Vivek Ramaswamy is running for Ohio governor on a plan to “put more money in your pocket and give your kids a world-class education.” His proposed changes to entitlement programs, however, might leave Ohioans with less retirement income and increased healthcare costs.
Ramaswamy, a billionaire biotechnology entrepreneur and former 2024 Republican presidential candidate, will face Democratic former Ohio Department of Health director Amy Acton in the November election. His campaign slogan is “lower costs, bigger paychecks.”
During his unsuccessful presidential campaign, Ramaswamy said he favored privatizing Social Security, replacing it with a system that would allow the government or individuals to invest retirement funds in stocks and bonds. He said he would keep Social Security and Medicare as-is for current beneficiaries, but consider major changes for those currently contributing to the programs but not yet receiving benefits.
One such reform he brought up during a New Hampshire town hall event in August 2023 was investing Social Security funds. “If we had just allowed that money to be invested by Social Security in the same way that your financial advisor would recommend that you invest your money, in a diversified portfolio, we would be swimming in surplus today,” he said.
Ramaswamy made similar comments in February 2024 interview with AARP, telling the nonprofit group, “I think we have to be honest about learning from a prior mistake: 20 years ago we should have allowed people to actually invest their Social Security money or the government to invest Social Security money in the same way that we would have allowed and private citizen to do in the stock market and in bonds and otherwise.”
Experts say investing Social Security money in the stock market could leave future beneficiaries with much less money in retirement if the investments go downhill or the stock market crashes. Instead of a fixed monthly payment, benefits would depend on whether the investments gain or lose value.
In 2023 interviews with both CNN and NewsNation, Ramaswamy said that Social Security and Medicare should be reformed after the country meets a set economic growth goal.
“I am up for [reform of Medicare and Social Security], after we have delivered economic growth … After that, people have more money in their pockets, then we can have the conversation about how, for the next generation, not touching the benefits of seniors now, but for the next generation how we rationalize, by first taking aim at the bureaucracy,” he said in the August 2023 NewsNation appearance.
In an October 2024 interview on the “Ezra Klein Show,” Ramaswamy was asked whether Medicare and Medicaid were mistakes. “I believe they were, with the benefit of retrospect, particularly Medicaid, particularly the welfare state, without work attachments required attached to it,” he replied. “What I think of as the welfare state, my principal issue with it is that it actually, I think the evidence would show, in my opinion, that it has harmed the very people that it was created to actually help.”
More than 2 million Ohioans receive Social Security benefits, about 2.5 million get health insurance through Medicare, and another 3 million are covered by Ohio Medicaid. An estimated 65,000 of those Medicaid subscribers are veterans and 44% of Ohio’s kids are covered by the program.
Ramaswamy’s current campaign website says little about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, aside from a May press release promising to “crush Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse.” A campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
