La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz for March 20, 2025

Elon Musk is not coming directly for the Social Security and Medicare benefits workers have earned (based on earnings from which we have contributed over a lifetime of our careers) and to which we are entitled (hence the original meaning of the word “entitlements” — something to which we are ENTITLED because we earned them and they are ours before reality-reversed conservatives tried to twist it into meaning some kind of handout, you know, like corporate welfare or bazillionaires getting away with paying little or no taxes). They’re coming for it, but just not outright. Just not directly.

Medicaid? SSI? They might go after those directly, but not Social Security and Medicare themselves.

What they will do is make the earned benefits harder to actually claim.

Cut back phone access. Slash the number of workers answering those phones.

Require more in-office visits for any elderly or disabled people in order to begin claims, change direct deposit information or other transactions if they are not computer savvy, and then close many of the number of offices especially in remote areas that are most difficult to access.

And then have the nerve to say it is in the name of “efficiency” when the Social Security Administration total overhead rate is 1%, less than any other government agency or even anything in the private sector, especially compared with for-profit insurance companies that run overhead rates averaging 16%.