Mark Miller: Social Security & Medicare, What’s Changing and What It Means for You

**Steve Chen** (0:05)
Welcome back, everyone. Social Security and Medicare are going through some of the biggest changes in decades. And today, we've got an expert joining us, Mark Miller, who is a writer for the New York Times and Morningstar. He also publishes Retirement Revised, the newsletter and podcast, and he's the author of a book, Retirement Reboot. So with that, Mark, great to have you join us. Thanks for taking the time.

**Mark Miller** (0:26)
Yeah, good to be with you, Steve.

**Steve Chen** (0:27)
Yeah, I appreciate it. So, you know, these are two huge topics, right? They affect pretty much every American's life, Social Security and Medicare. And just want to kind of dive in, you know, first, maybe you could give us a little background on, like, kind of, you know, you focus on these things and, you know, why? Like, what do you find so interesting about them and important?

**Mark Miller** (0:47)
Yeah. Well, I've been covering retirement for almost 20 years now. I can't believe I'm saying that. But the further I got into it as a beat, the more I realized just the central importance of Social Security and Medicare in the sense that, you know, there really are two universal retirement programs. And as you noted, almost everybody is covered by them. So, you know, there's huge interest in them.
And also the further along I got, I just realized that they're really the two most valuable components of retirement for most households. And then, you know, particularly in the case of Medicare, there's some complexities in managing Medicare in terms of enrollment and kind of on-going enrollment choices. I think Social Security, by comparison, is more simple, although some people like to make it complicated.

**Steve Chen** (1:37)
Yeah. I'm actually just like checking A. I'm super curious. I think a lot of people, they underestimate the value of Social Security and Medicare. So I'm like just, you know, wondering what is the net present value? Because the people think about it as benefit streams, but that would cost you a bunch of money to buy. Do you happen to know off the top of your head?

**Mark Miller** (1:57)
I don't, but I've definitely read analysis of, people have done comparisons of Social Security, comparing that to like buying an annuity. It is definitely the cheapest annuity around. I actually don't tend to think about it in those terms, even though you certainly can make those estimates.
Partly because Social Security, what I think some people like to think about it, is like a personal account in the same way as an IRA, but it's really not. It's really a form of insurance. And what it's there to do is protect against the risk of lost income in retirement and to provide insurance against the risk of outliving your money. So I actually am much more interested in, you know, what's the benefit you're receiving every year and what's the value of that as you go through your life.

**Steve Chen** (2:52)
Yeah, totally agree. I had an interesting talk with Bob Merton, the Nobel Prize winner. It's one of our earlier podcasts. And he talked about how everybody thinks about retirement kind of the wrong way. They always think about it in terms of assets, right? How much money do I have?
And versus they should be thinking about it in terms of income, right? And what does that mean for my quality of life? And yeah, hedging longevity risk. These two programs, Social Security and Medicare, definitely feed into that.

**Mark Miller** (3:16)
Yes, for sure.

**Steve Chen** (3:18)
Yeah, I was actually, so I did look this up and it's like the rough net present value of Medicare is close to $500,000 for a couple and for Social Security, it's a little over $400,000.

**Mark Miller** (3:31)
So that would be just with like average longevity, I assume.

**Steve Chen** (3:35)
Yeah, probably.

**Mark Miller** (3:36)
And of course, nobody lives to the average.

**Steve Chen** (3:39)
Right, exactly.

**Mark Miller** (3:39)
People live beyond it or underneath it.

**Steve Chen** (3:42)
I know it's one of the reasons people are, they feel like these programs are a little bit unfair in terms of like wealthier people who just don't necessarily need these benefits as much, also tend to live longer so they can get more value from them. I mean, theoretically, they've hopefully, they paid more into them as well, but I don't know, you know. Okay, interesting. So, you know, by the way, you yourself, I think are eligible and have you claimed both of these things?

**Mark Miller** (4:07)
Yes, I have. Yes.

**Steve Chen** (4:09)
I would love to get your personal take. I'm like, what was that experience like?