Three times per week, Trudy E. Bell fights back against Parkinson's disease through University Hospitals' Rock Steady Boxing forced-movement exercise program in Avon.
LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- I am a 67-year-old widow who last year was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Both the House and Senate versions of Congress' Tax Cut-Cut-Cut overhaul terrify me: How will I have any kind of future economic or medical security?
First, the financial meltdown of 2008 to 2009 wiped out half my retirement savings, which have only recently recovered to their 2007 levels. As a result, it was clear that I would need to work until age 70 not only to maximize Social Security benefits, but also to make up for the economy's depriving me of the last anticipated doubling of my nest egg.
However, the tremor in my right hand (which first became noticeable in 2014) slowed and impaired my handwriting so much that I could no longer take fast notes at conferences or interviews, forcing my retirement as a research-science writer in 2016. I now get by on Social Security and IRA income totaling only two-thirds of my final salary.
There is no one to help me, either now or later. My husband, who might have been a future caregiver, collapsed of a massive heart attack in 2012. My daughter is groaning under student loan debt -- it breaks my mother's heart that I can no longer help relieve her inescapable burden.
Now, among other things, Congress proposes to slash nearly half a trillion dollars -- $473 billion -- from Medicare.
With every paycheck for 46 years, ever since I became self-supporting at age 21, I have diligently and faithfully paid into Medicare, glad to rest in the security of anticipation that Medicare would indeed care for me in my old age. Well, old age has arrived, and what now? Even though I now willingly pay monthly Part B premiums, Congress is chopping away at the oak's roots.
I feel directly, personally threatened: I fear Medicare will be hacked to pieces, leaving me to stumble adrift and friendless over its rubble, despite my own lifelong investment into it as my share.
Moreover, nothing is being done to rein in the upward-spiraling costs of prescription drugs -- crippling to people needing maintenance medications, including many with Parkinson's.
As a topper, the House tax plan proposes to eliminate the medical deduction, a financial lifeline for the seriously ill.
How is destroying Medicare and making health care unaffordable supposed to help the middle class? (Don't wave red-herring language of vouchers and "increased access" to choice; access and choice do not equal affordability or security.)
Moreover, the tax-cut plans propose to eliminate some deductions for state and local taxes. How would increasing taxes help me, my daughter, and other Ohio residents?
The House tax cut plan proposes to eliminate deductions for interest on student loans -- how is that supposed to help my daughter repay hers?
An earlier draft provision (which could be revived) proposed to slash the amount that my daughter could contribute to her 401(k) to a pitiful $2,400 a year. How is limiting her ability to save for retirement supposed to help her secure her own future?
And for all Americans and their children, how is vastly growing the national deficit supposed to serve the nation??
In the darkest of nights, I sit on my bed and sob in terror and despair for my future under the heavy sentence of inevitable growing disability.
All my life, I've done everything right: I've worked fulltime for 45-plus years. I've lived frugally. I've saved for retirement. I've never asked for a handout. I've done good for the world through education. For what? To watch the bottom drop out of my nest egg, the supports kicked out from under medical security, and -- with the proposed trillion-dollar cut to Medicaid -- the prospect of no potential safety net should I fall into destitution, which now feels almost guaranteed for me and millions like me?
Both of Congress's tax cut proposals are nothing less than Robin Hood in reverse: robbing from the middle class and poor to give to the rich. When is being a billionaire already not rich enough? Must they also come after my widow's mite and my daughter's future?
Trudy E. Bell is the author of a dozen books and more than 500 articles. To delay the progression of Parkinson's disease symptoms, she is participating in both a clinical trial of a compound called inosine and in a forced-movement exercise program called Rock Steady Boxing at University Hospitals Fitness in Avon.
To reach Trudy E. Bell: t.e.bell@ieee.org
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