In a recent article, I have addressed a pair of issues (among others) that deserve to be repeated here. I have made the article available on my website at www.dennisjwall.com: "Social Security Old-Age Insurance: Is There a Constitutional Right?" 39 Insurance Litigation Reporter 245 (May 28, 2017), reprinted with permission of Thomson Reuters, the Insurance Litigation Reporter, and the author. No further publication permitted without the express consent of Thomson Reuters.
The first issue is that Social Security Old-Age Insurance is insurance despite some dicta in a U.S. Supreme Court case decided in 1960. The case is discussed at some length in my article. In that case, which devolved into an application of Due Process to deportation of an alleged Communist, Justice Harlan said that he could not "soundly analogize" Social Security Old-Age Insurance to insurance, namely an annuity. The opinion displays a disappointing but perhaps understandable lack of knowledge of insurance and particularly of annuities, but in any case the opinion was written to focus on Due Process and not on insurance principles.
Without any question to insurance practitioners, Social Security Old-Age Insurance is insurance.
The second issue to be mentioned here as well as in the article, is that the right to payment under an insurance contract is governed everywhere by the law of insurer bad faith, a body of law which scarcely existed before the mid-Twentieth Century. Insurance bad faith law does not say that every insurance claim should be paid; it says instead that every insurance claim should be handled reasonably and without violating the covenant of good faith and fair dealing which is implied if not expressed in the insurance contract.
As it is clearly said in the Bible, so we must clearly say here: "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear." Social Security Old-Age Insurance, and the Social Security Program as a whole, are under attack from people who will be the only ones to profit from dismantling either the Insurance or the Program. These attacks should not be heard. The people who hold the Insurance and depend on the Program say the things that should be heard.
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