Tweet
Paul Ryan’s Republican budget plan would privatize Medicare and dramatically slash Medicaid over time. The result: senior citizens, poor children and the disabled paying dramatically more for care, getting worse health insurance coverage and/or losing coverage altogether, according to a report by the CBO.
Under the proposal, most elderly people would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system. For a typical 65-year-old with average health spending enrolled in a plan with benefits similar to those currently provided by Medicare, CBO estimated the beneficiary’s spending on premiums and out-of-pocket expenditures as a share of a benchmark: what total health care spending would be if a private insurer covered the beneficiary. By 2030, the beneficiary’s spending would be 68 percent of that benchmark under the proposal, 25 percent under the extended-baseline scenario, and 30 percent under the alternative fiscal scenario.
Federal payments for Medicaid under the proposal would be substantially smaller than currently projected amounts. States would have additional flexibility to design and manage their Medicaid programs, and they might achieve greater efficiencies in the delivery of care than under current law. Even with additional flexibility, however, the large projected reduction in payments would probably require states to decrease payments to Medicaid providers, reduce eligibility for Medicaid, provide less extensive coverage to beneficiaries, or pay more themselves than would be the case under current law.
Cutting Medicaid enrollment means making life worse for the absolute weakest in our society. Most people covered by Medicaid are children and most of Medicaid’s spending is on care for the elderly and this disabled. Although, I guess Ryan probably thinks his plan is the motivation these lazy toddlers and 90-year-olds with dementia need to go get a job.
Paul Ryan’s future America is a truly dark place, where we as a country decide it is simply not worth it to help the most vulnerable in our society.
38 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
As far as the old folks go, it appears to be a question of reaping what one sows.
They want the government out of Medicare, and it looks like they are going to get it.
Hey, if Broder could work till the end, anyone can.
THIS IS WHAT CUTTING DEALS WITH REPUBLICANS HAS RESULTED IN
“PRAGMATIST” OR “ENABLER”?
Obama’s appeasements UNDERMINE/MARGINALIZE Democrats. He comes across as an accommodating co-dependent. When voters couldn’t see a CLEAR DISTINCTION between Democratic and Republican values/policies, they had nothing to rally FOR or fight AGAINST in the midterms.
Iraq/Afghanistan are no more stable/winnable than they were under Bush. Innocents CONTINUE to DIE for NOTHING. Taxpayers CONTINUE to have hundreds of billions and or trillions of dollars pi$$ed away. The price of GASOLINE, HEALTH INSURANCE and FOOD continue to skyrocket.
Obama didn’t keep his campaign promise to provide AFFORDABLE health care insurance. There is nothing in the health care bill that creates the “competition” necessary to drive health care insurance prices down. 50,000,000 Americans are uninsured. Don’t get cancer, don’t break a hip and don’t get pregnant!
Obama didn’t keep his campaign promises to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, to implement environmental regulations to govern smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers, to end off-shore/deep water oil drilling, to provide government transparency or to help homeowners keep their homes.
Obama has been HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL in perpetuating the abuses and corruptions of the military industrial complex, crap-shooting banks and stock brokers, usurious insurance companies, monopolistic oil companies, manipulative real estate mortgage companies and the OBSCENE bonuses their executives say they are ENTITLED to.
Had Obama been an IDEALIST, would he have FOUGHT HARDER to keep his campaign promises? Or would he still have cut deals with the devil and declared he “had no choice”?
No, only those 54 and younger are going to “get it.” And how.
I sure don’t want to misunderstand what you’re saying so I will ask straight up; are you serious?
If they are going to eviscerate the benefits of being a Medicare beneficiary, I wish they’d at least make enrollment in the program voluntary. I’d much rather keep 2.9% of my income than trade it in for some crappy voucher in 35 years.
Ryan’s budget plan makes sense when you see it as part of the effort to protect Bush era tax cuts – the ones extended by Obama and Democrats just a few months ago – at all costs.
Obama will go along with it because he too cares only about enhancing the wealth of the wealthy.
Obama’s 2012 campaign slogan should be:
“F*ck the elderly. F*ck the poor. F*ck the disabled.”
