In what America was Mick Mulvaney raised? What kind of life did he enjoy that made him care so little for his neighbors, to base his spiritual character on ideology rather than shared humanity?
11
It's sad that this article had to be written. It's sad that some white people would vote against free air for all if they thought black people would get air that they didn't "deserve." Yes, Virginia, there are poor and low-income white people. But apparently Ronald Reagan's welfare queen myth lives on.
15
Why is this health care plan thought to benefit the rich? Do the rich not live in the same country as the rest of America? And how does it benefit working taxpayers? Is our federal government nothing more than a bookkeeper charged only with keeping a short-term balance sheet?
Does Mr. Mulvency seriously think he and other working and/or well-off American taxpayers will be unaffected by the suffering and early deaths of their relatives, colleagues, friends, and neighbors? Will they themselves never be unlucky enough to suffer serious illnesses or uninsured disabilities triggering massive uncovered personal expense?
And what about corporations and businesses? Won't their revenues suffer due to lower spending by those same disfavored groups as they struggle to pay premiums, out-of-pocket costs, and uncovered expenses?
It's been shown that coverage for many basic preventative care services will be excluded from coverage for Americans in that disfavored tier even if they do manage to pay premiums, and won't be affordable for the uninsured. So, in short order, we can expect exponentially increased numbers of critically ill Americans, resulting in strained medical resources and concomitant numbers of personal and corporate bankruptcies.
How will these results lead to lower health care costs? How will they make America great?
Obviously, none of the above scenarios will benefit anyone, Not working taxpayers. Not the rich. Not even Mr. Mulveny. Talk about "Sad!"
Does Mr. Mulvency seriously think he and other working and/or well-off American taxpayers will be unaffected by the suffering and early deaths of their relatives, colleagues, friends, and neighbors? Will they themselves never be unlucky enough to suffer serious illnesses or uninsured disabilities triggering massive uncovered personal expense?
And what about corporations and businesses? Won't their revenues suffer due to lower spending by those same disfavored groups as they struggle to pay premiums, out-of-pocket costs, and uncovered expenses?
It's been shown that coverage for many basic preventative care services will be excluded from coverage for Americans in that disfavored tier even if they do manage to pay premiums, and won't be affordable for the uninsured. So, in short order, we can expect exponentially increased numbers of critically ill Americans, resulting in strained medical resources and concomitant numbers of personal and corporate bankruptcies.
How will these results lead to lower health care costs? How will they make America great?
Obviously, none of the above scenarios will benefit anyone, Not working taxpayers. Not the rich. Not even Mr. Mulveny. Talk about "Sad!"
1
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft"
Interesting. This sentence inadvertently explains why Republicans are so deeply committed to giving tax cuts to their billionaire donors.
Interesting. This sentence inadvertently explains why Republicans are so deeply committed to giving tax cuts to their billionaire donors.
6
Reading Mulvaney's impassioned defense of those he urges to feel resentment to those who receive Medicaid assistance, you'd think that all of them are deadbeats lounging in their social welfare hammocks. Au contraire. Nearly eight in ten adults receiving Medicaid live in working families and more than half work themselves. Among adult Medicaid recipients not working most report significant impediments to their ability to work. As Mulvaney passionately observes: So if you left for work this morning in the dark, if you came home after your kids were asleep, if you feel lucky to get overtime pay to support your aging parents or adult children, if you’re working part-time but praying for a full-time job, if your savings are as exhausted as you are, you have not been forgotten." Is he so ignorant to believe that these same concerns and pressures are not part of the working Medicaid poor's life? What a jerk.
12
So Trump is a felon who admitted taking billions of dollars from investors for his casinos so that he could take the casino companies into chapter 11 and stiff his creditors. Mulvaney said, "taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft." So his boss is now our thief-in-chief. Good work Mulvaney.
8
"41 percent, of Medicaid recipients, are white"
Those who voted for Trump may get what they voted for.
Elections have consequences...
Those who voted for Trump may get what they voted for.
Elections have consequences...
3
Two thoughts.
One of the tenets of Republican conservatism is there are consequences to conduct and people shouldn't be shielded from those consequences. Therefore, I support the reduction and eventual elimination of Medicaid. Let all those lower class whites on Medicaid realize there are consequences to voting for Trump and the Republicans.
Second, Mulvaney, McConnell, Ryan and their ilk believe that Medicaid is a socialist hand out. They do not believe that prohibiting Medicare from bargaining with the drug companies for lower prices, limiting liability for nuclear plants that blow up and other forms of corporate welfare are not socialist hand outs.
One of the tenets of Republican conservatism is there are consequences to conduct and people shouldn't be shielded from those consequences. Therefore, I support the reduction and eventual elimination of Medicaid. Let all those lower class whites on Medicaid realize there are consequences to voting for Trump and the Republicans.
Second, Mulvaney, McConnell, Ryan and their ilk believe that Medicaid is a socialist hand out. They do not believe that prohibiting Medicare from bargaining with the drug companies for lower prices, limiting liability for nuclear plants that blow up and other forms of corporate welfare are not socialist hand outs.
3
There are a lot of people on Medicaid who are neither Republican nor Democrat. There aren't two teams in America.
1
The US citizens would do well with Medicare for all. It would work and be an accomplishment for those who enact it. It would help all people in the country. It would bring the US into the 21st century. If all other countries can do it the US House and Senate should prove that the US can do it too.
4
Unfortunately, the affected population that voted for Trump will do it again because as Trump pointed out, he can shoot somebody in 5th Avenue and his followers will still be with him. Trump will find a way to blame Muslims, blacks or Latinos for it.
I just hope that the Senate sit down to negotiate across the aisle and delete the cruel parts of the Bill.
I just hope that the Senate sit down to negotiate across the aisle and delete the cruel parts of the Bill.
3
The use of numbers here is specious--lying with statistics. If, let's say, 30 million whites get assistance, that's 10% of the white population (mol); if 30 million blacks get assistance, that's more like 100% of the black population. This "fake news" is the kind of dishonesty I have come to expect from this newspaper as a whole, but not from its few honorable survivors among whom I have counted Mr. Edsall...until today.
1
Well, of course your facts are true, but it doesn't take you to tell us so. More white people than people of color are eligible for Medicaid because there are more white people in this country. But what does it matter? People in need are still people in need. You might ask yourself why a larger percentage of people of color than white people need assistance. Unless you are saying they are lazier?
We were all little once. We received care for nothing. Once we grow up we do the same for others. That's the way society works. Some are healthy, strong and have the means to aid those whose youth or old age or vunerability, for whatever reason, necessitates care.
6
The Trump - Ryan - McConnell Health Plan,
AKA, “Let’s Make America Great Again,”
AKA, “G-d Help the Rich, Poor People Can Always Beg.”
AKA, “Let’s Make America Great Again,”
AKA, “G-d Help the Rich, Poor People Can Always Beg.”
2
For Thomas Edsall, his readers and for the editors of the New York Times Book review: get a copy of and read Nancy Maclean's just published "Democracy in Chains" (Viking Press).
Well, the President at least isn't lying this time if you consider that his use of the word "great" in this case means "unusual, considerable or extreme in degree" and not "wonderful, first-rate, very good."
1
So the 3-ytrillion the GOP took from surplus Medicare payments for the Iraq war is theft. I believe Mulvaney voted for that theft. Maybe he is talking about the Trump bankruptcies? Or tacking 25% of middle class income in Federal taxes vs 15% for billionaires is theft. I think so
4
Thank you. This piece is packed with information which really targets what the Republicans are trying to do to their constituents.
Mulvaney would not be someone that I would every believe. On anything.
Mulvaney would not be someone that I would every believe. On anything.
3
Mick Mulvaney's views on the budget and on government are truly some of the most despicable view around, and as Edsall proves, they are based on boldface lies of the most deplorable sort. Here's hoping that Mulvaney will one day face a reckoning for all the slanderous statements he has made about hard working Americans who happen to get some meager assistance from our stingy government.
5
Thank you so much Mr. Edsall, I was waiting for someone, anyone, to put together the facts that you have in your piece. Apart from the fact that it appears in the NYT, how can we educate the 52% of racist white people that Medicaid is NOT a welfare program and that them and their loved ones are the greatest beneficiaries? I have book marked your piece and will refer to it each time an idiotic trump supporter spouts racist garbage.
3
"The Mitch McConnell Sinkhole"
Aw, gosh... From this title, I was kinda hoping he was about to go under.
Aw, gosh... From this title, I was kinda hoping he was about to go under.
5
Racism, it seems is at the heart of national Republican politics. This is especially so with the 115th Congress & the trump administration. Their opinions on race & on who takes advantage of government programs is their guiding light for their destructive policies. Truth & facts have no place in their consideration, especially when they fly in the face of current GOP dogma.
Welfare (a dirty word in America today) is the domain of African, Hispanic & Native Americans according to this dogma. These are society's bottom feeders & white America will not have to stand by & take it anymore!
This is not only a callous & venomous view of our country today. It's simply not true!
The truth is the wealthiest Americans are the biggest beneficiaries of government largess. Much of it comes in the form of tax breaks for businesses & low taxes on investment income. While these "breaks" are available for everyone, only the wealthy are in a position to take advantage of these entitlements.
Welfare (a dirty word in America today) is the domain of African, Hispanic & Native Americans according to this dogma. These are society's bottom feeders & white America will not have to stand by & take it anymore!
This is not only a callous & venomous view of our country today. It's simply not true!
The truth is the wealthiest Americans are the biggest beneficiaries of government largess. Much of it comes in the form of tax breaks for businesses & low taxes on investment income. While these "breaks" are available for everyone, only the wealthy are in a position to take advantage of these entitlements.
4
Weirdly enough, I think this has the potential to be a "great, great surprise" only for the Republican party establishment and their clientele. Namely those who regularly shovel the slop into the trough so that their pet politicians can greedily gulp it up. And just like those pigs I used to throw the slop into the pig trough as a kid, the pigs would crowd in trying with all their might to force the others pigs out lest they themselves lose a single gulp.
What needs to happen, what really MUST happen is an image so vivid, so repulsive, so unforgettable that most every one of us simply cannot look away or forget. Just like the Grenfell Tower in London. And I believe - I hope this seven-year-long scheme can come to be just that thing.
In the immortal words of Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, "Overreachin' Don't Pay."
So it has gradually dawned on white middle America once the Obama part of the ObamaCare left the stage, and the Care part became a normal and essential thing, and not solely a radioactive emoticon, that the people who would be hurt by this very slop-swill arrangement would NOT be *those* people, but themselves. And for What? And for Whom?
The sheer, audacious, naked scurrilousness of it all is causing a collective gasp and just the beginnings of a retch. God help us, maybe we're halfway there. Grenfell Tower here we come.
What needs to happen, what really MUST happen is an image so vivid, so repulsive, so unforgettable that most every one of us simply cannot look away or forget. Just like the Grenfell Tower in London. And I believe - I hope this seven-year-long scheme can come to be just that thing.
In the immortal words of Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, "Overreachin' Don't Pay."
So it has gradually dawned on white middle America once the Obama part of the ObamaCare left the stage, and the Care part became a normal and essential thing, and not solely a radioactive emoticon, that the people who would be hurt by this very slop-swill arrangement would NOT be *those* people, but themselves. And for What? And for Whom?
The sheer, audacious, naked scurrilousness of it all is causing a collective gasp and just the beginnings of a retch. God help us, maybe we're halfway there. Grenfell Tower here we come.
3
It's nice to finally see what conservatives really do with power. The upward redistribution of wealth since Reagan is about tax cuts for the rich combined with spending cuts for the poor.
Why do conservatives vote against their own economic interests? Because abortion, guns, race and immigration override their own pocketbook, perhaps?
