Mainstream media outlets across the country have reported a boom in retiree bankruptcies, causing fear and concern for senior citizens.  Read below to see how skewed this conclusion is. Tired of media bias and plain error? Download our free, just published Prayer Guide: Praying for the Media and the Truth.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jer 29:11)

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… [T]here’s no boom in retiree bankruptcies, nor are there vanishing pensions, soaring medical expenses or inadequate savings. And the fact that the Times generated a long-form story from a single source without referencing a single doubter, and that even major papers like the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times followed suit, is more evidence to my claim that the media’s treatment of retirement savings issues leaves a lot to be desired.

Let’s start with the study, produced by three law professors and a sociologist, all very much on a mission. I can’t really do it justice, it’s something you need to read for yourself. But you get where the authors are coming from when they state as background – with a footnote, mind you – that:

National concern for the well-being of older Americans soon declined, beginning in the early-1980s, especially as the cost of funding their social safety net strained state and federal budgets. This financial tension and emerging ideological shifts promoted an intergenerational war. Conservatives, free market advocates, and media promoted the image of older Americans as “a threat to economic viability,” as thieves of our children’s futures, and as “responsible for the nation’s economic problems.”

If there was an intergenerational war then retirees won it, since entitlement spending on the elderly has skyrocketed since the early 1980s, but a lot of what the authors state is simply too ideologically-loaded to bother responding to….

The study uses its own survey data, which I’ll accept as valid despite small over-65 sample sizes and changing methodology over time. The reason I can overlook these issues is that the study itself finds that the over-65 bankruptcy rate hasn’t changed since 2001….

Reasons that don’t strike me as particularly compelling include those cited by the Times — “vanishing pensions, soaring medical expenses, inadequate savings.” Pensions weren’t ever very common to begin with and Census Bureau research has found that from 1989 to 2003 – roughly the period in which retiree bankruptcies rose – the percentage of new retirees receiving private retirement plan benefits rose from 32% to 44% and average benefits contingent upon receipt rose by 64% above inflation.

The same goes for healthcare costs. The chart below shows out-of-pocket health spending as a percentage of household incomes from 1984 through 2016. See a trend? Me, neither. Moreover, as the Times itself recently reported, the widespread claim that health costs are a major cause of bankruptcies has turned out to be not exactly true.

Health outlays as percentage of household incomes. Source: Andrew Biggs.

As for “inadequate savings,” well the net worth of the median retiree household in 2001 was 61% higher in real terms than in 1989, according to the Survey of Consumer Finances. The simple fact that retirees file for bankruptcy at far lower rates than working-age households should be a hint that things aren’t so bad.

But here’s another hint: declining savings and rising health care costs were the main drivers of rising retiree bankruptcies, wouldn’t we expect that within the retiree population we’d see higher bankruptcy rates among older retirees, whose savings have been drawn down and whose health costs have risen? We sure would, but the data don’t cooperate: bankruptcies fall as near-retirees shift into retirement and fall further as retirees age. In fact, a 2007 study whose authors include now-Senator Elizabeth Warren found that bankruptcy rates among Americans over age 85 were so low as to be “negligible.” (Excerpt from Andrew G. Biggs article on AEI.org)

PRO-LIFE GROUPS DEMAND END TO FEDERAL FUNDING FOR RESEARCH USING ABORTED BABY PARTS

Pray that NO MORE federal funding would go to support abortion in any way EVER. Ask the Lord to give us creative ways of doing research, not using aborted baby parts but by using  alternative methods.

Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. (Ps 139:16)

Reacting to Tuesday’s CNSNews.com report that the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has contracted to obtain “fresh” human fetal tissue to transplant into “humanized mice,” pro-life organizations are demanding that the U.S. government terminate funding of research that uses tissue taken from aborted babies.

In fiscal 2018, the NIH—which is a separate entity from the FDA but also a part of the Department of Health and Human Services–estimates it will spend $103 million on human fetal tissue research. In fiscal 2017, it spent $98 million.

In their statements, pro-life organizations called, not just for the termination of this contract, but also for laws prohibiting all such use of taxpayer funds. In July, the House Appropriations Committee approved a bill to fund the Department of Health and Human Services that includes language that would prohibit funding for research that uses tissue taken from babies who were aborted.

Family Research Council Senior Fellow for Legal Studies Cathy Ruse:

“It is difficult to imagine anything more shocking or upsetting than the U.S. government soliciting bids from traffickers in the remains of infant victims of abortion. Every part of this transaction is a tragedy. A woman is driven to abort her baby, too often by coercion or abandonment, and there in the shadows is a government contractor waiting to tear apart the baby’s body to deliver pieces in exchange for payment….

Students for Life of America:

“Reacting to the news that the FDA is acquiring the tissue from aborted babies to put into mice in order to experiment on them, Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins stated, ‘Students for Life condemns the wanton disregard for human life that the FDA is displaying. The FDA was established to protect Americans not exploit them. This is just another reason why Planned Parenthood and all organizations engaged in the exploitation of aborted children for profit must be investigated and charged with trafficking crimes. Until organizations like Planned Parenthood and their business partners are held to account for their crimes exposed with the Center for Medical Progress investigations, we can expect others to continue to act in this inhumane fashion.’…

March for Life Action President Tom McClusky:

“After an undercover investigation and Congressional investigation exposed the horrors of an industry that harvests and sells baby body parts, there is no excuse for anyone, much less the taxpayer funded federal government to enter into contracts that prop up this gruesome practice. Such contracts should be immediately terminated and the baby body parts trafficking industry shut down.”

Center for Medical Progress:

“By contracting to pay top-dollar in taxpayer money for baby body parts from @pppswaction business partners ABR, @US_FDA is sending the message these kids are worth more dead than alive.”

“It is unconscionable that the United States government is still paying top-dollar in taxpayer money for the freshest, most high-quality dismembered baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains. By custom-ordering late-term aborted baby body parts for sale from Planned Parenthood partners like ABR, the FDA is directly complicit in these abortions and implies that these kids are worth more to the U.S. Government dead than alive….

Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser:

“The use of aborted babies’ body parts for gratuitous, unethical experiments is simply horrifying. Investigations by brave citizen journalists and our allies in Congress have exposed the brutal reality that “fresh tissue” is obtained by torturing unborn children to death in late-term abortions.

Charlotte Lozier Institute Vice President and Research Director Dr. David Prentice:

“It is outrageous that the FDA would aid in the trafficking of aborted baby parts and fetal tissue. This not only fosters government-sponsored participation in unethical research but continues use of outdated scientific methods. Humanized mice can and have been made, for years, using ethical cell sources, including umbilical cord blood and peripheral blood stem cells. High-quality, modern scientific research has no need for unethical, tainted practices and grisly sources. Our government should lead in ethics and in science, and should rescind any contracts for or use of aborted fetal tissue.” … (Excerpts from Craig Bannister article on CNS News)