Q: Why am I opposed to "Means-Testing" Medicare or Social Security?
A: These programs are universally available to Americans. Turn 65, and you are automatically eligible to enroll in Medicare. When you reach 66 (currently; it'll be 67 in the future, which is a problem in its own right) you are eligible for Social Security benefits, assuming you or your spouse has paid into the system for a short period at some point in your working life.
This is what "entitlement" means. You are entitled to it, just as you are entitled (I.e., you have the right) to vote (except in an increasing number of Republican-controlled districts), to move wherever you can afford without getting a permit from anyone (since the defeat of Southern Democrat-led restrictive covenants in housing, starting 50 years ago).
To "means-test" these entitlements is to say, in Step One, that the wealthy are no longer entitled to them, because they don't need them. In other words, they become something akin to Welfare, and you will have to prove that you are financially eligible --in other words, prove that you are "poor." Mind you, there is no requirement to enroll in either of these programs; the civic-minded wealthy need not accept them.
Step Two will be to "end Welfare as we know it." That Clinton-Gingrich initiative certainly cut spending on welfare; it also contributed to overall levels of poverty and, in times of economic depression such as we are now experiencing, to severe economic distress.
To turn Social Security and Medicare into welfare programs is simply the beginning of a process that will result in their loss of legitimacy and an acceleration of the ongoing process of constructing a two-tiered society in which the rich prosper, the poor fall into Third-World levels of subsistence, and the middle class disappears.
Hey, the poor have always been easier to control than those who have even a small amount of personal independence, and who know they have rights.
