Think Trump is going to protect Medicare? You've been had!
If you thought Donald Trump was going to protect Medicare, well, you've been had.
Everything Trump has done since the election suggests that he's ready to either sit back and let Republicans privatize the program or lead the charge himself.
First, he said absolutely nothing when Paul Ryan started talking about how Republicans would try to combine their Obamacare repeal efforts with a Medicare "overhaul".
Then, just a few days later, he named Georgia Congressman Tom Price, one of Washington's most vocal supporters for turning Medicare over to the giant for-profit health insurance companies, as the next Secretary of Health of Health Human Services, which oversees Medicare.
And now, a little more than a month after the election, Trump himself has all-but admitted that he himself is ready to privatize Medicare.
The healthcare section of his transition team's website now says that one of the next administration's top priorities will be to "Modernize Medicare, so that it will be ready for the challenges with the coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation - and beyond."
That is literally straight out of Paul Ryan's recurring plan to throw grandma off the cliff.
"Modernization," like "overhaul," and "streamline," is one of the weasel words Republicans like Ryan use to trick people into thinking they don't want to do what they actually want to do -- which is voucherize and privatize Medicare.
Republicans like Ryan (and now Trump) have to use these code words because they know that privatizing Medicare is incredibly unpopular.
In fact, according to a new Morning Consult Poll, a full 55 percent of Americans oppose any changes to Medicare and think it should "continue as it is today".
And why, exactly, do so many Americans oppose Medicare privatization?
Easy: they know that "privatization" really just means "profitization".
They know that it means turning the most successful healthcare program in American history from a public utility to a profit center for billionaires like United Healthcare CEO Stephen J. Hemsley, whose 2014 total compensation was $66 million, including $45 million in stock options.
They know that privatization goes against the entire point of having a program like Medicare in the first place.
As Ian Millhiser pointed out in ThinkProgress, "Speaker Paul Ryan's plan to voucherize Medicare would drive up out-of-pocket costs for seniors by about 40 percent."
If Trump actually goes forward with this push to privatize Medicare, he's going to be in for a rude awakening.
Comments
Every time Republicans get their turn at bat, they always foul out and lose the game for the people. There's no reason to think it'll be any different this time around other than being so much worse than any time before. Of course, the owners never lose ... just the people.
Look at the bright side you have at least 4 maybe 8 years to bitch and complain.....it's what you washed up lefties are good at.:)
Repugnicans believe that if you have to choose between food/shelter & healthcare, then you deserve neither.
Few things in life are more entertaining than listening to radio pundits tell us exactly what the other guy will do. When listening to those that spout off, it is best if you take their advice with a large dose of skepticism. Case in point, my sympathies to those that read and believed financial predictions, especially those with a date predicted in the title. Hopefully municipal and union pension investors did not heed that advice.
Whoa! A con sticking up for unions! Yeah, baby, you're coming around!
A "defined benefit" pension -- long fought for by unions -- means that you don't have to worry about outliving your money. A "defined contribution," individual account-type of retirement savings plan -- a scam perpetrated on workers by Wall Street money-grubbers -- means that it is highly likely that you will outlive your savings, unless you're unhealthy or lucky enough to have a high-paying job that allows you to accumulate a couple of million, which the vast majority of workers are simply unable to do because of a lifetime of low wages.
Those suckers may as well work till they drop ... while the banksters get fat on the fees.
Trump Doesn't care what 55% of Americans think. He's happy to cowtow to the super-minority of zealots. He just appointed a guy (notice they're almost all guys) to the Israeli ambassadorship who takes an extreme hard line that only 25% of Israelis agree with.
The right wing predicted during the Obama administration that:
Gas would be over $6.00 per gallon
The unemployment rate would climb above 10%
The stock market would crash
The economy would crash
Obama would take away all guns
Still waiting.
This probably fits well here.
The election was a complete repudiation of "Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms. Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships."
"Here is a short primer for the young protesters. If your preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams. You might understand this better if you had not received participation trophies, undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper understanding of civics. The Democrats are now crying that Hillary had more popular votes. That can be her participation trophy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/election-therapy-from-m...
"Scare the bejesus out of the Kremlin"?!?! Are you kidding me? He's in cahoots with them a b d always will be as long as he thinks they'll support him and line his pockets so he can pay for all his defaulted loans. Trump terrifies me more than the Kremlin!
