By Mickey Friedman
March 29, 2019
When Donald Trump announced for President he proclaimed: “Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it.” Then he explained: “Get rid of the fraud. Get rid of the waste and abuse, but save it. People have been paying it for years …” Echoing remarks of 2015 to the Daily Signal: “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.”
A recurring promise: “Republicans stand for protecting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and strengthening the safety net for truly needy Americans.”
A promise is a promise is a promise. Until it’s broken.
John Cassidy of The New Yorker wrote: “So how does the ‘Budget for a Better America’ treat Medicare … By calling for even larger cuts to them than the White House proposed this time last year, when it formally abandoned Trump’s campaign pledges … With the budget deficit skyrocketing as a consequence of the Trump-G.O.P. tax bill, the 2020 budget would reduce spending on Medicare by eight hundred and forty-five billion dollars over the next decade.”
While they aim to cut payments to doctors and hospitals and providers, Trumpspeak calls it a proposal “to reduce wasteful spending and incentivize efficiency and quality of healthcare in Medicare, extending the solvency of the program for America’s seniors consistent with the President’s promise to protect Medicare.”
The President’s idea of protection is my idea of destruction. In 1965, Medicare was created to meet the medical care needs of the elderly. In 1973, Medicaid was created in response to the clear need for medical care for those receiving public assistance.
The Kaiser Family Foundation notes: “Today, Medicare plays a key role in providing health and financial security to 60 million older people and younger people with disabilities. The program helps to pay for many medical care services, including hospitalizations, physician visits, prescription drugs, preventive services, skilled nursing facility and home health care, and hospice care. In 2017, Medicare spending accounted for 15 percent of total federal spending and 20 percent of total national health spending.”
Medicaid “was a source of supplemental coverage for more than 1 in 5 (22%, or 7.0 million) traditional Medicare beneficiaries with low incomes and modest assets in 2016 (not including 3.5 million beneficiaries who were enrolled in both Medicare Advantage and Medicaid).”
Kaiser emphasizes: “In 2016, beneficiaries in traditional Medicare and enrolled in both Part A and Part B spent $5,806 out of their own pockets for health care spending, on average.”
The horrifying truth is we pay on average twice as much for healthcare as those in other developed countries. That’s an average of $9,024 a year on healthcare.
As Forbes notes “It’s fairly well accepted that the U.S. is the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but many continue to falsely assume that we pay more for healthcare because we get better health (or better health outcomes). The evidence, however, clearly doesn’t support that view.”
Americans with limited incomes often don’t visit a doctor when they’re sick, don’t get tests they need, even necessary treatments. They don’t fill prescriptions or skip doses to save money.
Forbes wrote “the U.S. ranks last overall with poor scores on all three indicators of healthy lives — mortality amenable to medical care, infant mortality, and healthy life expectancy at age 60 ….
The Commonwealth Fund’s report made the obvious point: “The most notable way the U.S. differs from other industrialized countries is the absence of universal health insurance coverage. Other nations ensure the accessibility of care through universal health systems …”
What does the President want to do? Cut the SNAP food program, the anti-hunger program which served 42 million people in 2017. Require Medicaid work requirements. Cut $1.5 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years. Eliminate Medicaid expansion by states under the Affordable Care Act. Create a system of “Market Based Health Care Grants” which would shift payments based on need to make block grant to states, many who are committed to cutting health care costs for working people.
$845 billion cuts to Medicare over 10 years, about a 10 percent cut.
Make no mistake. The Administration reduced our national bank account with its trillion and a half dollar Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the massive giveaway to corporations and the wealthy. It cut the top marginal tax rate for corporations from 35 percent to 21 percent, boosting profits almost 8 percent in the first three quarters of 2018. Now Trump wants to reduce aid for the most vulnerable.
Some who’ll suffer voted for Donald Trump. The Democrats should be talking to the 2,249,050 Medicare recipients and 1,502,000 SNAP recipients in Ohio; the 1,981,476 Medicare and 1,375,000 SNAP recipients in Michigan; the 2,629,753 Medicare and 1,843,000 SNAP recipients in Pennsylvania; the 1,110,269 Medicare and 692,000 SNAP recipients in Wisconsin. Run a TV ad called The Broken Promise.
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“The Broken Promise” was first published in the March 21, 2019 issue of The Berkshire Record.