Medicare remains an overwhelmingly popular benefit, and American families are supportive of preserving it. But some policymakers propose pushing middle- and high-income Medicare beneficiaries down a slippery slope by further increasing premiums based on their incomes.

Our goal shouldn't be to shift Medicare costs to seniors and make health care more expensive. It should be to make the wealthiest pay more.

In the coming days and weeks we'll be hearing a lot of misinformation about the Trustees Report from the Social Security Administration. It's time to separate the myths from the realities.

Cuts to Social Security -- whether they're in the form of means-testing or the Ryan/Romney proposals to raise the eligibility age and reduce cost-of-living benefits -- will hurt most seniors. They'll cause the most pain to elderly and disabled women and minorities.

The means-testing proposal is a Trojan horse. It uses anti-millionaire rhetoric to create the machinery for denying benefits to rich people, but its backers will then use that machinery against most Americans.

Means testing has such common-sense appeal that it has even gained traction among some Democrats. That is why it is especially important that we elaborate on why it would cost more than it saves.