Why do conservatives vote against their own economic interests? Because abortion, guns, race and immigration override their own pocketbook, perhaps?
1
Maybe we are looking at republicans the wrong way.
Maybe they don't hate minorities, but actually hate the needy.
Young or old, black or white, if you need their help, they hate you.
They hate the needy because denying them help forces them to acknowledge their own selfishness.
They hate the needy because it forces them to choose between their religious and/or moral obligations to help the poor and unfortunate, and their desire to obtain and hold onto wealth.
How do you claim to be a good person when you refuse to help those that cry for your help? It's much easier to be a good person when no one asks anything of you.
Then again, President Obama was far from needy but they hate him as if he was the antichrist. Maybe the fact that he wanted to help the needy was more of a factor than his color.
Maybe they don't hate minorities, but actually hate the needy.
Young or old, black or white, if you need their help, they hate you.
They hate the needy because denying them help forces them to acknowledge their own selfishness.
They hate the needy because it forces them to choose between their religious and/or moral obligations to help the poor and unfortunate, and their desire to obtain and hold onto wealth.
How do you claim to be a good person when you refuse to help those that cry for your help? It's much easier to be a good person when no one asks anything of you.
Then again, President Obama was far from needy but they hate him as if he was the antichrist. Maybe the fact that he wanted to help the needy was more of a factor than his color.
6
Republicans, so called "conservatives," have a hard time conceiving of human societies as anything more than a random collection of two types of people: "producers," who generate wealth (mostly for themselves, since anything else would be "theft") and "takers," who receive much of that wealth as hand-outs from the government so they don't have to work (remember, back in 2012 Mitt Romney said 47 percent of the American population is made up of "takers" hungry for government handouts). Thus, the collective or social institutions of an advanced human society are an example of theft on a grand scale, in which the takers deprive the producers of what is rightfully (and exclusively) "theirs."
Producers, especially rich producers, demanding tax cuts is fully justified, since no one is entitled to wealth that they have not produced. Poor people who complain about Medicaid cuts are doing so illegitimately, since Medicaid payments are taken from producers.
Anyone reading the New Testament could see that this worldview is deeply anti-Christian, and also contravenes the values of the greatest non-western civilizations, such as China, which have emphasized the duties that the individual owes to his/her family and society.
John Donne said: "No man is an island." 21st century Republicans simply don't believe it.
Producers, especially rich producers, demanding tax cuts is fully justified, since no one is entitled to wealth that they have not produced. Poor people who complain about Medicaid cuts are doing so illegitimately, since Medicaid payments are taken from producers.
Anyone reading the New Testament could see that this worldview is deeply anti-Christian, and also contravenes the values of the greatest non-western civilizations, such as China, which have emphasized the duties that the individual owes to his/her family and society.
John Donne said: "No man is an island." 21st century Republicans simply don't believe it.
5
The problem is that many people resent the possibility that someone who doesn't work as hard as they do is getting something they're not, or that someone who doesn't work at all is getting anything at all. The way to solve this is a single-payer system that covers everybody, rich and poor alike, from cradle to grave. You work, you pay in. When you need it, it's there. Those unemployed who are physically capable of working should have to participate in some sort of public service work instead. Once everyone is paying in and everyone is drawing the benefits, the objections will stop because the "welfare" objection becomes moot. The rich will still be able to get better care than the rest of us, or at least cut the line, never fear. But everyone else would not have to fear medical bankruptcy for themselves or their children.
7
Congress should pass a law that says "If you cannot afford or obtain health insurance, you will automatically be enrolled in the Congressional Health Care Plan". It's only right and fair that Americans receive the same care that their elected public servants receive.
5
Those who support Trump and the GOP at large don't mind receiving federal benefits i.e. Medicaid. They have a problem when others whom don't look like them or think like them receive the same federal benefits. The GOP have their own base voting against their own self interest. A rising tide lifts all boats, canoes and yachts alike.
5
Kentucky, Mitch McConnell's home state which keeps reelecting him, has a huge population saved from illness and or death thanks to medicaid expansion and Obama care. And yet, they feel "conflicted on who to detest more, the new TrumpCare bill or Obamacare." You can't make this stuff up... I have lost patience and compassion with this kind of mindset. They can rot, for all I care, but they shouldn't take the rest of us down with them.
5
Who cares what race someone is if they need care???? People who need help are people who need help. Period. While attempting to disprove myths about Medicaid, this article plays exactly into the racist playbook. If the statistics were different and more black or brown people were on Medicaid would it then be o.k. to cut it???
4
No, it wouldnt be okay to cut it. But the article is pointing out both the prejudices behind people being willing to make the cuts and why they are factually wrong. So it emphasizes the blind hatred Republicans have when they want to cut Medicaid. White person thinking: "not my grandpa, but its okay to cut off that black grandpa"!
2
I wish this vicious partisan nothing but failure in his cruel attempts to take health care away from struggling people. I shall never forgive the stolen Supreme Court seat. I shall never forgive his contemptuous and racist treatment of our gracious and elegant president Barack Obama. I shall never forget the image of Republicans ignoring and walking past anguished Sandy Hook parents holding photos of their slain kindergartners so they could into the Congress and vote more guns and more guns. I shall strive to see that the snake Mitch McConnell succeeds at nothing he attempts. He promised to show us how Republicans can govern and it is a promise he is keeping.
10
About 42% of Republicans still think that Obama wasn't born in the US. If you ever doubted the effectiveness of daily propaganda, that should disavow you of the notion.
The myth that the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid are simply giveaways to the African American community is another myth. But a longstanding one. As solid in stature as the black welfare queen driving a Caddy. It just doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean many Americans don't think it's true.
When you've had all chance at upward mobility destroyed by virtue of the wealthy sending your living wage manufacturing job overseas. When college now costs $60,000 a year at a private school, what are you left with? Your God, your guns, and the notion that you're superior to "them." Whoever "they" are.
Which is why the myth of giveaways to African Americans persist.
Trouble is the data doesn't support it, which is why this "health care" bill - which is nothing more than a tax cut for the rich who don't need it, is a problem. It's going to inflict pain on the very people who vote for the smarmy McConnells of this world. You know, Senators who will protect their "freedoms."
So it's a rubber hitting the white road moment for the Republicans. May they drive that political stake deep into their party's heart and keep hammering until there is no one left in the room by the Kool Aid drinking few.
Go gettem' Mitch!
The myth that the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid are simply giveaways to the African American community is another myth. But a longstanding one. As solid in stature as the black welfare queen driving a Caddy. It just doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean many Americans don't think it's true.
When you've had all chance at upward mobility destroyed by virtue of the wealthy sending your living wage manufacturing job overseas. When college now costs $60,000 a year at a private school, what are you left with? Your God, your guns, and the notion that you're superior to "them." Whoever "they" are.
Which is why the myth of giveaways to African Americans persist.
Trouble is the data doesn't support it, which is why this "health care" bill - which is nothing more than a tax cut for the rich who don't need it, is a problem. It's going to inflict pain on the very people who vote for the smarmy McConnells of this world. You know, Senators who will protect their "freedoms."
So it's a rubber hitting the white road moment for the Republicans. May they drive that political stake deep into their party's heart and keep hammering until there is no one left in the room by the Kool Aid drinking few.
Go gettem' Mitch!
5
Trump has a chance to live up to his campaign promises of medical care for all.
Yes, they were vague, but he has a mandate of sorts to put something together that might actually help the poor white patriarchs (and matriarchs), viciously hated by liberals and NY Times pundits, who voted for something different.
Trump might actually provide real leadership by suggesting a phase-in of universal health care, what Obama failed to deliver, with the cooperation of both Republicans and Democrats.
You have a hard time imagining that? But isn't such thinking outside the box what a real leader is supposed to do?
Perhaps it won't happen. But it's clearly what Trump voters actually want.
And the fact that it won't happen is actually proof that democracy is already dead. What gets passed is what is approved by lobbyists for the health care industry.
The health care industry wants to protect its profits and the incomes of those at the top of the income distribution who have traditionally contributed to Republicans in the hope that the poor wouldn't understand.
Smaller government? Yes that's a simple slogan recycled by Republicans for generations. It means virtually nothing.
It is time to replace the old Republican theology with a new political vision, one that actually puts the interests of the poor people first.
Is Trump up to the task? Or is he the buffoon that liberals make him out to be?
Of course, both sides could be wrong. All politicians might be corrupt to the core.
Yes, they were vague, but he has a mandate of sorts to put something together that might actually help the poor white patriarchs (and matriarchs), viciously hated by liberals and NY Times pundits, who voted for something different.
Trump might actually provide real leadership by suggesting a phase-in of universal health care, what Obama failed to deliver, with the cooperation of both Republicans and Democrats.
You have a hard time imagining that? But isn't such thinking outside the box what a real leader is supposed to do?
Perhaps it won't happen. But it's clearly what Trump voters actually want.
And the fact that it won't happen is actually proof that democracy is already dead. What gets passed is what is approved by lobbyists for the health care industry.
The health care industry wants to protect its profits and the incomes of those at the top of the income distribution who have traditionally contributed to Republicans in the hope that the poor wouldn't understand.
Smaller government? Yes that's a simple slogan recycled by Republicans for generations. It means virtually nothing.
It is time to replace the old Republican theology with a new political vision, one that actually puts the interests of the poor people first.
Is Trump up to the task? Or is he the buffoon that liberals make him out to be?
Of course, both sides could be wrong. All politicians might be corrupt to the core.
1
By now, anyone paying attention should know how atrocious the Republican bills to "repeal and replace Obamacare" really are. There is no rational defense, fiscally or morally, of what they're trying to do. The amazing thing is that as awful as their bills are, the republicans in congress don't care. They just keep at it. They don't care how many poor or unlucky people would be hurt as long as the very rich get their tax cut. The moral and ideological bankruptcy of republican party is just about complete.
3
The GOP is the part that insists upon taking our tax dollars and redistributing them to their friends in corporate America. They may not be taking the money directly from us but when they give tax breaks to businesses that earn more than enough money to overpay their CEOs, to the very wealthy, and then deny us help we need or tell us that we're takers, they are robbing us. In case the GOP has forgotten it, we pay their salaries and that's far more money than most of us will ever see for our work. They have contacts that we will never have. They do not live through prolonged periods of unemployment, spend their savings to pay medical bills or survive unemployment. All they have to do to get a job is call a contact from their campaign days or from an event they attended, or from an industry that they helped out and they have a job.
How dare they tell us we don't work hard enough. How dare they say that we don't know the cost of medical care. We may not know the exact price because no one does, but we know the cost: sometimes it's our entire nest egg. And sometimes the cost, when we can't afford the monthly premiums, the co-pays, and so on, is our lives. There is no reason other than greed, selfishness, and a complete lack of humanity, for the GOP to try and rip away the little bit of a safety net we have. Then again, maybe they like killing people's parents, children, hopes, and dreams.
How dare they tell us we don't work hard enough. How dare they say that we don't know the cost of medical care. We may not know the exact price because no one does, but we know the cost: sometimes it's our entire nest egg. And sometimes the cost, when we can't afford the monthly premiums, the co-pays, and so on, is our lives. There is no reason other than greed, selfishness, and a complete lack of humanity, for the GOP to try and rip away the little bit of a safety net we have. Then again, maybe they like killing people's parents, children, hopes, and dreams.
3
While I often find your articles informative they are usually full of texted quotes from various experts and tend to get off track of the main theme. Also they tend to be less artful at taking a position than this one giving the reader the opportunity to draw conclusions from an array of sources. This column is different and goes straight to the heart of the issue (and obfuscation and heartlessness of Republicans like Mulvaney) providing excellent and comprehensive support of your position. As we also see in some comments to your column the misunderstandings adding to obfuscation by Republicans is the general public's confusions about the differences between Medicaid and Medicare. These could have been spelled out quickly somewhere in your column.
