Seniors need and deserve a senator who will protect and defend Social Security, not try to privatize it. Senator Grassley has long supported privatizing Social Security. He wants to make seniors dependent on the private financial sector for those benefits. If he had been successful in pushing through his radical plans to risk Social Security on the stock market, imagine the devastating impact on millions of seniors when the economy came crashing down. The collapse of the stock market would have been magnified by the loss of benefits of our entire senior population.
Our senior citizens should be able to retire with dignity. We must ensure that our seniors have a Social Security system they can rely on to provide a safety-net throughout their retirement and that there is quality, affordable health care provided through Medicare. In order to strengthen the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, elected officials must work together to prohibit the use of Social Security and Medicare trust funds to pay other government bills. We must assure future generations will not look to those trust funds and find a series of promissory notes written by politicians.
Iowa health care providers deliver high quality care to our seniors, but existing Medicare policy punishes them with unfair reimbursement rates. For decades, that has meant that Iowa's physicians and hospitals have had one of the lowest reimbursement rates in the nation. Senator Grassley has done nothing to correct this unfair situation in the 30 years he has been in the United States Senate, including during his tenure as Chair of the Committee responsible for this issue. We should reward quality of care, not quantity. Iowa doctors should not suffer because they consistently do the right thing for their patients. I will fight to fix this chronic inequality.
In addition, we must increase accessibility to retirement accounts for American workers. Currently, only half of American employees have access to retirement accounts, such as 401ks. The other half must create their own accounts without generous benefits such as employer matching. The door to private financial markets should be open to all, but too frequently the privileged few are the only ones given the keys. We must simplify the enrollment process and remove barriers that prevent low-income earners from establishing an account -- and provide incentives for middle-class families to save responsibly for retirement.
