Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid of Republican ‘Reforms’

By SAM URETSKY

There is a classic joke (or is it a joke?) :”how can you tell if a politician is lying?” The traditional answer is “When they open their mouth,” but some politicians are more trustworthy than others. That’s why the White House fact sheet, March 21, seems trustworthy. The heading is: “80% of House Republicans Release Plan Targeting Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act, Raising Costs, and Cutting Taxes for the Wealthy.”

The original 180-page document, “Fiscal Sanity to Save America” is available at https://hern.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_budget_including_letter_web_version.pdf.

It promises things like:

Page 5: Ensuring Liberty Through Deregulaton
Page 25: Creating Opportunity Through Tax Reform
Page 73: Protecting Conservative Values
Page 86: Personalized and Affordable Health Care
Page 97: Saving Medicare
Page 102: Preventing Biden’s Cuts to Social Security

Obviously there’s a lot more, but protecting Social Security is based on the realization that people are living longer, and if Social Security isn’t reformed, the trust fund will run out of money, and benefits will have to be cut. The Republican proposal is to raise the age at which people are entitled to full benefits from 67 to 69.

Now consider this, While Americans are living longer than previous generations, the wealthy are living longer than the poor, According to The Equality of Opportunity Project (http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/) women at the lowest 1% can have a mean longevity of 78.8 years, while the wealthiest 1% have a projected survival of 88.9 years. Among men, the variation is even greater. Men at the bottom of the scale have a survival of 72.7 years while the top 1% have a mean estimated survival of 87.3 years. In other words, the rich get more money each month, and they get it for a longer period of time.

Now protecting Medicare is a good idea, but, but Obamacare originally had a provision for expanding Medicaid, the program that provides healthcare for low income families at federal expense. The expansion of Medicaid wasn’t automatic, the states had to ask for it. It was a federal expense the first year, but then the federal funds would cover 90% and the states would have to pay the remaining 10%. Most state politicians would be anxious to get federal money, but Republicans were more concerned about giving the Democrats a win.

KFF.org wrote “… financial struggles among rural hospitals has focused attention on the gaps in Medicaid coverage in non-expansion states, and availability of temporary enhanced federal funding for states that newly adopt expansion has sparked renewed expansion discussions in some of these states.”

The Texas Tribune wrote “Eighteen percent of Texans don’t have health insurance — the highest rate in the nation — and Johnson had already filed five pieces of legislation that session to use Medicaid expansion to get as many as 1.2 million of those people insured.” Of course the problems of rural hospitals, which force closure, are largely due to the fact that many of their patients have no way of paying for care.

The White House fact sheet notes the Republican Study Commission (RSC) proposal:

• Calls for over $1.5 trillion in cuts to Social Security, including an increase in the retirement age to 69 and cutting disability benefits.

• Raises Medicare costs for seniors by taking away Medicare’s authority to negotiate prescription drug costs, repealing $35 insulin, and the $2,000 out-of-pocket cap in the Inflation Reduction Act

Transitions Medicare to a premium support system that CBO has found would raise premiums for many seniors.

• Cuts Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by $4.5 trillion over 10 years, taking coverage away from millions of people, eroding care for seniors, children, and people with disabilities, and taking us back to the days where people could be denied care for pre-existing conditions and charged more for health insurance simply for being a woman.

Well, that’s a quick look at health and aging, but there are so many other topics such as PROTECTING CONSERVATIVE VALUES. The section lists proposed bills that support “conservative values” no matter the consequences. For example, Right to Life is apparently a conservative value. The proposed Republican budget endorses a bill that would provide legal protections “at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization.” The bill that has been proposed makes no exception for in vitro fertilization.

There’s protection of the Second Amendment, and proposes that if a person lives in a state that has no licensing requirements for carrying firearms, they have the right to carry their guns in states that have strong restrictions. The RSC Budget would implement Rep. Michael Cloud’s (R-Texas) No Registry Rights Act. This bill would prevent the ATF from using records to create a federal firearms registry. Specifically, it would mandate the ATF destroy all firearm transaction records on file.

Freedom of religion: ... supports former Rep. Ted Budd’s (R-NC) Equal Treatment of Faith-Based Organizations Act, which would reverse the Obama-era policy that required faith-based providers of social services to disclose their religious affiliation and refer potential clients to other providers ...

Christopher Hitchens wrote “Why Orwell Matters,” and he does – and if you doubt it, read the RSC report. Now more than ever.

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sam.uretsky@gmail.com

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2024

Populist.com