An uncomfortable conversation we need to have: Is the U.S. spending too much money on the elderly?

Otherwise rational liberals have a blind spot when it comes to Medicare and Social Security, says Josh Zepps

Published July 29, 2016 3:40PM (EDT)

Medicare and Social Security are the bedrock programs of American liberalism, so why do so many liberals consider it taboo to even suggest adjusting these systems to ensure their sustainability for future generations?

We The People Live host Josh Zepps tackles this question of progressive orthodoxy in this original Salon video filmed at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Zepps says America's resource allocation is in need of a serious reexamination: "Medicare costs more than $500 billion per annum, 30 percent of which is spent on the five percent of beneficiaries who die each year. One third of that is spent on the final month of life. The final month. I mean, you want to talk about priorities, let's just take that one datum. More than $50 million each year spent on the final month of life."

"The left needs to reckon with the uncomfortable truth that what this country is doing is sapping the vitality of the young and pumping it into the elderly," he says. "It is a gigantic resources Hoover from young professionals into old retirees."

Zepps also has a message for those who would change the topic by pointing to other items in the federal budget that could use cutting: "This isn't a conversation about why other people are wrong. We do enough of that. This is a conversation about how we can improve ourselves, by admitting things we tend to refuse to admit."

Watch the full clip above.


By Michael Garofalo

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