One of the biggest leftosphereic memes from last week was that Ayn Rand received Social Security and Medicare benefits.
This story fell into the swamp via this post from blogger Patia Stephens, who did a FOIA search of Rand and her husband’s name in the SSI and Medicare records. Keep in mind that in the introduction to her post she admits that not even The Huffington Post was willing to publish this bit of yellow journalism. There is a reason for that.
The story essentially revolves around a woman named Evva Joan Pryor, who was a social worker operating in NYC. After becoming friends with Ms. Rand and during a time in which her health was failing, Ms. Pryor was given Power of Attorney over Rand and her husband’s financial affairs.
Shortly after Rand’s surgery for lung cancer, a registration for Social Security and Medicare benefits was submitted in Rand’s and her husband’s names. Between 1974 and 1982, a sum of $13,945 was collected under their names. Nothing was paid out under Medicare. Though that doesn’t stop Ms. Stephens from insinuating that it may have been paid under “an assumed name”.
Ms. Stephens quotes Ms. Pryor who openly admits that Rand was absolutely set against filing for or accepting the government’s ill-gotten monies. In the text quoted by Stephens, Ms. Pryor tells a tale of mollifying Rand’s objections, though no other person so far found in the records Stephens uses to find Ms. Pryor’s story makes mention of this pacification of Rand’s views.
What neither Ms. Stephens or anyone on the left cares to think of is that throughout the history of SSI and Medicare there has been massive numbers of fraud cases.
Can they prove that this money went to the Rand’s accounts?
Or, in a more sinesterical style argument, can they disproved that it wasn’t deposited in Ms. Pryor’s accounts?
Not that answers to either of these questions will sate their lust to smear Ayn Rand. Just as a positive answer to the first will not make me disbelieve that a social worker who had Rand’s Power of Attorney filed for SSI bennies against her will.
But while this question remains unanswered this story cannot be seen as anything but simple yellow journalism designed to smear one of the great Paleo-Liberal writers of the 20th Century.