In honor of Senator Ted Kennedy, open up MEDICARE TO THOSE 55 AND ABOVE -- ?

I appreciate that one might argue that over several decades access to Medicare should be lowered until it reaches age 1 day. Insurance companies might even be glad to "dump" patients onto a public plan at just about the age where health-care costs begin to escalate.

However, this approach is almost always accompanied by suggestions, such as Tom Hartman's on Monday, wherein he suggested that 55+ year olds should just fold up their tents and retire so that younger workers could have jobs.

Ten years ago Bill Clinton was telling baby-boomers that they must work until 72 so that half of them would die before getting social security (thus eliminating half the draw down on SS funds by baby-boomers).

As a nation we not only hate getting old, yet we seek to disavow all obligations to the elderly.

In a nation where Medicare and Social Security are provided grudgingly by the under 40's I can't see how it will ever be offered to the "graying but not yet white-haired."

too often adopted by those who don't challenge and question propaganda --

I haven't actually heard what Hartmann said, but the idea of Social Security and
retirement at 65 was in some part intended to make room for the younger generation
while providing a way for those 65 and older to "retire."

And we certainly do have quite aged people out there right now continuing to work
even past their 70's which has obviously provided a large and cheap labor pool for
employers!

Where has compassion and humane interest gone -- for too long it has been unmentioned,
or many even unmentionable? The right wing has spread meanness in every corner of
American life and thought!

They might be recorded in some online resource.