Tag Archives: medicaid

Political Rants

Step one.

There’s a lot to say about the Republican’s craven plan to push through a massive tax plan in a matter of days. I needn’t point out that the final bill is likely to be a cobbled together mess, one that we’ll be struggling with for many years to come if it ever finds its way to Trump’s signing hand. Nor do I need to repeat the obvious fact that this is a tremendous giveaway to the richest Americans, to corporations, and to the GOP’s donor base, one that demonstrates the degree to which the Republicans’ supposed concern over budget deficits is just another ploy.

Rich folks get THIS much.What I find most infuriating about this legislation is that it is being proffered at a time when its chief beneficiaries – the richest of the rich – are doing just fine, thank you very much, and corporate America is sailing from strength to strength. The last thing they need is more money in their pockets. This is also a time when our armed forces are deployed in conflicts all around the world. Trump just signed into law a $700 billion defense bill, subject to repeal of the sequester agreement. When we’re spending this kind of money and putting people in harm’s way, why the hell are we cutting taxes? What effing justification is there for that? It is beyond shameful, frankly.

Even worse, this is just part one of a two-step routine the Republicans have been rehearsing for a generation now. Step one: cut the hell out of rich people’s taxes, and blow a huge hole in the federal budget. Step two: almost immediately afterward, feign panic over a ballooning deficit and use that as a rationale to cut core social programs, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other extremely popular programs. They have tried this numerous times before, with only limited success. This time might be different, as they are more craven than in previous decades and control every lever of power. They really don’t need any Democratic votes to push these cuts through.

The GOP has always hated Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, largely because they are defined benefit, pay as you go institutions. To the current crop of crazies running Congress, insurance is now tantamount to Soviet-style top-down socialism. Don’t think they won’t try this: Paul Ryan has been working on setting this up for many years. We have to be ready to fight back, or you can kiss these vital public institutions goodbye.

That fight begins with killing this tax bill. Best get started.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Sickness.

As I write this, the Senate Republicans have pulled their version of the ACA “repeal and replace” legislation – a bill that’s really more a massive tax cut funded by massive cuts in Medicaid. This temporary hiatus is mostly down to the many thousands of people across the country who made their voices heard in various ways, and so to all of you I say job well done. That said, this job is not, in fact, done. The Republicans will be back very soon with a slightly amended version of the bill that can garner 50 votes, after having bought off key senators with part of that $300 billion-plus deficit reduction bundle built into this piece of legislative ordure. Just watch.

Two old men who will never need Medicaid.This entire situation – I won’t say “debate” because there hasn’t been any – is ridiculous largely because no one in Washington will admit to what the ACA’s core problems are. The Republicans, and to a certain extent many Democrats, continue to insist that competition and a freer market in health insurance will deliver affordable coverage to everyone; just pull those sick people out of the system and into an underfunded high-risk pool, and the market can do its magic.

Bullshit. The “free market” approach to individual coverage doesn’t work because individual health insurance is not a profitable line of business; insurers have known this for decades and have been pulling out of individual policies because they carry too much downside risk. They prefer large employer plans, where the only money being risked is that of the client company, not the insurer. Even if you start an individual health policy in good health, things inevitably go wrong and then the company is on the hook. Sure, they prefer younger, healthier folks as customers, but even they get cancer once in a while. Individual policies are not a money maker unless the market is so drastically tilted in the insurer’s favor that they can basically sell nominal “coverage” to healthy people.

This is why Medicaid is such a popular program. Even the GOP’s complaints about it all center on cost, not care. (They just see it as a cash cow.) Medicaid is not provided on market principles; neither is Medicare nor the veterans health program. No health insurance should be market-driven, because treating it like a commodity severely disadvantages poorer, older, and sicker people. Those categories apply to most everyone at some point in their lives. The only way to ensure that coverage will be there for all of us when we need it is single payer.

Last word: this Senate bill is sick; it is a tax cut scheme built on gutting Medicaid and pulling money from Medicare. And it will be back.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Bugs in the system.

So the government’s Affordable Care Act web site doesn’t work. Does that surprise anyone? It’s a big, honking, outsourced engineering project that has had the budget axe swinging over it for the past three years. It’s been under constant threat of being defunded or declared unconstitutional, subjected to incessant political attack in Washington and around the country by a party dedicated to disabling it anyway that they can.

The fact is, the most dysfunctional part of the Affordable Care Act is Medicaid expansion, not because it doesn’t work but because half of the states in the union have refused to participate, even with 100% funding from the federal government. We hear so much about the Web site being a piece of shit (and rightfully so), and yet I don’t see anyone on the right wringing their hands over the fact that something like 7 million people, the vast Four star general in war on healthmajority of whom are working poor, will have no access to health coverage simply because the governors and legislatures in their state capitals are intent on making a political point. Throw needy (working!) families under the bus, and that’s fine. But build a buggy Web site? Unforgiveable!

It’s pretty clear, in fact, why Republicans are pulling the rug out from under their needy constituents. Chris Hayes interviewed an Ohio state representative on Wednesday night, and while the fellow tried his best to conceal his objection to Medicaid behind some blather about legislative process, he eventually got around to saying that Medicaid was a program people would get “locked into” because they would enjoy the benefit so much, it would be a disincentive for them to raise their standard of living to the point where they wouldn’t receive it anymore. Health coverage makes you lazy. The same old G.O.P. and conservative Democrat trope about welfare, still with us after all these years. They don’t like owning up to it, but it’s still there.

I have to say that this nationwide refusal by Republicans to sign on to Medicaid expansion is certainly one of the most craven domestic policy decisions I have witnessed in my adult life. Hearing them complain about a Web site would be laughable … if this were a laughting matter.

Once again – they’re the reason our kids are ugly.

luv u,

jp