Health Care

CNN Money - Saving Social Security and Medicare: The cost

You've seen alarming stats thrown around and maybe wondered what to make of them. (For example, the two programs are said to have a $43 trillion deficit payable over 75 years. Is that a lot? And if it's as big as it sounds, how is the government still running?)

Perhaps you've even slogged through one of the reform plans that politicians, academics and retired CEOs are always dreaming up. But what you really want to know is more basic: How am I supposed to plan for this?

Here's where politics meets your portfolio. And as tricky as it is to guess the direction of stocks, it's even harder to predict the long-run electoral fortunes of Republicans and Democrats or the compromises legislators will hammer out.