1
This is shocking, but the even more compelling argument against Mulvaney's view that medicaid recipients are thieves - which was not made here - is that many of these "thieves" receiving Medicaid and Medicare "welfare" are taxpaying citizens, including many who have paid far more into the system in taxes than they might receive in the form of Medicaid and Medicare support. After 45 years of paying taxes and hefty insurance premiums while remaining healthy enough to rarely need a doctor, I was recently diagnosed with cancer, and now my insurance company and Medicare are paying my huge medical bills–although these bills are not even close to what I paid in taxes and premiums over those 45 years. By Mulvaney's logic, I'm stealing from both the government and my insurance company. This is absurd! I'm convinced that the actual rational for Mulvaney's position is purely and simply racist.
The rich have been stealing from their workers for the past 30 years. When the GOP began to attack unions, worker wages began to stagnate. More and more states brainwashed the ignorant into thinking "right to work" laws are a good thing. In fact these are "right to pay lower and lower wages" laws.
2
Giving Republicans what they want may be the cure to Republicanism. Maybe we should stop fighting them? Almost nothing they can do is unfixable, except all out war.
And it goes on in a nation of wealthy people that members of a political party that sponges off of the wealth and the wealthy listen exclusively to a demon in their heads that tells them all lower income or no income people are lazy, immoral, and irresponsible. That they know this with an absolute certainty that reams of counterfactual research by credible institutions cannot displace the inner prejudices that work in their brains. Nice people give these self serving leaders the benefit of a doubt that there may be something seriously wrong with their prejudiced brains that keeps them from having feelings for other humans who are forced by political, by economic and by social conditions to struggle to survive. To say that the nation cannot afford to provide better prospects for low income people is an inexcusable reason for prejudiced neglect of our own citizens.
The rhetorical approach to attacking this bill is in terms of cruelty and morality. That argument is reasonable but unpersuasive to those who condemn liberal "bleeding hearts" and is unpersuasive to the angry whites full of resentment about their (mostly false) idea that they support others who are undeserving. For some reason Fox and the Republican Party has persuade many whites that their own families aren' recipients of what the G.O.P. wants to cut. We need to keep pointing out that yes, they are.
But more than that bit of True News, it may be more persuasive to push the morally neutral yet very true idea that Medicaid and insurance generally is fiscally smarter, even for those not on Medicaid and not in another person's insurance pool. People without insurance cost taxpayers more than people with insurance. The only way out of this is to tell people who can't pay to go die. We may become a society that does this, but since we are not there yet, the uninsured are a major expense.
In general, the argument that may persuade those who despise bleeding hearts is less likely to be, But your heart should bleed also. It is more likely to work if we say Invest (for example, in schools and thus our workforce) than Give. It is more likely to persuade if we point out that insured preventive care up front will save all of us money, and that uninsured people with no way to treat, say Tuberculosis, is a bad idea for all of us.
But more than that bit of True News, it may be more persuasive to push the morally neutral yet very true idea that Medicaid and insurance generally is fiscally smarter, even for those not on Medicaid and not in another person's insurance pool. People without insurance cost taxpayers more than people with insurance. The only way out of this is to tell people who can't pay to go die. We may become a society that does this, but since we are not there yet, the uninsured are a major expense.
In general, the argument that may persuade those who despise bleeding hearts is less likely to be, But your heart should bleed also. It is more likely to work if we say Invest (for example, in schools and thus our workforce) than Give. It is more likely to persuade if we point out that insured preventive care up front will save all of us money, and that uninsured people with no way to treat, say Tuberculosis, is a bad idea for all of us.
2
Mr. Mulvaney perfectly describes some people I know; he apparently has not met them. They are grateful for Obamacare, though we could do much better:
"So if you left for work this morning in the dark, if you came home after your kids were asleep, if you feel lucky to get overtime pay to support your aging parents or adult children, if you’re working part-time but praying for a full-time job, if your savings are as exhausted as you are"
Republicans are taking pennies from working stiffs to give to the already wealthy.
"So if you left for work this morning in the dark, if you came home after your kids were asleep, if you feel lucky to get overtime pay to support your aging parents or adult children, if you’re working part-time but praying for a full-time job, if your savings are as exhausted as you are"
Republicans are taking pennies from working stiffs to give to the already wealthy.
3
Many people commenting here are glossing over the notion of percentages. The only percentages that count are based on per capita. Sure, most people on Medicaid are white. But based on the percentage of African Americans in America overall, there are more "per capita" African Americans on Medicaid than whites.
Yes, if you care about race with respect to making arguments such as: African Americans are more likely to take from the government dole than do whites, you are correct in saying that it should be measured per capita. If you care about absolute numbers, i.e. the program helps more whites than it does African Americans, you are wrong. If there were 100 African Americans in America and they all received Medicaid that still wouldn't amount to the dollars spent on whites, your per capita argument is rubbish. You are attempting to divide the population to point out that a higher percentage of a certain racial group receive benefits rather noting that one racial group comprises a larger population of the overall group receiving benefits. Your per capita argument is simply another way of saying that "others" are taking the benefits because a larger percentage of their population are recipients. Thanks for proving the point.
I think what you are trying to say is that there is a larger percentage of African Americans on Medicaid than whites. But this misses the point. Edsall is talking about politics, about votes. His point is that since there are more whites than blacks on Medicaid, more white VOTERS will be hurt by the Republicans attack on Medicaid. Since these voters were mostly Republican in the last election, this may be bad for the Republicans.
But here is a "per capita" statistic for you. " Health care reforms associated with the ACA reduced the percentage of uninsured African Americans from 24.1 percent to 16.1 percent between 2013 and 2014."
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2015/01/20/104494/5-ke...
But here is a "per capita" statistic for you. " Health care reforms associated with the ACA reduced the percentage of uninsured African Americans from 24.1 percent to 16.1 percent between 2013 and 2014."
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2015/01/20/104494/5-ke...
1
You miss the point. Edsell is not talking about who "deserves" government insurance. He's talking about the electoral consequence of the GOP plan.
1
Thank you for emphasizing the fact that the highest percent of recipients are white.
It's a pet peeve of mine that when the media shows pictures of people who are struggling in this country, the vast majority seem to be minorities.
This stigmatizes minorities, gives the perception that most social services are consumed by them (creating the us as givers vs. them as takers), and does not do justice to the large population of struggling whites.
It's a pet peeve of mine that when the media shows pictures of people who are struggling in this country, the vast majority seem to be minorities.
This stigmatizes minorities, gives the perception that most social services are consumed by them (creating the us as givers vs. them as takers), and does not do justice to the large population of struggling whites.
2
It's hard to believe that those in republican leadership positions do not have a single relative in a nursing home being paid for by medicaid. They're paying out of their own pockets to provide care for every elderly relative they have? Maybe they can afford it, but people with no jobs in blue or red states cannot.
1
Nursing home residents on Medicaid have worked all their lives and paid into the system. They deserve respect in their golden years. What kind of country are we if we don't respect our seniors in their time of need?
3
The biggest problem that I see is that spending on health care in the U.S. already is out of proportion to the size of our population compared to other affluent, Western countries and it is only going to get worse. The costs of this ever-growing elephant will undermine whatever system we have, be it the ACA or a Republican replacement (or lack of one) . Demographics (an aging population) combined with poor national health habits (obesity, lack of exercise) and a growing drug-use problem ultimately are going to force this country to ask how much of a share of its national wealth should go to the health sector of the economy. At some point living in a miasmic bubble of deficit spending will not allow us to deny that some real choices have to be made. We are now at the stage of debating which means of denying reality has the most political traction.
Some of the other countries have similar obesity, drinking and smoking statistics, e.g. Australia. The REAL difference is that they ALL have an efficient, universal, government run health care system.
1
It's unfortunate that in rejecting the GOP's - specifically Mulvaney's - demeaning attack on socioeconomic groups (disporportionately non-Euro descent), the article necessarily cites socioeconomic and racial composition of Medicaid recipients. Government's role is to do for all of us that which we cannot do alone - education, transportation systems, old age security, health care. Today's Republican representatives reject this model and should be summarily removed from their positions of power, starting at the top. They workship raw power and greed, serving no one but themselves.
3
Professor Edsall is right about much of what he has written. However, by failing to discuss the impact of the ACA on the independent businessman, he has missed the mark. My firm pays both IRS Form 941 taxes and provides health insurance for our employees. Medicaid ultimately comes out of our 941 taxes.
While I am pleased that Ohio expanded Medicaid coverage, it is still the elephant in the room. Rural hospitals have stayed open and those with opiod issues are able to receive treatment.
I don't mind keeping rural hospitals open and enabling those who need help to receive it, but I am concerned about the able bodied young people who have (apparently) opted out of working for a living. Under the ACA, it seems to me that many of the newly insured are the able bodied young people who have chosen not work.
Likewise, when the mandate and subsidies go away, many of these young people will no longer opt to be insured. When the penalties are removed, "the young invincible mentality" will prevail (once upon a time I was one of them).
As a result of young people opting out of this insurance program, we NEED TO REMIND progressives and the mouthpieces in the mainstream news media that THIS IS A VOLUNTARY ACTION. No one is denied insurance coverage, it is the individual who has declined to enroll.
Unfortunately, these misconceptions result from being around (liberal?) academics most of the time, rather than considering people like me (who are where the rubber meets the road).
While I am pleased that Ohio expanded Medicaid coverage, it is still the elephant in the room. Rural hospitals have stayed open and those with opiod issues are able to receive treatment.
I don't mind keeping rural hospitals open and enabling those who need help to receive it, but I am concerned about the able bodied young people who have (apparently) opted out of working for a living. Under the ACA, it seems to me that many of the newly insured are the able bodied young people who have chosen not work.
Likewise, when the mandate and subsidies go away, many of these young people will no longer opt to be insured. When the penalties are removed, "the young invincible mentality" will prevail (once upon a time I was one of them).
As a result of young people opting out of this insurance program, we NEED TO REMIND progressives and the mouthpieces in the mainstream news media that THIS IS A VOLUNTARY ACTION. No one is denied insurance coverage, it is the individual who has declined to enroll.
Unfortunately, these misconceptions result from being around (liberal?) academics most of the time, rather than considering people like me (who are where the rubber meets the road).
1. Pricing insurance out of affordability is tantamount to denying it.
2. Let's see some statistics, some numbers on these health young people who could get a decent job, but refuse to work. I suspect they are largely figments of your imagination.
2. Let's see some statistics, some numbers on these health young people who could get a decent job, but refuse to work. I suspect they are largely figments of your imagination.
1
On the other hand, I suspect that many of the young you feel are not working actually are working, but are in the low paying jobs at the beginning of their working lives, and we know there are now many more of these jobs than the higher paying jobs (unions brought us) a few decades ago.
Still, they need to pay their share now or we all pay for them. The mandates were not strong enough and need to be a adjusted. We will pay for their decisions one way or another, but the cheaper way by far is to insure them and encourage preventive care.
From what I understand we never got to the full employers mandate.
If we're all going to have healthcare, we ALL must pay our share.
Still, they need to pay their share now or we all pay for them. The mandates were not strong enough and need to be a adjusted. We will pay for their decisions one way or another, but the cheaper way by far is to insure them and encourage preventive care.
From what I understand we never got to the full employers mandate.
If we're all going to have healthcare, we ALL must pay our share.
1
Edsall writes that, "contrary to the view that Medicaid is a welfare program, in real life Medicaid has become a financial, emotional and practical lifesaver for millions of Americans."
