Are You Entitled Or Merely Eligible?

If you are Medicare-eligible, you know that this is the time of the year when you can change your medical preferences and sign up for additional benefits. I am close but not quite there but have been seeing the ads run on television over and over.

Joe Namath was a great quarterback for the N.Y. Jets when they beat the much-favored Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl. He is on one of the commercials and he makes a statement that caught my attention. He says that, with the pandemic, participants need to sign up for all the benefits that they are entitled to.

Focus on the word “entitled.” In this case, it is absolutely appropriate because people on Social Security and Medicare are entitled to these benefits since they have paid into their system and should expect (be entitled) to everything that they are eligible for.

But, somehow along the way, people have started confusing the words entitlement and eligibility. For some reason, we have become an entitlement society and many think they are entitled to a whole host of benefits that just ain’t so. Far too many in this country think that just because they are born here that they are entitled to the government taking care of them — from cradle to grave.

All you have to do is to look at this last presidential election and listen to the Left pandering to every possible special interest group that there is out there — promising them everything under the sun for “free.” I guess there is one exception. They don’t pander to the hard-working taxpayers who are expected to pay for all the “free” stuff that liberals think they are entitled to just because they are alive.

I’m not sure I can list everything on the liberal “wish list” that they have promised to Americans and tells the average citizen that they are entitled to these benefits by doing nothing.

It’s kind of sad the number of people who buy into this “free” giveaway mentality that the Left has pushed just so they can win elections and be in power. I’m sure for some liberals it is about helping people but, for others, it is nothing more than control and power. Stick your head in the sand and believe otherwise but that doesn’t change the facts.

Take a college education for an example. Our graduating high school students are eligible for free community college tuition. And they are guaranteed it (entitled to it) if they do certain things to earn it. But, the Left wants to eliminate the second step (doing things to earn it) and make everybody entitled by doing absolutely nothing beyond graduating from high school.

And you can take this same example and apply it to just about everything else the Left is wanting to give away to everyone with no strings attached. You don’t have to do anything beyond being in this country — legally or illegally. Your physical presence makes you automatically entitled.

Let’s see what happens over the next couple of years and whether we can afford all these unearned entitlements.