Letters: Should Social Security and Medicare Be Means-Tested?

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Re "Old and Rich? Less Help for You" (Op-Ed, Feb. 20):

Yuval Levin has it exactly backward; means-testing Social Security and Medicare is the worst possible plan.

Social Security is our most successful antipoverty program, more successful than any welfare grants. Medicare is our most successful medical care program, more successful than Medicaid. In each instance the program available without means-testing works better, without stigma and with general approval and political support. Means-testing turns applicants into potentially fraudulent beggars for charity.

The problems of Social Security can be fixed with a few tax and benefit tweaks. The problems of Medicare are serious, but they are the problems of our entire health care system and will need the same solutions.

Entitlements without means-testing unite us into one country. Means-testing divides us into rich and poor, each resenting the other. Our tax system is a much more effective mechanism to deal with disparities in wealth and income.

HASKEL LEVI
Oakland, Calif., Feb. 25, 2013

To the Editor:

Yuval Levin pinpoints the crux of Social Security's sustainability problem: the program is a safety net that ensnares everyone, including those who don't need it.

Providing Social Security payments only to those who actually need federal assistance would drastically shrink the program and its revenue requirements without affecting the program's societal purpose, to ensure that our elderly citizens' most basic needs are met when they can no longer work.

Mr. Levin's means-testing proposal is a legitimate vision for the future of the program. Providing a substantial one-time tax credit to the rich beneficiaries who choose to forgo their Social Security entitlements would be an appropriate first step toward that vision.

BRAD ROGERS
Boulder, Colo., Feb. 20, 2013

To the Editor:

Yuval Levin's proposal may sound reasonable, but it is horrific policy.

I am someone who earned a modest income through my career but who lived frugally and managed to accumulate a substantial sum of retirement money. My neighbor who earned a similar salary but who spent lavishly on vacations, luxury cars, furnishings, entertainment, clothing and so on and amassed a large level of debt may be entitled to full Social Security and Medicare benefits under "means testing."

I, on the other hand, would have to forgo such "entitlements."

Why would any reasonable person follow my example? He or she would rightly be considered a chump.

RON ALLEN
St. Louis, Feb. 20, 2013

To the Editor:

Re "Our Second Adolescence," by David Brooks (column, Feb. 26):

I am a working-class senior, but I reject means-testing Medicare and directing that savings to children and infrastructure. Medicare is an insurance program, not a welfare program.

If Mr. Brooks wants to finance children's programs and infrastructure, there are other ways to do it, like raising taxes on the wealthy, corporations and Wall Street; raising the capital gains tax; eliminating carried interest; eliminating subsidies to oil companies and agriculture; and cutting military spending.