6 April 2011 Roll up the safety nets





http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/opinion/06wed3.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211

The Budget Battles: The Threat to Medicaid and Medicare

Published: April 5, 2011

Representative Paul Ryan’s proposals to reform Medicare and Medicaid are mostly an effort to shift the burden to beneficiaries and the states. They have very little reform in them.

I’ve listened to the arguments about the necessity to decrease the amount paid out in entitlements to our citizens. I recognize that the need to reduce these budget items is real, and must be handled quickly.

The Ryan proposal now floating in D.C. and on the airwaves is just another attempt by the GOP/teavangelists to roll the social safety nets back to the days before Teddy Roosevelt. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are their primary targets. They have been since they were signed into laws.

Medicaid provides for healthcare to the very poor and the young. By causing the states to disburse Medicaid funds while decreasing the amount of federal funds available to cover an ever-increasing demand for healthcare, the GOP/teavangelists are removing medical safety nets from those who fall into their “get sick and die quickly “list. They will contribute to increasing deaths and diseases that are preventable and treatable. The states will rapidly run out of money and physicians will continue to balk at treating Medicaid patients due to next to non-existent reimbursement and needlessly complex billing and payment procedures intended to allow payers to drag their feet rather than pay in a timely manner.

When you next hear, the GOP/teavangelists cry about “The poor children,” remind them that their policies caused the problems the children face.

Social Security really annoys the GOP/teavangelists. There is a pool of money owed to those of us who paid our FICA taxes for our working lives that the greedy bastards can’t control. They can’t invest it their selves, can’t slip it under the table to their investor, hedge fund, securities analysts, thieving corporate owners who want it to further fuck up the economy by “privatizing” it.

Even after the events of 2008 there are still voters who believe the GOP/teavangelists when they tell them lies about how much they will benefit when their Social Security retirement funds are “privatized” – handed over to some sleazy financial firm, totally devoid of ethics, in order to pay bonuses for the wealthiest 1% of our citizens while the workers and once-middle class are told that Social Security no longer exists due to market downturns and speculation-driven economic collapse.

Medicare needs to be converted to a single payer universal health insurance for all citizens. Ryan proposes gutting it, making it into the twin bastard sibling of Medicaid. He claims that allowing insurance companies to administer the fund at a state level, will lead to lower costs and better care.

Ryan seems blind to the fact that insurance costs are what drives the ever-increasing cost of health care and health insurance today. The unholy practice of bonuses for CEO’s paid from the funds intended for paying out benefits to the insured is deeply at fault. Yet his goal is to remove any federal oversight and set the insurance industry to police itself, acting in the best interests of the insured. It will be freezing in hell before that ever takes place.

The goal is to gut every safety net that the GOP/teavangelists hate. They’ve failed to do it by using lies and propaganda. Now they’ll try to blame those programs for the deficit spending that they helped bring about.

Mr. Ryan seems quite willing to rip out all the social and healthcare safety nets that allowed the middle class to retire with some semblance of dignity and well-being. At the same time, he’s only too willing to use the Bush tax cuts to keep the super-wealthy from suffering along with the rest of America. Not at all surprising.

The government shutdown is likely now. Be sure to avoid being trampled at the banks as our elected members of Congress rush to deposit their paychecks and laugh at the rest of us who, thanks to their malfeasance, have nothing to deposit.