Medicare is federally based health insurance for people 65 and older or under 65 with specific disabilities.

Medicare is federally based health insurance for people 65 and older or under 65 with specific disabilities. Medicaid is federally-based health insurance for people in lower-income areas who cannot afford private health insurance. Medicaid assists people with limited income and resources in having access to healthcare. (D.C.D., 2022). A significant gap in Medicare is that it does not cover routine dental, vision, and hearing services. This means that people with Medicare may need to pay into secondary insurance to cover those costs. Especially for people over 65, vision and hearing change as we age, and that part of the population arguably needs the most hearing and vision coverage so they can still participate in daily life. Medicaid has a large gap that does not cover disposable items such as bandaids and adult diapers. For lower-income families and patients with disabilities, these items can be very costly. For a disabled person, families spend around $1,800 a year to buy diapers (Howe, 2018). While this may seem like a small price to pay, these families are on this insurance due to low income and have many other costly items such as physical therapy, speech therapy, and care to still pay for. 

Social Security is a source of income after retirement or after an injury stopping you from working. In its original plan, Social Security benefited U.S. citizens as they had money to rely on as they retired. Still, nowadays, more and more of the public depend on Social Security to pay their bills when they don’t work. While Social Security rose 28.9 million people from the poverty line in 2022, it was noted that around 35% of those people were solely supported financially by Social Security (Matsui & Anderson, 2023). While the Social Security benefits are helpful, they should be more widely supervised and don’t need to be drastically modified. However, allowing them to be watched would enable fewer people to use only social security as income. It would encourage more people to attempt other income sources, such as working from home or getting a part-time job.