The Average Social Security Check is $1000 a Month…..

[McCamy Taylor]

Out of which, the elderly and disabled must pay their rent, utilities and buy food and gas. For the people who are laid off in their fifties and early sixties by companies that want younger, less expensive (and often non-American) workers, that Social Security check is all they have to live upon. Forget the story about the married couple who will be flush with cash----and who will qualify for Medicaid---when they early retire at 62. In order to qualify for more than $60,000/year in Social Security, they had to be high wage earners for years. That means, they probably have savings, a retirement account, maybe even insurance from their jobs. That couple will do fine no matter what happens to Social Security.

This is for the 58 year old disabled woman who finally started getting her $950 a month check, after filling for Social Security, being denied and then appealing twice. Going from no income to $950 a month income has made all the difference in the world—though it does not even begin to touch the mountains of debt which she accumulated after her stroke cost her a job and home. Medicare will make even more of a difference, when it finally kicks in (you have to be disabled for two years to qualify, unless you are on dialysis.) Unless the GOP has its way, and her insurance is “privatized.” Cigna will not touch this woman and her $20,000/year medical bills with a thousand foot pole. Not for less that $1000/month in premiums---and she only makes $950.

According to the GOP, this woman is not just lucky. She is living high off the hog, gorging herself at the federal government trough, draining our coffers. She is a parasite. She is the New Welfare Queen. She is American royalty---

Because she can now afford to eat beans seven nights a week instead of not eating at all.

This is the woman who sewed your blue jeans. This is the woman who assembled your telephone. This is the woman who cleaned your motel room. She worked hard all her life, raised two kids, paid her taxes, voted in presidential elections, accepted a wage that was half of what a man with her high school diploma would make. This is your mother. Your grandmother. Don't you think she is worth $1000/a month and health insurance she can afford to use?