UAW's Gettelfinger Says Bush Proposals to Privatize Social Security And Medicare Are 'Unsafe, Unsound, and Unacceptable'
DETROIT, Jan. 29 -- UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said today that proposals to privatize Social Security and Medicare made by President Bush during his State of the Union speech are "unsafe, unsound and unacceptable." "The stock market decline of recent years -- which has cost American families trillions of dollars worth of their personal savings -- should have proved once and for all that private savings accounts are no substitute for a universal, guaranteed social insurance program like Social Security," said Gettelfinger. "You can't outlive your Social Security check," said Gettelfinger. "You can't be swindled out of it by crooked corporate executives or biased financial analysts. It doesn't lose its value if the stock market has a bad year -- or a bad decade." "Social Security is a promise to our nation's retirees, a promise that has been kept every single year since the program was established in 1935," said Gettelfinger. "If Congress follows President Bush's lead and abandons this promise by allowing Social Security funds to be diverted into private accounts, it will drain tens of billions of dollars each year from the Social Security trust fund. We need to strengthen our Social Security system, not look for risky new ways to make it less stable and reliable." The president's proposed prescription drug program for senior citizens is similarly flawed, said Gettelfinger. "Bush's plan would force senior citizens into private HMOs -- requiring them to give up their choice of doctors -- as the price for receiving prescription drug coverage," said Gettelfinger. The use of private HMOs to provide Medicare coverage, said Gettelfinger, "is an idea that has already been tried -- and it has already failed." Private HMOs have dropped more than 2 million senior citizens from their plans since 1999, he noted, forcing them to scramble for new health care coverage. An additional 300,000 senior citizens will be dropped from HMO rolls this year. "Forty percent of Americans live in rural areas where no HMO is available at any price," said Gettelfinger. "Does the Bush administration think that people who live outside major cities don't need prescriptions?" Bush's proposals for private solutions to public problems, said Gettelfinger, "will lead us further towards a two-tier society, in which a privileged few enjoy decent retirement and health benefits, while others have to survive on meager pensions with substandard medical care." "That's not the American way," said Gettelfinger. "We need universal programs which meet the needs of all citizens."