So when African Americans are on Medicaid, Edsall derides it as "welfare." When "Americans" (i.e. whites) are on Medicaid, Edsall praises it as a "lifesaver."
So when African Americans are on Medicaid, Edsall derides it as "welfare." When "Americans" (i.e. whites) are on Medicaid, Edsall praises it as a "lifesaver."
1
Edsall does no such thing. Please read a bit more carefully.
2
Thank you for an excellent op-ed. Reality, reality, reality…… in a country where half of its citizens are indifferent to sound decision-making based upon an understanding of objective reality, how big a dose of it can be persuasive?
The Republicans’ dogged effort to repeal the ACA increasingly resembles a proposed murder-suicide. But the GOP points a handgun at its own temple and takes the first shot, expecting the electorate to follow suit.
It appears to me that the decades of GOP demagoguery concerning healthcare in the US is only succeeding in making a strong argument for establishing a single-payer healthcare system.
At this point, it would be very interesting to see a financial comparison between the costs and benefits of the chimeric ACA - a plan that seeks to preserve a public-private partnership with the insurance industry – and a “Medicare For All” plan that assures all Americans the right to high quality healthcare on an equal basis.
The Republicans’ dogged effort to repeal the ACA increasingly resembles a proposed murder-suicide. But the GOP points a handgun at its own temple and takes the first shot, expecting the electorate to follow suit.
It appears to me that the decades of GOP demagoguery concerning healthcare in the US is only succeeding in making a strong argument for establishing a single-payer healthcare system.
At this point, it would be very interesting to see a financial comparison between the costs and benefits of the chimeric ACA - a plan that seeks to preserve a public-private partnership with the insurance industry – and a “Medicare For All” plan that assures all Americans the right to high quality healthcare on an equal basis.
2
I thought we were a Christian country where the Good Samaritan (not Jew) gave aid to the needy (requiring assistance) while the rich Pharisees walked by because they would not be paid back.
What taxpayer would trade places with someone who needs Medicaid?
What taxpayer would trade places with someone who needs Medicaid?
I would agree with Mulvaney to this extent - "Taking money from someone without an intention to pay" (them) "is not debt. It is theft." As in the 1%.
2
Republicans aren't interested in facts and policy minutiae; only hyperbole and striking emotional tirade are permitted to whip up reaction and hysteria in the populace. Mulvaney is where he's at for being the most vile, hateful and spiteful of Tea Party vengeance initiators, and only a moderating Congress can push against his rapacious inclination to damage the nation. How much of his verbal invective will remain influential in the policy sphere is open to debate.
2
Mr. Mulvaney wants US to go back to Nineteen Century when there were no taxes, unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. I just wonder when the majority of white people in the south and mid-west will wake up and see what Mr. Mulvaney and Republicans stand for.
3
Uncharacteristically, Edsall makes a number of errors in logic:
1. Racial - Yes, 41% of Medicaid is white. This country is 65% white. Blacks are almost twice a share of Medicaid (22%) as they are in the population. Faulty logic to ignore this. Edsall tries to buttress his point by looking at states where white usage of Medicaid is even higher. But again, he picks states like NE that have higher-than-average white populations.
2. Semantics - Atypically, he spends a lot of time talking about euphemisms like "social insurance" or a "safety net" rather than "welfare". The facts are that it's a means tested program (like food stamps).
3. Elderly - He tries to gain sympathy by suggesting that a large portion of Medicaid recipients are elderly. In reality, only 9% of Medicaid recipients are over 65. Most are quite young.
Most egregiously, he implies this kind of "me too" attitude - if people support the most desperate recipients - e.g. children with autism, Down syndrome, etc. - then they should support everyone else. But this is simply flawed. Healthcare is a necessity - just like housing or food. In the spirit of compromise, I can accept the need to help those who simply cannot help themselves - elderly, children, disabled. But at some point, shouldn't people be responsible for their own outcomes in life. Education is the great emancipator. Yet, roughly 20% still fail to graduate high school. Is it really society's obligation to pay for such bad choices ?
1. Racial - Yes, 41% of Medicaid is white. This country is 65% white. Blacks are almost twice a share of Medicaid (22%) as they are in the population. Faulty logic to ignore this. Edsall tries to buttress his point by looking at states where white usage of Medicaid is even higher. But again, he picks states like NE that have higher-than-average white populations.
2. Semantics - Atypically, he spends a lot of time talking about euphemisms like "social insurance" or a "safety net" rather than "welfare". The facts are that it's a means tested program (like food stamps).
3. Elderly - He tries to gain sympathy by suggesting that a large portion of Medicaid recipients are elderly. In reality, only 9% of Medicaid recipients are over 65. Most are quite young.
Most egregiously, he implies this kind of "me too" attitude - if people support the most desperate recipients - e.g. children with autism, Down syndrome, etc. - then they should support everyone else. But this is simply flawed. Healthcare is a necessity - just like housing or food. In the spirit of compromise, I can accept the need to help those who simply cannot help themselves - elderly, children, disabled. But at some point, shouldn't people be responsible for their own outcomes in life. Education is the great emancipator. Yet, roughly 20% still fail to graduate high school. Is it really society's obligation to pay for such bad choices ?
3
Your qualifications are well stated, but not sure if 1) is relevant here because the argument at play isn't percentages of population, but overall percentages of a specific racial group.
2
Princeton, the assumptions in your critique contain some logic errors:
Why do you assume that health insurance should be contingent on employment or education at all? Our system is a historical accident -- no other developed nation links access to medical care with employment or education.
Why do you assume that paying for their insurance is a bigger burden than the social costs of leaving them unhealthy? If they get an epidemic disease, do you think the microbes will not infect virtuous citizens like yourself?
Do you understand that some illnesses are chronic an
Why do you assume that adults working without benefits must lack education? Lots of us have high school and college degrees and still end up in middle age doing part-time work, self-employment or contract work. Many of us are uninsurable on the individual market and cannot find full-time jobs with benefits.
Divorces, illnesses and layoffs can happen to anyone, and cause loss of health coverage. Do you think you have a crystal ball, or some magic immunity from life's unforeseeable misfortunes? Guess what? No one does. I'm sure Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI had no idea they were making "bad choices" when they decided the poor were unworthy of their aid. Hubris can be as deadly as disease.
Why do you assume that health insurance should be contingent on employment or education at all? Our system is a historical accident -- no other developed nation links access to medical care with employment or education.
Why do you assume that paying for their insurance is a bigger burden than the social costs of leaving them unhealthy? If they get an epidemic disease, do you think the microbes will not infect virtuous citizens like yourself?
Do you understand that some illnesses are chronic an
Why do you assume that adults working without benefits must lack education? Lots of us have high school and college degrees and still end up in middle age doing part-time work, self-employment or contract work. Many of us are uninsurable on the individual market and cannot find full-time jobs with benefits.
Divorces, illnesses and layoffs can happen to anyone, and cause loss of health coverage. Do you think you have a crystal ball, or some magic immunity from life's unforeseeable misfortunes? Guess what? No one does. I'm sure Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI had no idea they were making "bad choices" when they decided the poor were unworthy of their aid. Hubris can be as deadly as disease.
37
3. Could it be that only 9% of Medicaid recipients are over 65 is because those over 65 are on Medicare? Just askin'.
5
Mr. Edsall, you elided something important that is the distinction conservatives are drawing. Not sure if this omission was intentional but it goes to the crux of the matter.
Medicaid delivers a lot of services. The services you mention whites receiving are also received by non-whites, and likely in comparable numbers when key variables are accounted for.
What is distinctly unequal is the amount of Medicaid given to able bodied adults of each major ethnic group. That is what conservatives object to. Far more able bodied African Americans receive routine medical care through Medicaid than do able bodied whites. And that is the distinction you either purposely elided or didn't dig deep enough to understand.
Medicaid delivers a lot of services. The services you mention whites receiving are also received by non-whites, and likely in comparable numbers when key variables are accounted for.
What is distinctly unequal is the amount of Medicaid given to able bodied adults of each major ethnic group. That is what conservatives object to. Far more able bodied African Americans receive routine medical care through Medicaid than do able bodied whites. And that is the distinction you either purposely elided or didn't dig deep enough to understand.
1
What are your statistics for this statement?
2
This administration is lost in the miasma of personal attack, alternate facts, and distortions. Thank you Mr Edsall for you detailed line by line clearing up of the lies that the Trump administration is selling to a poorly informed electorate.
Well, gosh, I sure am glad that Mr. McConnell and Mr. Mulvaney are finally taking a look at all those shiftless white Medicaid welfare kings and queens who get these public handouts. I wonder if there is going to be any shift of support for new homeless shelters to house those who lose everything when the new health bill goes into effect, or the legal aid lawyers who will need to pick up the slack for the increased number of bankruptcies, or the pauper graves for those who die as a consequence of the bill's cuts or through suicide because the future has simply become too grim to face. They sure must be proud of their legal handiwork.
“Safety net” is cyclical; “welfare state” is structural. The question is whether the “natural” distribution of wealth in today’s economy is so different from yesterday’s that we have to start thinking differently about what’s cyclical and what’s structural.
So when I read articles about how the Republicans have a natural advantage in future elections because of their nationalism and white rage I need only think about the McConnell and Ryan health care travesties. I can see them trotting out a proposal for white's only Medicaid.
2
Hang on. The terminology around Medicaid is alarmingly imprecise here. It's important for everyone in this debate to understand the nature of the program and, for whatever difference it makes, Medicaid IS more akin to food stamps than to Medicare. References to Medicaid providing "care" do not help. There's very little doubt that too many Congressional Republicans don't understand this distinction (to say nothing of the President) but it appears that the poll takers quoted here don't grasp it either.
1
While we renegotiate maps of the road to a Neanderthal past, our competitors proceed toward the future with socialized health care and socialized higher education. The Republican Party has become the messianic proselytizer of cruelty, sadism, depravity and superstition,
8
Medicaid is ABSOLUTELY welfare -- it's not even remotely "insurance" -- but in the thousands of times I have posted about Medicaid over the years, I have always clearly stated that "most poor Americans are WHITE...most people on welfare are WHITE...most people on Medicaid are WHITE."
That is a clear fact, and nobody denies it.
However, you are wrong in believing that Americans oppose welfare and Medicaid -- especially for slackers, cheaters and fakers -- because they think everyone on it is black. They are just as upset about their white relatives who slack on welfare and Medicaid, as they are about strangers.
That is a clear fact, and nobody denies it.
However, you are wrong in believing that Americans oppose welfare and Medicaid -- especially for slackers, cheaters and fakers -- because they think everyone on it is black. They are just as upset about their white relatives who slack on welfare and Medicaid, as they are about strangers.
1
I for see no opposition whatsoever to medicaid were it to become a whites only program. I guess 60-70% is just not white enough. Just the thought that one non-white person might benefit from basic healthcare insurance is enough for Trump's deplorables to oppose it - even if it means their own elderly parents are tossed out of their nursing home beds.
6
You are 100% correct and none of it matters to the GOP.
4
My wife's grandmother spent over a million dollars of her own money on nursing home care before she eventually qualified for Medicaid. What would Mick Mulvaney and his ilk have said to her when, after nearly 10 years of paying out of pocket and exhausting her savings, she was broke but still, inconveniently for their vision of how things should be, alive?
4
Thank you for this thorough presentation Mr. Edsall. To paraphrase Rick Blaine in Casablanca in this crazy Trump world of ours the facts and data of one NYT columnist don't amount to a hill of beans for those who should be aware of them.
2
Are Republicans determined to destroy social insurance? Absolutely. Just consider the vulgar buffoon they are happy to have representing them in the Oval Office with the expectation that he will sign anything they slide across his empty desk in pursuit of his next photo op.
