One of the more strange developments of the last few years, in my mind, has been the flip flop republicans have made in regards to entitlement programs like medicare, medicaid and social security. When I was first getting into politics in college the republican party was still of the mind that these programs needed to be drastically pared back, but it was the republican party that vehemently campaigned against the paring back of Medicare by democrats this cycle.
Not to be chained in by… their own logic, the GOP is now starting to talk about none other than cutting entitlement programs.The most drastic of this in, not surprisingly, in Texas, where some among the republican caucus there are arguing that the state should drop the Medicaid program altogether. Via Emily Ramshaw at the Texas Tribune:
Far-right conservatives are offering that possibility in post-victory news conferences. Moderate Republicans are studying it behind closed doors. And the party’s advisers on health care policy say it’s being discussed more seriously than ever, though they admit it may be as much a huge in-your-face to Washington as anything else.And not to be outdone by the Lone Star State, rising stars like Eric Cantor are trying to have their cake and eat it too, by arguing for the repeal of the trimming of subsidies to private Medicare Advantage plans through one side of their mouth, while arguing against out of control spending on the other. This isn’t complicated math… its addition and subtraction. They know they don’t have the votes to repeal much (if any) of the health care reforms passed, so pulling funding out of it only puts us in a deeper hole.
I am totally with them on being against using that trimming to pay for other programs… that money, and more (why are we subsidizing PRIVATE supplemental insurance AT ALL?!?), should indeed be trimmed… but it should go towards lowering the deficit, not towards more spending.
The blindness of the GOP on this is so bad that it leads me to wonder whether they intend to push the government into so much more debt that we’re already looking at over the next generation, that we go bankrupt and are forced to enact Greece style austerity measures. I wouldn’t put it past them… but its just as likely that they are so blinded by their ideology that they genuinely think that cutting taxes will magically pull us out of our deficits and debt problems.
This example is just one of the GOP’s “One-Stop-Shop” for hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteCheney/Gregg's Deficit Reduction Act 2005 passed in RECONCILIATION, illegally with two different documents in the House and Senate, taxes the middle class elderly the total amount of their life savings if they need a nursing home. Most of these nursing homes are non-profit to boot, as it is in my parent's case.
In my parent's case this was a $600+ a day “tax” for 1.5 years before MassHealth (yes, Massachusetts) would consider their application. So my parents paid out their total life savings @ $600 a day to subsidize all the others in the nonprofit nursing home who are already on Medicaid.
This is the Cheney/Gregg's method of reduction of the deficit...off the back of W.W.II Disabled Vets (my parents) who remain alive long enough to need a nursing home, but too old to complain. If they passed away before they needed the nursing home their life savings would have been inherited tax free (less than 2M).
Now that their life savings has gone to the nonprofit and Medicaid has kicked in, my parents still have to pay the nonprofit their retirement income of $69,348 a year, as it should be!!!!!! …but only after Medicaid demands they continue to pay their Medicare and Federal Blue Cross insurance premiums of $5,505 a year. They have prescription coverage under their Medigap policy, but they still were forced to Medicare D.
Why wasn’t their retirement income of $69,348 (minus the premiums of $5,505 still required of them going to Medicare and Federal Blue Cross) enough for the nonprofit nursing home from the date of their admissions? Ask Cheney/Gregg.
Gregg says now… “We can all agree that no American should lose their life savings or their home because of illness or injury and that the rising cost of health care severely burdens individuals, families and businesses,” Gregg wrote in his letter to Obama this week. “Report after report also confirms that health care costs are a systemic risk to the long-term fiscal health of our nation.”
He apparently forgot about his Deficit Reduction Act 2005 he passed in reconciliation which does exactly this to the elderly needing nursing homes who have saved more than $2,000 in their lifetime and not hidden it.
Cheney/Gregg's DRA 2005 is the perfect example of how the GOP reduces the deficit off the backs of W.W.II Vets with a tax of $300+/day...the perfect storm of GOP, health care debate let them eat cake and GOP hypocrisy.
Medicare does not cover nursing homes. My parent’s life savings does. Watch Sen. Gregg "not" answer the hard questions about what he did here.
The Cheney/Gregg Deficit Reduction Act 2005, passed in reconciliation, is the largest case of Elder Middle-class W.W.II Disabled Vet Financial Abuse in History!!
Wake up all you elders who are on Medicare or Medicare Advantage and LOVE them. Cheney/Gregg are counting on you and your families to remain hapless while they take your life savings from you if you ever need long-term care.
The gentleman in the next room to my parents purchased long-term-care insurance to protect his assets. It turns out that this policy will not pay for his long-term care now (he was duped by the countless loopholes). So his and my parents’ life savings are paying for all the others in that nonprofit nursing home who hid their assets and/or are already on Medicaid.
Pay close attention to how the GOP will not address what they did to the elderly with the Deficit Reduction Act 2005 that passed in reconciliation. They counted on the elderly to be and remain ignorant until they are admitted into nonprofit nursing homes…