Numerical Storytelling.

The Washington Post recently ran this story, minus the numbers.

A woman with two young children at home was asked to make a decision about reviving her husband, who had suffered a lack of oxygen to the brain. She chose to bring him back from the dead, so to speak. Later, missing companionship, she divorced and remarried a childhood friend. Interesting story, but they left out the numbers...

How much does this man qualify for in Social Security disability benefits? How much of his medical care does Medicaid pay for directly? How much, if anything, do his daughters receive monthly for being minor children of a disabled man? How much does/did Social Security pay monthly for his personal caregiver? What types of additional government services does he qualify for?

Then, I'd like to see the salary numbers of the woman, as well as her second husband.

We all agree -- the older generations, as well as the younger -- that we need to reform Social Security benefits. That it should be preserved as a social "safety net". So -- if this woman has wealth, why shouldn't she first be called on to finance her personal choices, and not draw millions off of the social safety net if she can pay out-of-pocket for much of his care?

I understand, the man has paid in. But how much? How long will the State be asked to collectively pay for his personal needs, when so many others are being asked to work until ... age 70? in order to keep this social safety net system afloat.

Maybe they could put Ezra Klein on it. He's a numbers guy, they tell me. And questions like mine, surely also in the minds of younger others, are not going away. If anything, as the Ron/Rand Paul libertarian generation awakes, we will want to know more and more where our confiscated tax dollars are going -- to whom -- and what kind of choices we as a society are permitted to make in the deciding.

This isn't FDR's elderly generation of poor, nor is his social safety net program for the poor elderly and disabled designed for these kinds of losses, second families, and medical/life prognosis. Let's reform. Now. Bring it up to 21st Century standards, and put some numbers to these poor human interest stories.

Yes We Can.