Republicans are craven and intellectually bankrupt.
Republicans are craven and intellectually bankrupt.
6
Thank you for giving lie to the arguments being used by Mulvaney & Co. Remarkably, and tellingly, they have made no effort to explain or to bring on board even their core constituency in support of this dog of a health bill. This president, who bristles when his ignorance is exposed by the NY Times, can offer nothing more substantive than "it's going to be great" or the ACA "is a disaster". The disaster is in the White House and the Republican Congress.
4
Ever since Reagan made the "welfare queen" public enemy number one during his 1976 presidential campaign programs like Medicaid have become identified with fraud and a program for minorities. In our FOX watching, right wing radio nation this article will fall on deaf ears.
2
But it is mostly rich white people who contribute to politicians. Rich white people will have more money to pay to rich, white politicians to pay for their campaigns to get re-elected and keep their cushy jobs that include full health coverage. It's a simple and unending American political process.
2
We can laugh at a clown who trips over his own efforts to entertain, but it is disgusting, if not terrifying, to read such illogic written by a cabinet-level appointee.
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft." Does this make the IRS the greatest thief? What about Congress looting Social Security funds?
"So if you left for work this morning in the dark, if you came home after your kids were asleep, if you feel lucky to get overtime pay to support your aging parents or adult children, if you’re working part-time but praying for a full-time job, if your savings are as exhausted as you are, you have not been forgotten." We in the govt are going to lift your spirits by announcing tax cuts for the wealthy. There, now doesn't that feel better?
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft." Does this make the IRS the greatest thief? What about Congress looting Social Security funds?
"So if you left for work this morning in the dark, if you came home after your kids were asleep, if you feel lucky to get overtime pay to support your aging parents or adult children, if you’re working part-time but praying for a full-time job, if your savings are as exhausted as you are, you have not been forgotten." We in the govt are going to lift your spirits by announcing tax cuts for the wealthy. There, now doesn't that feel better?
7
Regarding that picture of Mick Mulvaney. I know this is grossly off topic, but is there any male in Trump's administration (including Trump) who owns a suit that properly fits? It is silly to say, but the ill-fitting sartorial deficiency seems somehow to parallel the bumbling trajectory of the administration.
1
Perhaps now the dumb republican "base' starts realizing what's going on. Instead of "Make America Great Again" their posters should have said "Make America Weak Again" and should be signed "Putin". Russia wants us to be a second grade country, torn by internal dissensions, with sickly people (due to un-affordable health care), poorly educated (with DeVos in charge of destroying public education) and thus unable to handle advanced weapons and technology. God Save America!
2
Most Republican members of Congress suffer from the Lake Wobegone Effect. Lake Wobegone is “where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”.
It’s where we tend to overestimate our own skills, success, and performance in relation to others.
Congressional Republicans see themselves as superior, hard working, and entitled. Everyone else is a slacker, a taker, and a deadbeat.
That’s why it is so easy for them to righteously throw all but their “kind” (i.e. the wealthy) under the health care bus.
It’s where we tend to overestimate our own skills, success, and performance in relation to others.
Congressional Republicans see themselves as superior, hard working, and entitled. Everyone else is a slacker, a taker, and a deadbeat.
That’s why it is so easy for them to righteously throw all but their “kind” (i.e. the wealthy) under the health care bus.
Mulvaney is basically a nobody in the worst sense of the political world. An immature, shallow individual brought up from the South (as is half of Trump's cabinet) to quickly steal as much as possible for the GOP. They could not care less HOW they do it, they are just hired to do it.
4
Here's another bill renaming suggestion to go along with Warren Bufffet's "Relief for the Rich Act" : "Kill The Poor Act". the poor rarely vote republican and the fewer poor people there are to vote, the more the GOP can consolidate power to better serve the 1%.
6
“Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft.”
So, in the ideal Republican utopia there would be no taxes. Bridges and highways would last forever – and we would never again have to build new bridges or highways. Public education would be a thing of the past. No more defense spending. No more more of those pesky OSHA and EPA rules – those departments would be abolished. Banking rules? Gone. Wall Street can do what they please – and steal from the people – like they did prior to the last recession. Sick? That’s your problem. Stop complaining and die.
The saddest thing is not that the Republican party spouts this baloney – it’s that so many working class people who will be at the short end of the stick are enthusiastically supporting this nonsense. Like sheep being led to the slaughter.
Make American Stupid Again.
So, in the ideal Republican utopia there would be no taxes. Bridges and highways would last forever – and we would never again have to build new bridges or highways. Public education would be a thing of the past. No more defense spending. No more more of those pesky OSHA and EPA rules – those departments would be abolished. Banking rules? Gone. Wall Street can do what they please – and steal from the people – like they did prior to the last recession. Sick? That’s your problem. Stop complaining and die.
The saddest thing is not that the Republican party spouts this baloney – it’s that so many working class people who will be at the short end of the stick are enthusiastically supporting this nonsense. Like sheep being led to the slaughter.
Make American Stupid Again.
To Mr. Mulvany, in the phrasing of Dean Wurmer, "cruel, ignorant and dishonest is no way to go through life, son.''
4
People voted for them. Overwhelmingly!!! To repeal Obamacare was on his agenda and not a hidden secret. What we're people thinking????? You get what you voted for. I guess you can call me bitter. There will always be a next election. Maybe next time they think and stop mixing up bible and politics.
3
Mulvaney tries to separate taxpayers from Medicaid receipients when, in fact, a lot of Medicaid receipents are the working poor, ie they work and likely pay taxes, like payroll taxes, sales tax and likely some income tax too. So what he really means is "rich" taxpayers....no one should be fooled by this. And I find it rather astounding that the rich are so miserly, and feel so aggrieved and unduely burdened to have to pay a little extra, when many of them (Koch brothers, I am talking about you and your kind) have done everything possible to cut wages, reduce benefits and reduce hours taht make in nearly impossible for the average working class person to earn a living wage.
4
The only 'great, great surprise that many of us are waiting for is to end the majority of the GOP, aka Greed Over People, , and see the dangerous Apprentice-Pesident be kicked out of the White House. Believe me, believe me.
4
I just hate it when facts - so clearly presented by Edsall - get in the way of dog whistle and, in many cases, blatant racism. How can this Trumpian hack present his case with a straight face? And how can so many thousand Americans ignore the heart-wrenching stories and incontrovertible statistics? It won't be long before the spinners of this appalling McConnellian policy start shouting about "Fake News." May those spinners be consumed by their bitterness and ignorance.
1
This statement here is horrendous:
"Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina who is now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, promulgates the conservative view."
It is horrendous because it refers to the lie, supported by Mulvaney, that minorities make up the largest group of Medicaid recipients.
But you refer to it as the "CONSERVATIVE VIEW." So a lie, is simplified to the conservative view.
I see more and more of this nonsense in the media of accepting all "views" as equal, even when some are lies or horrid poor logic and distortions.
It is becoming "fake news" and bad journalism.
Please: remember the famous Confucius statement:
“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”
"Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina who is now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, promulgates the conservative view."
It is horrendous because it refers to the lie, supported by Mulvaney, that minorities make up the largest group of Medicaid recipients.
But you refer to it as the "CONSERVATIVE VIEW." So a lie, is simplified to the conservative view.
I see more and more of this nonsense in the media of accepting all "views" as equal, even when some are lies or horrid poor logic and distortions.
It is becoming "fake news" and bad journalism.
Please: remember the famous Confucius statement:
“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”
You are missing the point. Republicans hate the poor and middle class regardless of race or any other factor.
4
Mick Mulvaney is a Roman Catholic opposed to abortion, but calling the mother who delivers the child on Medicaid a "thief", and then call a child born disabled, who depends on Medicaid for expensive lifelong expert medical treatment and often with nursing home care, a "thief". Is that what Pope Francis teaches Mick, is that what the Bible and Jesus taught you?
And what do you call profit driven health insurers, who skim off 20-30% of your hard earned premiums before they even consider paying your medical bills? Oh wait, the premiums for your own excellent health care are paid for by the tax payers... are you going to repay the tax payers for them? If not, what does that make YOU, Mick?
And what do you call profit driven health insurers, who skim off 20-30% of your hard earned premiums before they even consider paying your medical bills? Oh wait, the premiums for your own excellent health care are paid for by the tax payers... are you going to repay the tax payers for them? If not, what does that make YOU, Mick?
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To be fair all members of Congress are required to purchase their HC through the ACA. They are on the DC Exchange. This guy needs a reality check. Too bad the same T supporters can't be gathered 15k-20k strong and be told the truth, but they would choose not to believe their ears. Maybe when Grandma comes to live on the couch they will see the light.
2
I recall Senator Grassley's warning about how Obamacare would "pull the plug on Grandma".
Republicans, including Grassley are literally scheming to do exactly that.
Republicans, including Grassley are literally scheming to do exactly that.
89
Pulling the plug on Grandma? That's not enough Congressional Republicans. They'd rather smother Grandma with her pillow, then charge her family for it.
2
More like Grandma's pulling the plug on Grandma.
Thanks Mr. Edsall. I believe that numbers don't lie, and that includes percentages. Very impressive PERCENTAGES too. But allow me to be perfectly honest with you, and this does not include all Trump voters. I daresay that the average Trump voter, and I am not pointing out any particulars, but generally they don't care about this. They don't so sad as it is to say. You are speaking / writing to the choir. But as usual, I am amazed by your writing.
1
The only thing that Mulvaney forgot to mention is that he is his source of income. It's good for him that he has the necessary financial resources that others do not for his future health care.
Obviously, after his years in Congress, he has been paid enough by lobbyists and big biz to afford to be self-pay for all of his future necessary medical treatments, including a nursing home, when his successors feel it's time to put him out to pasture. Here's to you Mick!
Obviously, after his years in Congress, he has been paid enough by lobbyists and big biz to afford to be self-pay for all of his future necessary medical treatments, including a nursing home, when his successors feel it's time to put him out to pasture. Here's to you Mick!
2
According to the article: 41% of recipients are white, 22% black, 25% hispanic.
According to the Wiki page on the racial make-up of the USA: 72.4% of the population are white, 12.6% are black and 16.3% are hispanic.
Let's do simple math to calculate, based on total population, who receive the most Medicaid?
White: 0.57
Black: 1.75
Hispanic: 1.53
So someone who is black is approximately three times more likely to be on Medicaid than someone who is white. While I totally agree that the Republicans use race-baiting to stir up white discontent against blacks obtaining Government assistance, the numbers above do prove that African-Americans receive a greater proportion of Medicaid spending per capita compared to whites.
Regardless, universal health care is the only way forwards.
According to the Wiki page on the racial make-up of the USA: 72.4% of the population are white, 12.6% are black and 16.3% are hispanic.
Let's do simple math to calculate, based on total population, who receive the most Medicaid?
White: 0.57
Black: 1.75
Hispanic: 1.53
So someone who is black is approximately three times more likely to be on Medicaid than someone who is white. While I totally agree that the Republicans use race-baiting to stir up white discontent against blacks obtaining Government assistance, the numbers above do prove that African-Americans receive a greater proportion of Medicaid spending per capita compared to whites.
Regardless, universal health care is the only way forwards.
4
Your math points up that African Americans are the most likely of these three groups to be poor (the sole criterion for eligibility), and whites a third less likely to be poor. What does that say about the US?
2
Yup all true. I've said it before and I'll say it again too many whites have demonstrated that they will cut off their nose to spite their face if they think in the process they will hurt blacks.
If America is to survive this Republican-Trumpian onslaught:
Protest and resist every day in every way!
Protest and resist every day in every way!
