I just want to say something about the…

I just want to say something about the elderly living in poverty. I work with many elderly women. These women come from a time when women didn’t have to work, they relied on their husbands to take care of the family but for whatever reason, death, divorce, these women are living on their own. Their typical social security check each month is $733, their rent on the low end is about 400 per month, plus they have utilities, and the other costs of daily living, however, they get food assistance totaling 16 dollars per month. Often these people do not have transportation. In my rural area, most of the cities, towns and villages don’t have public transportation. The one city within this county that does have public transportation charges our seniors 3 dollars 1 way per ride. It’s no wonder a good portion of our seniors don’t take care of themselves, they don’t have 6 dollars to ride the bus to see their doctor, or they live in an area that don’t offer transportation. Don’t get me wrong this happens to men too, if they worked all of their life but didn’t have a pension or retirement plan, they can expect to see roughly 1200 per month from social security which is still hard to live off after all of their bills. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around a system that will continue to take care of someone that has no ambition to work, but not those that have made their contribution to society.