In the 1984 Social Security was in the same situation it was today. To balance things Congress (among other lesser measures) set a new schedule for bumping the retirement age, the last step of which only took effect recently. It's not a coincidence. It's been over 40 years since then; it had been 49 years between then and the creation of Social Security.

The narrative is that Social Security is broken because previous generations were idiots who didn't understand or care that lifespans would increase, yet chose to create a fundamentally unsustainable entitlement program anyhow. But lifespans are right on track today as expected in 1984, just like lifespans in 1984 were exactly where actuarial tables predicted them to be in 1935. And Congress in 1984 expected their successors to do today what the 1935 Congress expected of them. A program isn't fundamentally broken just because periodic maintenance is required. OTOH, in theory the 1935 Congress could have attempted to implement a perpetually self-healing, self-executing algorithm, as could have the 1984 Congress. They didn't because politics doesn't work that way; kicking the can down the road to a future Congress is typical, though kicking it 40-50 years down the road is pretty laudable, all things considered.

Obamacare did try to create a self-executing process to reevaluate costs, and it failed miserably, because it required perennially revisiting contentious points of policy, and to do so outside Congress. The president had the responsibility, but no accountability, because failure would be blamed on Congress, and the Democrats especially. In that light, the approach taken wrt Social Security seems prudent.