"Scare the bejesus out of the Kremlin"?!?! Are you kidding me? He's in cahoots with them and always will be as long as he thinks they'll support him and line his pockets so he can continue to pay for his power with IOUs. Trump terrifies me more than the Kremlin!
I think the fact that Hilary had more popular votes is a testimony to the stupidity of Democrats and Hilary Clintons' campaign in particular.
Fact: Clinton outspent Trump by a 2 to 1 margin. Clinton spent $623.1 million, Trump $329.4 million.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-...
Fact: Take California vote total out of the election, Trump has 58,495,826, Clinton has 57,090,827.
Fact: Presidents are elected by the electoral college. I assume Clinton and the Democrats knew this fact.
California may soon be taken out of the equation anyway.
They will become irradiated from Japanese water, flodded out because of glowball warming, or break off into the newly warmed Pacific ocean due to a fracking caused earthquake.
Nature weeding out the stupid.
Far from privatizing medicare, I vote for expanding it to a single-payer system for all US citizens!
What do I think? Since the unfathomable election results, I have lived with emotions ranging from depression, on to bitter desperation, and finally to, at times, inconsolable panic. Regardless of the outcome to our health-care safety net, I fear that my wife will quickly be dead from the result, whether it be heightened copays, per-patient cost caps, or a deep gutting of the system altogether.
Recently diagnosed with a terminal condition, pulmonary hypertension, which, along with a myriad of bottled prescriptions, requires her to refill her medicine pump, connected directly into her heart, every 48 hours. And each refill costs over $8,000! A lung transplant is the only best treatment for her, but she is working to lose weight to be placed on the waiting list.
Her medical costs are covered through a mix of both Medicare and Medicaid: and it is my understanding that Medicaid will be treated even more savagely than Medicare. Both of us heading toward our elderly years (she’s 62) and both very disabled, we have been reduced to live on a pauper’s SSI income and $20.00 food stamps between us. So, what do I think? I try not to. I am, however, emotionally preparing myself for her unnecessarily early passing. With a lung transplant, she could live another 10 years, but without her pump medication, she will die in only 2 hours.
You know, Hillary was not my first choice either, but if she had won, we would not have had the best that Putin had to offer as our Commander in Chief. Also, even more astounding in my estimation, is that we would not have had a First Lady, who the entire nation can view exactly what she looks like unclothed from head to toe in her nude, girl-on-girl photos back in 1995, when she worked as an illegal, improperly documented alien. Trump promised to produce documentation to discredit this charge, but conveniently, he never did.
Gotta love the prudish. I highly doubt that after her husband in in office the incoming first lady will declare that this is the first time in her entire life that she is proud of her country.
While everyone is obsessing over Trump's latest outrageousness, Paul Ryan and friends are rubbing their hands in glee. Wake up people! The destruction of Social Security and Medicare is about to commence and it will move fast. Trump will not stop it. But we can.
Everyone across the political spectrum who depends on or cares about these programs needs to write and call their congressional representatives NOW and tell them: "I oppose any move to privatize Social Security and Medicare. No reduction of benefits, no voucherization, no reduction of COLAs, no increase in eligibility age. If you support any of these things you lose my vote."
Republicans may have majorities in Congress but we still have the franchise. Congresspeople want to keep their jobs and we are the ones who determine if they will.
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Most of us who post on this blog already knew Crooked Donny was totally lying his way into the White House. His desire for Medicare privatization was already a foregone conclusion. It's pretty easy to manipulate the limited minds of religious nuts, gun nuts, and Teabaggers.
Now thanks to Citizens United, and networks like Fox News, the billionaires have become emboldened with their complete control of the propagnada message/machine. This along with confidence that there are enough Putins/Skeeters out there to get consistently within election fraud range ....they have come unabashedly out of the dark shadows and into the political limelight. Everybody needs to resist at all cost!
Tonight NBC news spun the Putin /Trump collusion with, but of course.... it's all Obama's fault for not stopping it. LMAO They stood totally behind Trump's spin of "why didn't Obama speak out more before the election was over." Not a mention of why Putin wants Trump in the White House!
At the end of the NBC news segment a comment was made that Trump is now giving some credibility to the CIA claim, and his pivot would "scare the bejesus out of the Kremlin." exact words.....OMG! ....you can't make this sht up. I thought I was watching Fox News.
If anyone thinks there wasn't collusion between Trump and Putin...you've got your head in a place where the sun doesn't shine.