Medicare & Social Security Changes Anathema to Elderly Voters

The NY Times has an article on the effect of Republican efforts to change Social Security and Medicare on support for Republicans by the elderly. Overwhelmingly, the changes are detrimental to elderly support for Republcians:

Surveys show that older voters remain skeptical; a new nationwide poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health research group, found that retirees were almost twice as likely to say they viewed the benefit unfavorably (45 percent) as favorably (23 percent). Last month's New York Times/CBS News Poll found that most did not expect the law to lower drug costs over the next few years.

This is what Democrats are focusing on, and with good reason. The programs proposed do nothing to help with the future solvency of Social Security or providing affordable drugs for seniors. The former benefits financial firms and create an unfunded liability for the Social Security program and the latter helps pharmaceutical companies without providing the government the ability to negotiate over drug prices.