And the 2012 Republican candidate’s slogan should be:
“Vote for me, and I’ll f*ck ‘em better, harder and longer.”
Yup. Embrace the shitty choices, my fellow Americans. We’re witnessing democracy at its finest.
When Ryan read Dickens “A Christmas Carol” he was disappointed at Scrooges transformation into a human being.
In case anyone was wondering btw, this would be a FEATURE, not a BUG.
I think LittlePig’s point was that there are some voters who side with the Republican puppets on this issue because they aren’t aware the Medicare is a government program.
Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare! (Aug 5, 2009).
Lets call this plan what it is,
slow boil phaseout of the program.
Any other talk is playing into the Republican’s hand.
If the Dems were serious about the 2012 election, they would tar the Republicans with this and win in a landslide.
My old boss on the farm was handicapped had nurse aids helping him all the time and had Fox News on the tv on all the time.
I think the GOP lost his vote his 5 or so nurse aids during the weeks vote and his farm employees vote.
The guy did not pay a living wage for hard work most people can’t do and of course he never paid over time.
I know he is going to cry this will put him out of business.
If he can’t afford nurse’s aids he is going to a home. His business running a farm and his nurse’s aids lose their jobs. And his home goes for sale in a depressed housing market.
Karma is a Bitch. :)
“are there no poor houses?”
That’s not future America, that’s today’s America. And the sheople have already decided. Wasn’t that what the last election was about? The GOP certainly thinks so.
‘It became necessary to destroy
the townMedicare to save it.’I think I understand what LittlePig is saying but it’s bullshit. Just because a majority of people in a certain demographic voted for Republicans doesn’t mean they all did. So saying they “reap what one sows” is overly simplistic in my opinion. Sorry liberals under 54, (who would be the ones affected, not people who are currently over 65), but because over 50 percent of your contemporaries vote for Republicans, you deserve to get screwed by them. It’s not fair and it’s not even correct. The people who predominately vote Republican are keeping their benefits. People under 54 vote majority Democratic or did in 2008.
That Gov in Florida runs a bunch of nursing homes doesn’t he if these cuts go through assisted living independently for the handicapped very well might end.
Nursing homes will take care of these people at greater cost chances are the handicapped will lose any jobs they have if they go to a home.
If they get a new job it will probably be at the home or nearby at some factory that the nursing home owner has an interest in.
I wonder if the handicapped would be paid minimum wage or would most or all the cash they earn go straight to the nursing home?
In otherwords does this bill bring back slavery?
Fixed.
Can’t decide which brand of cowardice is more repulsive… The Republican style of blatantly trying to kill old people and children, or the Democrat style of doing nothing to stop them. ‘Perhaps’ they both want the same thing wink wink.
Right on.
Meanwhile, “people under 54 vote majority Democratic or did in 2008″ because they thought they would be getting something very different than what they actually got since Jan 2009.
Puppet Politics – where Democrats are puppets on the left hand and Republicans are puppets on the right hand of a$$holes who are ruining this country, and where all the puppet politicians of both parties, doing the bidding of their masters, deceive and divide the American people – has to end.
Yeah, does it matter? The people who suffer and die are going to be just as miserable or dead, as well as being unrelated to any of the politicians.
David Dayen has a fresh cross-post ready: Gbagbo Clinging to Power as Ouattara Forces Storm Residence
Yep. The only difference is that one side has no problem admitting they have rich peoples’ hands up their asses. It’s “good cop, bad cop” politics.
For those, if any here, who continue to support Obama on the basis of “he’s doing the best he can.” Would you like Obama to be your doctor?
Like the 52% of voters (including this one) that bought O’s crap (or at least bought the lesser-of-evils crap)?
Joe Klein thinks that Ryan is being “courageous”. Who fucking reads that douchebag anymore anyway?
Obama is doing what he wants, which is next to nothing. ‘The best he can’ that’s funny. I can’t believe the creep has the nerve to run for a second term. Does he live in a bubble?
We only read Joe if we got writers block and need material Joe and Bobo are to stupid to realize that without cutting military spending the debt will keep going up.
That’s why I think Democrats generally and Obama in particular are so much worse than the right-hand puppets. They make Americans believe that the interests of workers, the middle class, etc will be represented and defended. But they aren’t. Progressives need to find their own voice. No more “lesser of two evils” nonsense.
