you see in the papers or online tend toward the inconsequential (The Six Best "Fast & Furious" Movies). So here's a list with a bit more gravitas: The five biggest lies you're being told about entitlement programs. Never mind that the very word "entitlement" is a lie. Social Security and Medicare got that name because workers became "entitled" to those benefits by paying into the system. In recent years, however, the term has become distorted to signify benefits people are entitled to without earning them.

President Obama won't release his proposed budget for 2014 until Wednesday, but liberals and AARP have been howling all week about something they expect to be in it. What has our president done to provoke such outrage among his supporters? He's chained CPI. In an attempt to meet Republicans halfway in the battle over taxes and spending, Obama has offered to change the formula for calculating Social Security's annual cost-of-living increase - an "entitlement reform" GOP leaders have long asked for. The result would not change current Social Security benefits, but it would reduce future raises by an estimated three-tenths of 1% in the first year, or about $42 for the average beneficiary.

The conventional wisdom has long held that Social Security is the "third rail" of politics, so popular that criticizing it amounts to committing political suicide. Evidently no one bothered to warn Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who repeated his critique that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" shortly after entering the race for the Republican presidential nomination. His hyperbolic denunciation, which has resonated with segments of the GOP and the "tea party" movement, reflects some of the real problems in the 76-year-old program.

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

Re "Fix Social Security, now," Editorial, April 25 It's hard to take this editorial seriously because it fails to talk about the Social Security payroll tax holiday enacted in 2010. If you want to fix Social Security, the first thing you need to look at is rolling back this tax break. With every extension of the payroll tax holiday, the prospect that Congress will ever restore the tax to its statutory 6.2% of covered income becomes increasingly remote. In case you haven't figured it out yet, this is the tax that funds Social Security, so it should be no surprise that Social Security will run into trouble if we don't pay it in full.

Dear Liz: When I was 62, I started Social Security and I'm currently saving half of my monthly benefit after taxes (about $750). My decision to take my benefits early was influenced by a financial columnist who suggested that if I started at 62 and invested half or more of it until I reached full retirement age, the lower early benefits would be matched by the investment returns by the time I'm 85. Is this advice still reasonable? Answer: In today's investing environment, it's hard to match the guaranteed annual return you get from delaying Social Security benefits.

WASHINGTON -- The bipartisan Senate immigration proposal would provide a boost to the Social Security fund, its chief actuary said Wednesday, as more immigrants come out of the underground economy and begin paying taxes. The assessment of the bill's impact on Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance is another entry in a growing body of economic data amassing on both sides of the immigration reform debate. “Overall, we anticipate that the net effect of this bill on the long-range OASDI actuarial balance will be positive,”  Stephen C. Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, wrote in a letter to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)

The retirement plans of more and more Americans are about as connected to reality as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Grim is exactly what it is going to be for these folks when, in their 70s, their 401(k)s have petered out, they have no pensions and no income except what they get from the tottering Social Security system. Financial experts drone on about how today's younger couples need to be tucking away an ample share of their paychecks into 401(k) plans in order to avert a destitute old age. It's easy for them to scold.

In his Wednesday column, Steve Lopez said it's time for public employee unions to make concessions. Lopez said he believes strongly in unions but the times require compromise: For more than half of my 38 years in the news business, I've been a member of a union, though I'm not currently. And my late father was a proud Teamster for decades. So I appreciate the goods that unions deliver to nearly 15 million members in the United States: living wages and good benefits.

Washington's tug of war over the federal budget has many wonders, but the biggest one of all must be the lengths to which politicians and pundits will go to deprive Granny and Grandpa of $30 a month. That's the amount by which benefits for the average Social Security retiree would be reduced by 2023 under a provision in President Obama's new budget. It might not sound like much to the president or fans of the proposal in both parties and the Washington commentariat. For the retiree trying to stretch an average monthly check of about $1,200 to cover housing, healthcare and every other necessity under the sun, it looms rather larger.

Re "Obama's entitlement gambit," Opinion, April 10 The current calculation used to determine adjustments to Social Security benefits is based on the cost of living for an urban worker, not a senior. Therefore, it doesn't account for the greater percentage of income the average senior spends on healthcare. Because the cost of healthcare rises faster than other necessities, even the current formula does not adequately protect seniors from inflation. Switching to the "chained CPI" to determine payouts, as President Obama proposed to do in his 2014 budget, would only make a bad situation worse.

For a 77-year-old, Social Security is looking pretty spry today, the anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's signing of the Social Security Act in 1935. The program covers more than 54 million Americans, providing a dignified retirement and keeping the families of premature deceased workers out of poverty.  Among those who should be celebrating: Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisc., the newly-anointed GOP candidate for vice-president. As has been widely reported , Ryan's father died in 1986, when the future congressman was 16. The younger Ryan collected Social Security survivor benefits, which he put away for college, until the age of 18. Yet he returned the favor by proposing one of the most draconian plans to privatize Social Security in 2005.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's proposal to trim Social Security's cost-of-living adjustments has sparked not only Democratic outrage, but Republican confusion. In the days since Obama put the idea in his 2014 budget, Republicans' reactions have included support, opposition and refusal to commit. The proposal was once a mainstay of the GOP's deficit-reduction overtures to the White House. House Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that the idea, the so-called chained Consumer Price Index, “is the least we must do to begin to solve the problems in Social Security.” DOCUMENT: President Obama's 2014 budget But the chairman of the House Republican Congressional Committee, who is trying to preserve the party's majority in the House in the next election, called it a “shocking attack on seniors.” “You're trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors and I just think it's not the right way to go,” Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon told CNN.   That potentially off-message comment provoked swift rebuke from the powerful Club for Growth, the conservative advocacy group that supports the measure as a starting point for reining in spending on government entitlement programs.

President Obama won't release his proposed budget for 2014 until Wednesday, but liberals and AARP have been howling all week about something they expect to be in it. What has our president done to provoke such outrage among his supporters? He's chained CPI. In an attempt to meet Republicans halfway in the battle over taxes and spending, Obama has offered to change the formula for calculating Social Security's annual cost-of-living increase - an "entitlement reform" GOP leaders have long asked for. The result would not change current Social Security benefits, but it would reduce future raises by an estimated three-tenths of 1% in the first year, or about $42 for the average beneficiary.