2
I firmly believe that we should be our brothers keeper, & I support Mr. Edsall premise that Medicaid is essential to help the poor & the aged. What bothers me & where I share Mr. Mulvaney’s position is the huge number of Black & Hispanic recipients of Medicaid, together they represent 47 % of those that receive Medicaid. White Americans are by far the most populous in the country, & while 41% seems a large percentage it’s not when you
compare it to the total population of White Americans, while the percentage of Blacks & Hispanics are huge when you take in their total population.What is also left out in mr. Edsall’s figures are what percentage of Medicaid White Americans are unable to work & what percentage of Black & Hispanics cannot work. This is where the Edsall premise falls apart, & Medicaid becomes welfare.
To borrow an old Native American saying,” give someone a fish he will have food for that day, teach him to fish & he will always have food.”this is where we failed Hispanics & Black Americans, we have fallen down on educating them and supplying opportunities for them to become self sufficient.To keep giving them fish,will not help retain Medicaid for those that truly need it.
compare it to the total population of White Americans, while the percentage of Blacks & Hispanics are huge when you take in their total population.What is also left out in mr. Edsall’s figures are what percentage of Medicaid White Americans are unable to work & what percentage of Black & Hispanics cannot work. This is where the Edsall premise falls apart, & Medicaid becomes welfare.
To borrow an old Native American saying,” give someone a fish he will have food for that day, teach him to fish & he will always have food.”this is where we failed Hispanics & Black Americans, we have fallen down on educating them and supplying opportunities for them to become self sufficient.To keep giving them fish,will not help retain Medicaid for those that truly need it.
The time for hardball is decades overdo.
The largely northern states need to stop transferring their taxpayer funds to keep deadbeat states like Alibama, Messysipping, Sour Carolina and the Sour South afloat on Northern taxpayer support.
It is they who assure elections for the Hatefuls: the mean, ignoramus, stupid Haters responsible for the misery of the 65% plus among us in the total population.
The largely northern states need to stop transferring their taxpayer funds to keep deadbeat states like Alibama, Messysipping, Sour Carolina and the Sour South afloat on Northern taxpayer support.
It is they who assure elections for the Hatefuls: the mean, ignoramus, stupid Haters responsible for the misery of the 65% plus among us in the total population.
5
My daddy, God rest his soul, always said, "When the Republicans are in office, hang on to your wallet." This crew is especially bad. They say they can't break their promise to their constituents to repeal Obama Care. But, they are really too scared to break their promise to their high donor overlords to repeal the ACA taxes. They are frankly willing to get behind the wheel of the truck and run it into a crowd. Greedy, cowards.,
6
South Carolina. Secede from our Union. Again.
Mitch McConnell will be remembered as the guy who let Obamacare become the law of the land so that his party could sabotage it and then take credit for killing it, all the while screaming "I told you so." All he had to do was work with Obama to save healthcare. But he is too small, too treasonous - just ask the Russians, whose opening to boost the supremely unqualified Trump is owed entirely to Congressional dysfunction - and simply too awful to do good when there were votes to be had by doing bad.
Mitch McConnell is the worst person in American politics. Even worse than the bozo he invited and allowed to hijack his party. Trump is his creation. McConnell is the captain of that sub in The Hunt for Red October who fires his torpedoes with the safeties off and dooms himself and his crew. He, with an assist from his gerrymandering friends, have made it look like we need a strongman to "shake things up," and now they have a guy at the head of their party whose tactical moves are, as McConnell reportedly says, "beyond stupid." What should you expect when your own moves are beyond evil?
Mitch McConnell is the worst person in American politics. Even worse than the bozo he invited and allowed to hijack his party. Trump is his creation. McConnell is the captain of that sub in The Hunt for Red October who fires his torpedoes with the safeties off and dooms himself and his crew. He, with an assist from his gerrymandering friends, have made it look like we need a strongman to "shake things up," and now they have a guy at the head of their party whose tactical moves are, as McConnell reportedly says, "beyond stupid." What should you expect when your own moves are beyond evil?
Get wait until Granny is kicked out of the Nursing Home. Talk about chickens coming home to roost. Maybe Ivanka will start a Home Health
company. Of course, only the Rich could afford it. Details, Details.
company. Of course, only the Rich could afford it. Details, Details.
1
Shrink the government to the size of a baby, then drown the baby. This is the Republican mantra. As Paul Krugman says, the government is an insurance company with an army. Trump is picking fights all over the globe, so we need the army. The only way to shrink government is to kill off the social programs.
2
When Mitch McConnell's wife has to stop working to take care of him....wait, that will never happen, he has the Cadillac Congressional insurance plan! For life!
3
"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” 1 Timothy 6:10
Republicans worship money as their god. This is wrong. It is a sin. If they would accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they would start growing their faith, repent, and understand how they need to treat their fellow man.
You cannot worship two gods. People who love money and treat people like garbage need help.
Republicans worship money as their god. This is wrong. It is a sin. If they would accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they would start growing their faith, repent, and understand how they need to treat their fellow man.
You cannot worship two gods. People who love money and treat people like garbage need help.
1
I am sure the next step in Trump's propaganda scheme is to assert that white Medicaid recipients are brave, deserving heroes, while black ones are lazy parasites, and to tailor the program to make it white-only.
1
Raise the payroll medicare tax to insure everyone. Businesses would pay their fair share and immediately reap savings to help pay for by eliminating private health insurance costs of premiums and HR personnel. All working adults would pay their share based on their income. Eliminating insurance company profits would immediately save billions of dollars. Who loses? The private insurance companies and their racket that makes the Corleone family look like boy scouts.
2
It's well-established that these people are all snakes, but this Mulvaney character stands out as a genuine psychopath. And that's before we even consider the infantile quality of his statements, in the context of the actual workings of a macroeconomy. Jeez. They really are birds of a feather -- he, Chump, and the whole fan club.
3
Throw Momma Out Of The Nursing Home.
Then tag along with Pinocchio as he follows Honest John into the coal mines. Not that either political party has much to offer in the way of safe spaces nowadays to a young working class male in his quest to be a real boy who might someday grow up to be a real man with responsibilities and family.
Then tag along with Pinocchio as he follows Honest John into the coal mines. Not that either political party has much to offer in the way of safe spaces nowadays to a young working class male in his quest to be a real boy who might someday grow up to be a real man with responsibilities and family.
Mulvaney's examples put the lie to own words: part-time workers and most if not all low wage earners aren't being 'robbed' because they pay no federal income taxes to begin with -thanks to our progressive tax system, which he no doubt wants to get rid of.
He's a complete fool and needs to return to his Mexican Restaurant immediately.
He's a complete fool and needs to return to his Mexican Restaurant immediately.
1
There is no opiate that will relieve the pain the GOP will inflict upon this nation with its cutthroat policies.
Force McConnell and Ryan to spend a day in an ER waiting room and see if there is a change in their attitude.
Do not hold your breath.
Force McConnell and Ryan to spend a day in an ER waiting room and see if there is a change in their attitude.
Do not hold your breath.
3
It's interesting that not one of the historically Conservative Republican opinion-writers in the New York Times seems to be a fan of McConnellCare or President Trump. That says a lot, right there.
2
Mick Mulvaney, the Trump administration’s budget director, on Capitol Hill last week. He is a great defender of huge cuts in federal programs.
He looks like he's playing a roll in some cheesy sit-com. Meanwhile his boss (our president, in case you need a hint) is facebooking (or whatever it's called) a typically befuddled and deadline-traumatized blond female reporter. Insulting her, he is, while Paris, Rome, London, Moscow, Beijing, Buenos Aires, and New York are all burning.
Oh! It's not them he's worried about. It's Himself he is.
Isn't that what a leader of the world ought to be worried about?
Ordinarily, it would be easy to ID the one of the two who is spread thin and acting ditzy. But not today! Oh! no! Not today.
In fact, not for the last five months have we been able to tell the difference between the idiot and the exasperated.
We live in the old New World! Name calling! Lies! Scorn and contempt. If we could just "off with their head-it" and get on with things, but NO! The President of the United States of America, duly elected by men and women who ought to know better but decided Miller Time was more important than DOING THE RIGHT THING. Don't those voters want to gag when they look in the mirror today? Aren't they ashamed? Picking on a woman's hairdoo while sitting in the Oval Office in our White House?
Trap door please. Can we take it from the top?
Please?
He looks like he's playing a roll in some cheesy sit-com. Meanwhile his boss (our president, in case you need a hint) is facebooking (or whatever it's called) a typically befuddled and deadline-traumatized blond female reporter. Insulting her, he is, while Paris, Rome, London, Moscow, Beijing, Buenos Aires, and New York are all burning.
Oh! It's not them he's worried about. It's Himself he is.
Isn't that what a leader of the world ought to be worried about?
Ordinarily, it would be easy to ID the one of the two who is spread thin and acting ditzy. But not today! Oh! no! Not today.
In fact, not for the last five months have we been able to tell the difference between the idiot and the exasperated.
We live in the old New World! Name calling! Lies! Scorn and contempt. If we could just "off with their head-it" and get on with things, but NO! The President of the United States of America, duly elected by men and women who ought to know better but decided Miller Time was more important than DOING THE RIGHT THING. Don't those voters want to gag when they look in the mirror today? Aren't they ashamed? Picking on a woman's hairdoo while sitting in the Oval Office in our White House?
Trap door please. Can we take it from the top?
Please?
1
The Republicans are banking on 1) that these lower income white are incredibly stupid and gullible and 2) as long as those whites can say I'm white and free, at least I'm not black, then they'll be willing patsies. Hey, it's been working for generations.
2
Trump and his pals aren't about to let facts get in the way of a great, great surprise.
1
The government has been taking money from my income for decades, and not once did I ever think they were going to pay it back....Mulvaney has a screw loose.
1
This reminds me when Craig T Nelson famously said that: no one helped him out when he was on food stamps and welfare. Go figure? GOP has used these very subtle tactics from the days of Reagan. Remember the famous ghetto Queens, who happened to be driving Cadillacs while on welfare? I wonder if those Queens have traded in their Cadillac for Lexus? So long as we have stupid people who can't see thru the fog, GOP will be fooling all of the people all of the time. The top 1% can vote at 100% of the rate but the GOP still needs those stupid people like CT Nelson to put them in power. I wonder when they will ever come around to see that they are shooting themselves in the foot.
46
Why haven't we heard screaming about Republican "death panels" that will make the determination who will or will not receive Medicaid?
2
This column is only needed because, scratch the surface and you discover that much of the opposition to social spending is the feeling that it is black guys and or illegal immigrants getting away with something.
That's bad, but Mulvaney is worse because he thinks everyone who doesn't pay in taxes the value of services received is a thief.
The difference matters: when Mitt Romney was caught saying that 47% of Americans are takers, it shocked his constituency because he was including working whites. Stuff like that should open the eyes of conservative whites in struggling areas.
That's bad, but Mulvaney is worse because he thinks everyone who doesn't pay in taxes the value of services received is a thief.
The difference matters: when Mitt Romney was caught saying that 47% of Americans are takers, it shocked his constituency because he was including working whites. Stuff like that should open the eyes of conservative whites in struggling areas.
But Mr. Edsall, if "Fifty-seven percent of the working-age disabled covered by Medicaid are white," that means 43% are non-white. And if a racist person guesses that that's greater than the percentage of "colored people" in the population, it becomes a "welfare handout" - for THEM, of course. Not for the racist white person making the call, who is sure of his own legitimate needs.
White Trumpists would just as soon cut off their own noses and lose benefits for themselves or their family members, rather than see any of "their" tax money going to help people with darker skin.
I think racism is pretty much the entire reason we don't have a national health care system in the USA - though the reasons given (by the racists) will always be put into economic terms, plus carefully chosen code words - like "welfare."
