The Importance of Entitlement Reform Programs

Entitlement Reforms
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According to the CITATION Con12 \l 1033 (Congressional Budget Office, 2012), entitlement refers to ‘a legal obligation of the federal government to make payments to a person, group of people, business, unit of government, or similar entity that meets the eligibility criteria set in law and for which the budget authority is not provided in advance in an appropriation act. Spending for entitlement programs is controlled through those programs’ eligibility criteria and benefit or payment rules. The best-known entitlements are the government’s major benefit programs, such as social security and Medicare.’ entitlement and entitlement programs are used synonymously in this essay. Reforming refers to ameliorating existing legislation in the interest of political, economic, social or cultural issues. Entitlement reforms thus broadly refers to efforts by the political class in various levels of the legislature to amend the statutory obligations that define and protect existing entitlement programs. In most cases, the entitlement program reforms are efforts by either individuals or political parties to restructure the provisions of the existing acts that protect these entitlement programs mainly to cut government spending. Entitlement reforms are mainly perceived as a veiled attack on these programs to cripple them and or propagate the interest of an individual or a party for various factors including political mileage.
Entitlement reforms are important because they affect the lives of millions of Americans directly and indirectly. For example, Medicaid, it is the nation’s largest healthcare program providing free health insurance to 74 million low-income and disabled people as of 2017 according to CITATION Sta19 \l 1033 (Statista.com, 2019). This accounts for about 23% of the American population and it has been federally funded since 1965. Medicare is also another entitlement program which provides universal healthcare coverage to the elderly and many young people with disabilities. Elderly under these entitlement programs are the senior citizens aged 65 years and over. Medicare has an enrolment of about 59 million people. Social security is a universal program that gives the elderly money they need to live when they stop working. Currently, 61 million Americans are under this program and it has helped reduce the elderly poverty rate. Under the program, only 9% of the elderly are poor compared to the 40% who would probably be poor CITATION Kat18 \l 1033 (Roming, 2018). Therefore, the people who are covered under these programs number in the tens of millions and any legislation that could affect their lives has a significant ripple effect to the economic and social functioning of the whole country. If the entitlement reforms lead to cuts in these programs, then it could lead more people to poverty for not able to meet their medical and or living costs. If the elderly are not well catered for by the government through these programs, they will burden their families for caring for them and that will reduce their saving capacity for increased expenses. These are some of the ways the entitlement programs are affective any reform to any of them would affects...