Money to pay for huge tax cuts for the richest 1% and welfare for criminal corporations has to come from somewhere, so Republicans will turn, as usual, to those most in need by slashing Medicare to the tune of $1 trillion. It’s all part of RepubliCare, the plan that offers a death benefit to the poor and middle classes.
The GOP isn’t just indifferent to poor, elderly, and disabled Americans, they actively want them to suffer. What else is there to conclude?
The assault on Medicaid is about to begin. GOP sources have told Politico’s Jonathan Allen that House Republicans will propose $1 trillion in cuts from the program. Exactly what form those cuts will take is not entirely clear. But a trillion dollars over ten years is serious money and Capitol Hill sources are saying it will likely come from two dramatic changes: Eliminating the Medicaid expansion that takes place under the Affordable Care Act and then converting the entire program into a system of block grants….
[R]olling back the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion would mean taking health insurance away from about 15 million people. That’s the official, Congressional Budget Office projection of how many people will get coverage under Medicaid once the Act is fully in place.
As for turning Medicaid into a block grant, here’s a quick refresher on what that entails. Right now, Medicaid is an entitlement program. That means the federal government, in partnership with the states, must enroll everybody who meets the program’s guidelines. In other words, if millions of additional people become eligible because, say, they lost their job-based insurance in the recession, than the feds and the states have to provide them with coverage and find some way to pay for it. And it can’t be spotty coverage, either. By law, Medicaid coverage must be comprehensive.
At least, that’s the way it works now. If the law changes and Medicaid becomes a block grant, then every year the federal government would simply give the states a lump sum, set by a fixed formula, and let the states make the most of it.
The GOP likes to trumpet block grant programs as providing maximum flexibility for states. What this would actually do is take away states’ ability to provide healthcare in economic downturns, like the one we’re still in the middle of… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Daily Kos>
Do I even have to ask how Jan Brewer will spend a block grant, or Mike Scott, or Scott Walker? If House Republicans get their way in the upcoming budget battle (not the extension), people will die. That’s RepubliCare.
6 Responses to “The RepubliCare Assault on Medicaid”
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It is so sad ,what they are trying to get away with– what is even sadder would be if they get away with it —that is the responsibility of all of us– to speak up–If we complacently sit and watch these Repugs dismantle every support system in place then it seems we deserve what we get—
I agree. When they actually propose it, we need to melt the capitol switchboard.
Alan Grayson’s description of RepubiCare is still true to day. “Don’t get sick. If you do get sick, die quickly.”
That’s the RepubliCare death benefit.
Here’s the rub on block grants. Whatever is left over can go in the state’s general fund. That gives the states incentive to slash services in order to have a pool of money at the end of the fiscal year. It also gives incentives for states to charge co-pays that put poor people right back where they started — with insurance they can’t afford.
Thanks Blue. You did a better job explaining this than either the author or I did.