HEALTHCARE - Backers of Privatizing Social Security Back Anti-Healthcare-Reform

"Group 'Warning' Elderly About Dangers Of Health Care Reform Tried To Privatize Social Security" by Greg Sargent, Who Runs GOV

Elderly people who are frightened by a conservative group’s ads warning them that health care reform could lead to their extermination at the hands of government bureaucrats might want to keep this in mind: The same group invested huge money in the push to privatize their Social Security.

The 60 Plus Association — which is running a national ad warning that health care reform would mean bureaucrats would decide whether old folks are “worth the cost” — has already gotten attention for some of its previous right wing advocacy.

But little to no attention has been paid to the group’s efforts to privatize Social Security, the effort which could arguably do the most to discredit it among the seniors that are the primary target of the group’s lurid health care scaremongering right now.

A Democrat points me to this piece from National Journal’s archives that show the 60 Plus Association spending big bucks on the Social Security privatization push as far back as 2001. The group’s president, Jim Martin, was one of an exclusive group of top level anti-Social Security right wingers that included Grover Norquist, and Martin that year bankrolled the privatization push to the tune of more than $1 million.

In 2005, when George W. Bush’s privatization push started to gather steam, the group hailed Bush and the Republican Party’s “leadership” on the issue, describing itself as a “strong proponent for personal retirement accounts.”

The talking point writes itself: Seniors, every time you hear ads “warning” you about the “dangers” of health care reform, supposedly for your own good, keep in mind that these ads were bankrolled by the same forces that spent huge money trying to protect you from your own Social Security.