I have been reading with interest Gerard Gelinas’ responses to letters to the editor from me and others.

Social Security is not a retirement program. Social Security is a social insurance that was designed to keep the elderly and the disabled from poverty. So whether other countries have privatized their programs doesn’t matter. As a social insurance, Social Security works. There is no crisis with Social Security, and the program will remain solvent until late in this century.

Medicare spends 12 to 13 percent to administer the program. Private insurance companies spend 25 to 33 percent to administer their insurance programs. Where does the public want its money to go: to multimillion-dollar bonuses for executives or to help people?

What Gelinas and other conservatives want to do is to end those programs and to put the public’s money into the hands of the private sector. Every time that happens, the money is stolen. Look at the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s and the subprime mortgage mess that is plaguing the country now.

I would warn people not to believe what conservatives and Republicans are peddling. I don’t believe that most of them have the public’s best interest at heart.

Judson Duncan, Monmouth