Oh they realize it but they’ll never say it.
Nope, I agree. No more votes for Vuchycrats.
Thats cause they are frauds selling us shit they don’t believe in.
If only progressives and the tea parties could find common ground and join voices! When the tea party first started, every disgruntled party was there. Then TPTB freaked out and started intensely working on taking over the movement. They caused division with a couple well publicized attacks by agent provacateurs. They demonized the LaRouche group and got them kicked out of the rallies because of their signs. LaRouche is a democrat! They couldn’t have the two groups united against them! Republicans hijacked the tea parties to act as useful idiots against their own interests! They are starting to realize they were duped! How do I know? I am a tea party leader and I belong to a union. I have a foot in both worlds and my message is this: We need to come together as people. If the progressives go it alone, they have limited ability. If the tea parties remain with the repubs they too are owned. We are more alike than everyone thinks. MSM propaganda tells us we are enemies, opposites. Do not believe this. It is an illusion to keep us under control.
economic news but off topic so I apologize -
http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/news/moment-truth-report-national-commission-fiscal-responsibility-and-reform – the Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Commission report that suggested eliminating four categories of corporate tax breaks, while exempting offshore tax havens by adopting the “territorial” tax policy, is now being pushed by the Business Roundtable and appears to have White House backing.
This would increase offshoring as it would not have the small brake on it that the current “worldwide taxation with credits for foreign tax paid” system has due to its throwing up deferred taxes – those taxes that the GOP are so desparate to get rid of via a tax hgoliday “so companies can bring home overseas cash to invest in the US” (the deferred tax does not prevent taking overseas cash equal to the capital originally moved from the US and using it for jobs in the US – so this is a con-job).
It is being pushed by Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Mike Crapo (R-Id.), with Chambliss spokesperson saying they have no proposal yet and the rest refusing to comment. The Business Roundtable also refuse to comment but says that an untaxed foreign income system– known as a “territorial” plan as opposed to our current “worldwide income” plan – is vital to making American business competitive with firms in other countries, despite economists saying nonsense – the fake companies in the Cayman’s have no real economic value and no independent life or meaning. But of course Obama had Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner state in last Tuesday’s hearing before a Senate subcommittee that the administration would consider granting a one-time tax holiday for corporations who stash money in tax havens, if it were part of a “comprehensive” “revenue-neutral” tax reform project (perhaps this is a way to avoid the permanently push popular offshore tax shelters beyond the reach of Uncle Sam GOP approach since Obama is unable to veto any corporate request).
The 2007 study by George W. Bush’s Treasury Department showed that the average American company actually pays a tax rate of just 13.4 percent — lower, for example, than France, Portugal, Spain, Japan, Canada, and Switzerland, and less than half the average rate paid in the United Kingdom and Australia – while having the “high” nominal tax rate of 35%. A 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office said 83 of the 100 largest U.S. companies operate subsidiaries in nations that the government watchdog considers tax havens.
But fixing tax haven nonsense runs into GOPers against any government taxation revenue increases – so the corporations demand other hidden give backs – and the lower tax rate is part of that give back.
So naturally the GOP now wants the lower tax rate AND wants to make the tax haven hidden income permanently non-taxable, covering their butts via giving the average voter a tiny tax break – a ploy that was used in the Bush tax cuts.
Paul Ryan’s hairstyle is from the 1920′s. That’s no accident. He want to return the country to pre-New Deal policies.
this is so epu’d, but your post is the most hopeful thing i’ve read here in weeks. it’s like the wisconsin thing might have legs.
Divide and conquer. It really is about class warfare. It’s the greediest, least patriotic among the top 1% against everyone else–and everyone else is losing! However, right-wing media constantly demonizes liberals and unions in an ongoing campaign of blame shifting.
IMHO, it’s worth considering that far too many Americans fantasize about becoming rich, and being able to take advantage of taz breaks. Never mind that that is a pipe dream,I think a lot of people actually think that they can become part of that 1%. I would be very happy to be wrong about this, BTW.
Ryan champions a mean, ugly society, in which the weak suffer and perish.
Shame, Shame.