Get Government Out of My Hair and Your Filthy Hands Off My Medicare

By on August 23, 2012

The choice of Congressmen Paul Ryan has injected a new wrinkle into the Health Care Reform debate: Medicare. The Todd Akin flap has injected others, but let’s take this one wrinkle at a time.

Ironically this now spotlights people who DO have health care coverage and efforts to pare away at it. Most groups, even very conservative groups, are happy with the care seniors are receiving. But, Medicare is a program also suffering because the cost of health care in the US is rising far faster than the revenue coming in. It is possible many seniors don’t know the true price tag of what is being purchased on their behalf.

Those who have tagged the national debt as the leading campaign issue this year have targeted Medicare entitlements as something in need of drastic reduction. They have been vague about what exactly they would do about these entitlements because take-aways are a politically tricky issue. You just hear the shears snipping away at something in the background as they talk. Paul Ryan has been a poster boy and leading spokesperson for ‘the Snippers.’

His first instinct was to ‘privatize’ Medicare so that those who had invested in the system over years would now receive a check at retirement with which they could go purchase private insurance. If the check was not enough to pay for the insurance, that was tough. If the recipient  was sick with pre-existing conditions and couldn’t get any insurance at all, that was even tougher . The burden of escalating costs was now their problem.

Now the Snippers propose offering people a choice: they can take the check which may not pay for care, or they can take the social assurance of being covered. Guess what wins? Some are concerned the healthiest and wealthiest will choose the check and opt out of the pool, but they may regret this later on as death and disease approach. The very wealthy of course will adore this because it gives them even more money to throw away on extravagant care for themselves. Remember the upper 1% consumes a huge percentage of the money spent annually on health care.

Why is this so important? After cutting the tax rates in 2003 and seeing that this forced the country into a fiscal crisis caused by greater unfunded spending on Medicare Part D (drug coverage) and two avoidable wars in the Middle East, self-styled fiscal conservatives realize that they cannot cut taxes again without reducing government spending. And they live to cut taxes for their big contributors. We already have the lowest income tax rates of any Western country, but the people who are pouring millions into PACs want more. Is this healthy, or even reasonable?

Medicare does need attention as a vast number of baby-boomers who have paid into the system now become beneficiaries. The number of people working to support them is proportionally fewer each day.  Cost escalation must be seriously addressed. The ACA is only a start. Means testing may become necessary. Shifting more costs of a certain kind onto the consumer may be necessary too. But, what kind? Sorry, no one on either side is going there right now. We’re still sloganeering on the campaign trail.

I have never described myself as a Liberal and I pride myself as an Independent whose desire is to choose the best candidate, be the person Republican or Democrat, but I grow increasingly disaffected with the element that has taken over the Republican Party, whose motto seems to be “I Got Mine, Screw The Rest of You.”  People like Ryan seem to have one goal— to ingratiate themselves with folks like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers with this attitude, who in turn reward them by shoveling millions of dollars back into their campaign coffers.

The Rich have many friends. The Poor have only critics.

And those in the middle, most of us, this year have a clear choice.

It is preferable for an office holder to have one contributor who gives a million than a million contributors who give a dollar each. The customer maintenance is simpler. It also means more time at the tanning parlor. But it promotes pandering for power. Paul Ryan seems to have perfected this art, only now as a national candidate some of his past ‘favors’ are coming back to haunt him.

I suspect that years ago the wealthy French aristocracy complained about the poor and less fortunate in similar dismissive terms before the Revolution. I’m sure they reassured those less well off that they were looking after their interests as they picked their pockets. I’m sure they aristocrats disparaged their detractors as they lined their own, before the blade started to fall.

This is not a winning strategy for either side, and certainly not the philosophy that has held this country together for over 200 years. The wealthy have previously seemed to have more sense, except once in the Gilded Age when they gorged themselves with oysters and cherries jubilee, shortening their life span. The mantra of I-Me-Mine has not been the source of our national strength in our finest moments. It is not even the traditional Republican approach to governing. If Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower could return, I doubt they would recognize their party today.

Lippmann

Old Dixiecrats and folks who skipped doing their homework back in school appear to have taken over. Akin is not an isolated embarrassment.  The choice this year is not really between the rich and the poor as some have charged. Nor is it between the businessman and the freeloader, since business types have had a major role in pushing the country into an economic crisis. And it is not a battle between traditional Conservative and Liberals philosophies since both William F Buckley and Walter Lippmann would be scratching their heads if they showed up again and surveyed the wreckage.

Buckley

It is a choice between the enlightened and decent or the greedy and rapacious. It is choice between those who stand for democratic ideals, and those who just seem to stand for office.

Tom Godfrey

 

 

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