Oh, but ain't that America for you and me?

Ain't that America, somethin' to see, baby?

Ain't that America, home of the free, yeah?

Little pink houses for you and me

You may be surprised to learn that the elderly still have bills. Social Security doesn't necessarily cover all of those bills. Medicare does not cover all medical expenses in their entirety, and many times require a part B private insurance plan and a monthly premium payment and co-pays to go along with it. And medication expenses. For someone that just had a major medical issue, they could be looking at thousands, or tens of thousands, or more, to pay for the medical treatment they just received. They can be indebted to medical debt for life.

Source: My parents worked their entire lives and put money into retirement savings. It did not last them their expected lifetime so they ran out of retirement savings. Their social security checks do not cover all of their expenses. They pay over $200 a month OOP in medications, pay ~$800/month for a Medicare part B premium, ~$100/month for medication insurance, and still have to go to doctors/specialists multiple times a month with co-pays/OOP expenses.

This isn't an elderly-specific issue. My brother had cancer and was in and out of hospitals for 3 years. He died owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in OOP medical debt (total bills were well over $1 million). His widow, my sister-in-law, will be paying those expenses for the rest of her life, even though she is remarried and my brother died 25 years ago. He had insurance. He was a teacher.

TLDR: Our medical system is barbaric and should be torn to shreds and rebuilt as a universally-paid, non-profit social service.

Assuming he saved nothing for retirement, and assuming he never worked for an employer that had a pension (which would be a bit odd for a 72 year old)

• when the car needs new brakes, you don't have retirement money. When the hot water tank breaks, that's most of your contribution. When your upstairs neighbor floods the bathroom and you're moving the things out that can be saved while dealing with the futility of insurance and renting from old and new place for a month, retirement contributions tend to be null for a bit. When life isn't like on TV, retirement becomes a secondary dream to just getting by.
• we don't get dream jobs every time. Sometimes you go for a living wage and that's not enough to live large at 70.
• sometimes we have car accidents or horrible illnesses. And, in america, that means you lose everything you ever saved - either on costs, or on fighting your medical insurer.

Americans live in this cognitive dissonance where they know all these things but yet just hope they'll win the lottery and not have any of it happen to them. I hope you also never have to deal with any of that, and you don't die for many years until that freak parachute/jetski/shark accident takes you.

Putting aside that some people have lost their retirements in financial collapses or to medical expenses there are also predatory things like Reverse Mortgages that regularly invert people’s financial situations.

This country has been specifically designed to make sure that the average person can’t retire.

Were you actually under the impression that SS and medicare are sufficient on their own to retire?

Doesn't he still need to try to work in order to qualify for medicare?