White Trumpists would just as soon cut off their own noses and lose benefits for themselves or their family members, rather than see any of "their" tax money going to help people with darker skin.
I think racism is pretty much the entire reason we don't have a national health care system in the USA - though the reasons given (by the racists) will always be put into economic terms, plus carefully chosen code words - like "welfare."
Why on Earth is Adam Schiff refusing to have Carter Page appear before the committee investigating the false Russia-collusion legend? What truths does he not want us to hear? I just never heard of a people cancelling he other party's witnesses.
The ever-awkward Schiff clammed up when asked about it.
It was a mistake when wanna-be collectivist Lyndon Johnson got the federal government into the medical care business and it was an even dumber mistake when Obama and friends foisted this massive redistribution scheme on working American families.
We have to get back to where we were in 2009 when the American people were eighty percent satisfied with their health care. What was with the war against the workers, Barack? Nancy? Harry Reid?
The ever-awkward Schiff clammed up when asked about it.
It was a mistake when wanna-be collectivist Lyndon Johnson got the federal government into the medical care business and it was an even dumber mistake when Obama and friends foisted this massive redistribution scheme on working American families.
We have to get back to where we were in 2009 when the American people were eighty percent satisfied with their health care. What was with the war against the workers, Barack? Nancy? Harry Reid?
Hillary lost, and democrats are supposed to look within and try to understand the struggles of the rural white voter. We looked. They're hurting, they are reliant on medicaid and social services more than any other group, and yet they remain the most stubborn, ignorant, and vindictive toward the rest of America.
There's nothing I can do about that. I can go halfway, sometimes 60, 70 percent even. But I can't do it all. They need to turn off Fox and the radio and pick up a newspaper.
There's nothing I can do about that. I can go halfway, sometimes 60, 70 percent even. But I can't do it all. They need to turn off Fox and the radio and pick up a newspaper.
6
"How is it possible, then, that Senate Republicans are continuing to weigh the consequences of passing health care legislation that would inflict harm on millions of low- to middle-income white voters essential to the conservative coalition?"
The answer to that question is obvious to anyone who happens to know some of those millions of low- to middle-income white voters which - so painfully demonstrated by the political coverage and prognostications of 2016 - the reporters of the New York Times obviously do not. So, let me spell it out for you.
There are deserving poor and undeserving poor.
The deserving: the truly handicapped, the aged who paid into the system, and anyone who served their country.
The undeserving: recent immigrants and newly minted citizens, the able bodied of any race, and anyone who has more children than they can afford.
The reason for this distinction between deserving and not deserving in humanity is that the working poor actually live cheek by jowl next to the non-working poor. They are more attuned to the differences and nuances than reporters from the NYT. Oh, and a lot of white folks who get any sort of assistance are embarrassed by it and resent having been put into that position by people from social classes like...... well, reporters from the NYT.
The solution? Universal, single payer healthcare that doesn't make distinctions about people's situation in life Got it? Good.
The answer to that question is obvious to anyone who happens to know some of those millions of low- to middle-income white voters which - so painfully demonstrated by the political coverage and prognostications of 2016 - the reporters of the New York Times obviously do not. So, let me spell it out for you.
There are deserving poor and undeserving poor.
The deserving: the truly handicapped, the aged who paid into the system, and anyone who served their country.
The undeserving: recent immigrants and newly minted citizens, the able bodied of any race, and anyone who has more children than they can afford.
The reason for this distinction between deserving and not deserving in humanity is that the working poor actually live cheek by jowl next to the non-working poor. They are more attuned to the differences and nuances than reporters from the NYT. Oh, and a lot of white folks who get any sort of assistance are embarrassed by it and resent having been put into that position by people from social classes like...... well, reporters from the NYT.
The solution? Universal, single payer healthcare that doesn't make distinctions about people's situation in life Got it? Good.
3
And why didn't the NYTimes publish articles with this information 8 years ago, and kept publishing the same information every time a Rep screamed that "Americans" were against Obamacare?
2
The racism component is imported by the author, who claims to be able to read the minds of his political opponents. When he reads those minds he "discovers" that they are all racists, that this is all about race. Then he proceeds to criticize them and tell them how wrong they are to be racists, and that there are a lot of white people receiving medicaid.
No effort whatever is made to determine the real opinions and motivations of these opponents. They can now be written off as racists. An unconvincing piece of slight-of-hand. I am mildly surprised that it got printed in the NYT. If that kind of "reasoning" were advanced for any other proposition an editor would have thrown it out, but criticizing Republicans gets a free pass.
No effort whatever is made to determine the real opinions and motivations of these opponents. They can now be written off as racists. An unconvincing piece of slight-of-hand. I am mildly surprised that it got printed in the NYT. If that kind of "reasoning" were advanced for any other proposition an editor would have thrown it out, but criticizing Republicans gets a free pass.
1
I agree - it is easy to dismiss legitimate concerns as racist. What we need is an explanation of how Medicaid insulates hard working families from catastrophic situations. Grandma has no money - either get her on Medicaid for her nursing home or put her in a "poor house". We can't take her into or homes because both parents are barely making it at Walmart and McDonalds. Your brother has psychosis - or debilitating diabetes - you need assistance for him because you've got 3 kids already. This is how Medicaid helps us all. Hardworking Americans trying to live decently and take care of our own.
2
I think, in my state at least, the white Trump voters think that somebody else's Medicaid will be stopped. Some undeserving urban, non-white, or possibly illegal immigrant, person. not them. The rural Trump voters are worthy and hard-working. These other people aren't worthy and are parasites who take from the hardworking. It will be interesting to see who finally loses their Medicaid in my state. There's no question the state won't fully fund the need.
3
Medicare vs. Medicaid. Some of your readers seem to have the two confused. Perhaps another article would help????
1
Can someone please tell the white population on Medicaid -- YOU OR YOUR FAMILY MEMBER(S) ARE ON MEDICAID. Seems like the Republican strategy of cultivating ignorance is working.
4
Welfare, huh? I will tell what is "welfare." Corporate welfare. Insurers for "health" allow no equitable interest of policyholders, instead merely acting as conduits and taking the "skim." They add no value. Zero. Yet, through lobbying and corruption they are among the most profitable ( ROE) industries in America and have ridiculously highly compensated executives. The drug makers are beyond "welfare." That is just a criminal enterprise. Hostages have a better chance. They bribe politicians ( and doctors), get the government to do research and then get long patent protection. Where I come from we call that a "racket." Mulvaney is a wise little snake. He professes to protect "taxpayers." As if the families of disabled kids did anything wrong. As though veterans with a parent with dementia did not earn his or her peace of mind. My disabled son needs to live on $735/month, while Mulvaney talks about "welfare." Please tell me who is getting the "free ride" in our society? Visit K street before you answer.
8
Very interesting----------However, it would have been helpful to give the percentages of the population, and of the population in certain age ranges, in the whole U.S., to compare with the percentages of Medicaid recipients used in the article.
They just don't care if people die. If dead they can't vote
and all they care abut is tax cuts for the upper crust.
They just lie and lie to cover their tracks confident the MSM
will, per usual, roll over and play dead.
Lying is official GOP policy. See Krugman for historical
perspective.
and all they care abut is tax cuts for the upper crust.
They just lie and lie to cover their tracks confident the MSM
will, per usual, roll over and play dead.
Lying is official GOP policy. See Krugman for historical
perspective.
1
Are Republicans really going to go through with their plan to destroy social insurance? Sure, you bet they are.
Republican goals are to bring down Obamacare, give rich Americans a tax break, and make one single declaration – ‘We Won!’ That's it. There are no other goals.
The only thing Republicans are now doing now is chipping away at the sides of these overall goals in order to get enough votes to pass this thing and declare: ‘Yippee!!!!’ It does not matter what is in the plan. Republicans are just wheeling and dealing, cutting this, robbing Peter to pay Paul, etc., instead of setting out with unmistakable goals.
And Republicans do not understand the loud and clear message the majority of the American public are demanding: a plan that will provide coverage for all Americans. The views of the American majority do not matter one whit to 95%+ of Republicans.
To develop a plan that provides greater access and lower costs, elected Republicans must change their goals from bringing down Obamacare to providing greater access and lower costs. Unless something very unexpected happens, this will not happen.
And, therefore, today, tomorrow, next month, whenever….this Republican plan for eliminating Obamacare and giving rich Americans a tax break is going down in flames. Bigtime.
It is a mystery how these elected Republican officials can sleep at night.
Republican goals are to bring down Obamacare, give rich Americans a tax break, and make one single declaration – ‘We Won!’ That's it. There are no other goals.
The only thing Republicans are now doing now is chipping away at the sides of these overall goals in order to get enough votes to pass this thing and declare: ‘Yippee!!!!’ It does not matter what is in the plan. Republicans are just wheeling and dealing, cutting this, robbing Peter to pay Paul, etc., instead of setting out with unmistakable goals.
And Republicans do not understand the loud and clear message the majority of the American public are demanding: a plan that will provide coverage for all Americans. The views of the American majority do not matter one whit to 95%+ of Republicans.
To develop a plan that provides greater access and lower costs, elected Republicans must change their goals from bringing down Obamacare to providing greater access and lower costs. Unless something very unexpected happens, this will not happen.
And, therefore, today, tomorrow, next month, whenever….this Republican plan for eliminating Obamacare and giving rich Americans a tax break is going down in flames. Bigtime.
It is a mystery how these elected Republican officials can sleep at night.
2
Data is not the issue.
Republican voters will favor Medicaid (and other entitlements) if only whites benefit. Not because of data, but because of the horror they experience upon seeing a non-white persons living freely among them.
Data has lost all power since the takeover by the American Christian Taliban. How else could a president play this fast and lose with facts, and have his minions plain mock them with terms such as alt-facts?
Republicans objecting to Trumpcarelessness currently sit cozy, and can be rather overloaded with cuteness.
If Trumcarelessness fails; they claim victory in their states for having "stood up." It energizes the national hate machine to ensure victories in 2018 and 2020.
If Trumpcarelessness becomes law, and people in parasitic red states begin to lose their entitlement, republicans still win. Because one thing that every republican can take to the bank is their voters' total disinterest in data. All republican voters will blame a previous black president, a woman who ran for office, and immigrants as the causes of all their problems.
My smugness is rooted in the following. The future has no coal, nor factories with people (only robots). The only currency of tomorrow is the speed at which we learn. A party wedded to creationism and hate church will, sooner rather than later, run out of currency. And the American palate is now technicolor. Take your best shot republicans, this is your last gasp.
Kalidan
Republican voters will favor Medicaid (and other entitlements) if only whites benefit. Not because of data, but because of the horror they experience upon seeing a non-white persons living freely among them.
Data has lost all power since the takeover by the American Christian Taliban. How else could a president play this fast and lose with facts, and have his minions plain mock them with terms such as alt-facts?
Republicans objecting to Trumpcarelessness currently sit cozy, and can be rather overloaded with cuteness.
If Trumcarelessness fails; they claim victory in their states for having "stood up." It energizes the national hate machine to ensure victories in 2018 and 2020.
If Trumpcarelessness becomes law, and people in parasitic red states begin to lose their entitlement, republicans still win. Because one thing that every republican can take to the bank is their voters' total disinterest in data. All republican voters will blame a previous black president, a woman who ran for office, and immigrants as the causes of all their problems.
My smugness is rooted in the following. The future has no coal, nor factories with people (only robots). The only currency of tomorrow is the speed at which we learn. A party wedded to creationism and hate church will, sooner rather than later, run out of currency. And the American palate is now technicolor. Take your best shot republicans, this is your last gasp.
