Trumpcare Raids Medicare To Enrich The Wealthy And Plant A Bomb

While the media has highlighted the impact on Medicaid and on seniors not yet on Medicare, few have spotlighted the roadmap of destruction obviously in the works for Medicare itself. Trumpcare plants the bomb, where it will remain until the Republicans detonate it later this year and blow up Medicare.

The Republicans have certainly telegraphed their ultimate plans. Speaker Paul Ryan has been advocating the dismantling of Medicare for years. Consistent with that, as soon as the election ended, Ryan announced his intention to enact 2017 legislation ending Medicare. Ryan’s plan would force all seniors and people with disabilities onto the private market, arming them only with inadequate voucher coupons. So, that 64-year-old spending more than half her income on her premium will get no reprieve from her cat-food diet when she turns age 65.

Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Tom Price, has also been clear about the Republicans’ plans. Against all evidence, Price claims that “nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government’s intrusion into medicine through Medicare.” Of course, the exact opposite is true. Medicare saves lives. It allows seniors and people with disabilities, those with the greatest health needs, to obtain life-saving health care.

Now here’s the ticking time bomb: Trumpcare raids Medicare of $117 billion and puts it into the pockets of the rich. That raiding of Medicare, along with a provision that increases Medicare’s hospital payments by $43 billion, paves the way for further destructive action later in the year.