Kalidan
This explains in part why the GOP Congress members continue to support the incompetent President and his administration. They welcome the racist views and policies of President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump can keep whipping up hatred while Sessions takes away civil rights and equality and Mulvaney will work on taking away financial help to our neediest citizens.
The clear message from this administration is this:
People of color are not welcome in the United States. If we can not deport you or prevent you from coming to our land, we will make your life as miserable and hard as can be.
Poor whites are thrown in as an 'unfortunate consequence' due to the need to support the 1%. But at least they get to watch 'them' suffer that is the ugly payoff.
So let us not mince words anymore. This is the GOP in 2017.
My one vote will not be enough in 2018. Time to show up.
The clear message from this administration is this:
People of color are not welcome in the United States. If we can not deport you or prevent you from coming to our land, we will make your life as miserable and hard as can be.
Poor whites are thrown in as an 'unfortunate consequence' due to the need to support the 1%. But at least they get to watch 'them' suffer that is the ugly payoff.
So let us not mince words anymore. This is the GOP in 2017.
My one vote will not be enough in 2018. Time to show up.
3
The entire effort to repeal--and replace??--Obamacare could be titled "Get Rid of The Black Guy's Health Program. It seems to be an affront to white GOP srnsibikities that a black President came up with the best health plan ever offered in America to date. They'd rather destroy the house a black man built for them and go back to being homeless than accept a black guy's handiwork. That is the enormous stupidity of the working class abetted by the thievery and dkullduggery of the GOP politicians. I almost want to see the rug pulled out from under the feet of the working class and have the ACA repealed to see if it might knock them to their senses when they lose coverage but too many other people would suffer too and they need to be saved from themselves. Certainly the GOP won't save them.
"How is it possible, then, that Senate Republicans are continuing to weigh the consequences of passing health care legislation that would inflict harm on millions of low- to middle-income white voters essential to the conservative coalition?"
I work with people who fall into this category, and my answer is that they honestly believe that the Republican plan will somehow improve their own benefits substantially while only taking away the benefits received by minority Americans, who, they know beyond a shadow of a doubt, are mostly lazy moochers. After all, why would "their team" do anything to harm them?
If and when the axe falls, and their own health and quality of life are significantly harmed by this evil piece of legislation, they will find a way to blame it on Obama, somehow, because they just know in their heart of hearts that Republicans are always right and good and Democrats are literally evil servants of the devil himself working only to destroy the nation for, uh, some reason.
(I exaggerate for effect here only slightly; some of them do believe that Democrats take their marching orders from ISIS or the Bilderberg Group, rather than Satan.)
I work with people who fall into this category, and my answer is that they honestly believe that the Republican plan will somehow improve their own benefits substantially while only taking away the benefits received by minority Americans, who, they know beyond a shadow of a doubt, are mostly lazy moochers. After all, why would "their team" do anything to harm them?
If and when the axe falls, and their own health and quality of life are significantly harmed by this evil piece of legislation, they will find a way to blame it on Obama, somehow, because they just know in their heart of hearts that Republicans are always right and good and Democrats are literally evil servants of the devil himself working only to destroy the nation for, uh, some reason.
(I exaggerate for effect here only slightly; some of them do believe that Democrats take their marching orders from ISIS or the Bilderberg Group, rather than Satan.)
3
I've written this before on these pages. The only "fair" solution is to de-federalize Medicare and Medicaid. Leave these programs to be run by each State, with each State deciding on how much it wishes to tax and to spend. Blue states could then confederate / associate to provide a large pool who would have universal health care from cradle to grave. Meanwhile, in Red states, funeral directors will become very rich. The other "nice" component of this approach is that it will considerably reduce the socialist redistribution of taxes / money from Blue States to Red States.
1
You ever wonder why these lies of the likes of Mitch and get past the sniff test?
It's because the GOP has been short-changing the poor at least since the slaves were freed.
Educate 'em? Ha! The bad guys learned long ago that an uneducated American is helpless in a white, college educated nation. Helpless because the wealthy doesn't want their "economic" slaves to know anything that might make them angry at being short-changed.
From the top on down, slavery is still practiced, only poor whites have been added to the mix. Poor and under-educated, these "white" poor have become a sub-set of the black poor. The only difference is the African American knows he/she has been cheated for two hundred years. And when the nation they live in is predominantly white, they KNOW there's no such thing as "equal".
Equal Rights, for instance,
equal elementary school education, for another,
equal pay, for yet another,
equal medical and health care,
equality in the pursuit of jobs.
Equality when it comes to police protection of them and theirs, particularly if it is in the 21st Century equivalent of a ghetto.
The white folk have known for centuries that the less you know, the more they can scam you. Raise your voice?
You do so at the risk of your life and the lives of those you love.
Turn the other cheek? Why bother? You might get hurt, and if you get hurt your little girls and boys could well be left unprotected.
And then they are doomed.
Jeff Sessions is there, and our US atty general.
It's because the GOP has been short-changing the poor at least since the slaves were freed.
Educate 'em? Ha! The bad guys learned long ago that an uneducated American is helpless in a white, college educated nation. Helpless because the wealthy doesn't want their "economic" slaves to know anything that might make them angry at being short-changed.
From the top on down, slavery is still practiced, only poor whites have been added to the mix. Poor and under-educated, these "white" poor have become a sub-set of the black poor. The only difference is the African American knows he/she has been cheated for two hundred years. And when the nation they live in is predominantly white, they KNOW there's no such thing as "equal".
Equal Rights, for instance,
equal elementary school education, for another,
equal pay, for yet another,
equal medical and health care,
equality in the pursuit of jobs.
Equality when it comes to police protection of them and theirs, particularly if it is in the 21st Century equivalent of a ghetto.
The white folk have known for centuries that the less you know, the more they can scam you. Raise your voice?
You do so at the risk of your life and the lives of those you love.
Turn the other cheek? Why bother? You might get hurt, and if you get hurt your little girls and boys could well be left unprotected.
And then they are doomed.
Jeff Sessions is there, and our US atty general.
45
Equality is deemed oppression by the Oppressor.
Regarding the threat of cuts to Trump voters: they will be convinced, somehow, that the Democrats cost them their coverage or increased their costs.
5
Much space in this paper and others and time on cable news is devoted to the erratic & mystifying behaviors of President Trump, but he is not the author of this bill, the Senate & House Republicans are the joint progenitors of all of the ideas & policies therein. It's their baby. Trump just told them: give me a health bill that repeals & replaces Obamacare. If I didn't have children & potential grandchildren who might be affected by this horrible piece of legislation at some point in their lives, I would almost like to see it passed, so that the Republicans would have to own the results of their actions & their voters would finally recognize who they've been voting for all of these years.
3
To answer your question, sure, if they can pass it, they will.
Why not, because it might hurt people?
When has that ever stopped them before?
They can sell ice to an eskimo, it's called divide and conquer.
Oldest trick in the book, and it's still working after all these years.
Why not, because it might hurt people?
When has that ever stopped them before?
They can sell ice to an eskimo, it's called divide and conquer.
Oldest trick in the book, and it's still working after all these years.
2
What is really striking here is the grand canyon of opinions between Dem/Ind and the Reps. I submit that if we were all equally informed, schooled in the scientific, or at least the rational approach, the canyon would shrink to a ditch. Dump FakesNews and friends, watch PBS news hour instead, it's free but maybe not for long... And, of course, read the NYT, the WP etc. while we still have a free press. Differences of opinion are great but not differences in facts.
4
Mulvaney, another sterling Trump pick. Again Ryan and McConnell in lock step trying to reduce care to needy Americans. Medicaid is a life saver for millions of Americans. And don't forget our taxes pay Ryan's and Mconnell's healthcare for life. Maybe if they were in the system they are trying to create for us they would change their collective minds. No hope for that though, is there?
Self-righteous greed has tanken over our government, fueled by the ignorance of those who voted for them. How long before people wake up enough to change this situation? We desparetly need integrity and honesty now, all of which are so obviously lacking in people like Trump, McConnell, Ryan amd Mulvaney.
1
Since it's obvious that the GOP doesn't care about the lower class and it's healthcare, and it seems obvious too that they are concerned that the taxes collected does not bring in enough revenue to cover our excessive debt then why in earth is pot illegal in most states? Doesn't that kill two birds with one stone? And possibly put a huge dent in petty crime too?
1
That is no Mitch McConnell sinkhole. You can escape a sinkhole dollar by dollar and vote by vote.
That is the Mitch McConnell super massive black hole that warps space-time. The Mitch McConnell black hole from which no light can escape and information is mangled and manipulated beyond our natural mortal scientific and super natural theological powers of insight and understanding of the nature of physical reality.
What we 'know' is 4% of physical reality hopelessly divided by the incompatible theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. While about 70% of reality is a force called dark energy and 26% of reality is a mass called dark matter.
That is the Mitch McConnell super massive black hole that warps space-time. The Mitch McConnell black hole from which no light can escape and information is mangled and manipulated beyond our natural mortal scientific and super natural theological powers of insight and understanding of the nature of physical reality.
What we 'know' is 4% of physical reality hopelessly divided by the incompatible theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. While about 70% of reality is a force called dark energy and 26% of reality is a mass called dark matter.
3
Social entitlements will continue to kill the future taxpayers of tomorrow. The Republicans (unlike Obama who let everyone into this country while he knew his Obamacare was a disaster) are trying to fix a problem democrats created. And that is what you get from a community organizer and his think tanker administration with no business experience.
3
You do know that Obama's administration deported more undocumented immigrants than George W. Bush's, right? You do know that the young worker making $35-40k and trying to pay her mortgage will have difficulty saving enough for retirement and will need social security as much as her parents did, right? And this is, of course, while someone making $200k (one of my colleagues) essentially is exempt from paying social security taxes on essentially two of those salaries (anything over around $120k). You do know that another businessman, Warren Buffet, argues that health care costs because they are levied on businesses who pay part or all of their employees' insurance premiums are one of expenses that make it more onerous than the tax bills they get? Nothing is free. Not your roads. Not the health care of the person in a catastrophic car accident without insurance whom we do NOT let die on the side of the the roads. Libertarians like to pretend that we could all just pave our little section without regulations, buy our own snow plows, etc.
2
Social entitlements were created long before Obama was born.
It used to be, in my childhood, people got insurance through employment, most people were employed, and those jobs paid so well that you could pay for rent, your car, and have enough left for insurance. (Thanks to unions which pushed wages even for nonunion jobs. ). We had a prosperous large middle class.
This is not the world we live in. Wages have gone down, jobs exported or eliminated, insurance offered only to top level employees. Housing pric s have skyrocketed.
Poor people did not do this.
Now it's time to pay the piper. There is no state where a full time minimum wage job is enough to rent a 2-br apartment. None, zero. A great many fulltime workers are eligible for public assistance because their salaries can't even begin to cover even the rent.
This is the world rich people created. Paying taxes is a good alternative to civil war for them I believe.
It used to be, in my childhood, people got insurance through employment, most people were employed, and those jobs paid so well that you could pay for rent, your car, and have enough left for insurance. (Thanks to unions which pushed wages even for nonunion jobs. ). We had a prosperous large middle class.
This is not the world we live in. Wages have gone down, jobs exported or eliminated, insurance offered only to top level employees. Housing pric s have skyrocketed.
Poor people did not do this.
Now it's time to pay the piper. There is no state where a full time minimum wage job is enough to rent a 2-br apartment. None, zero. A great many fulltime workers are eligible for public assistance because their salaries can't even begin to cover even the rent.
This is the world rich people created. Paying taxes is a good alternative to civil war for them I believe.
2
Apparently, you feel the abject incompetence and ignorance of Trump, demonstrated daily, are fine. You apparently believe lies, such as "Obama let everyone into the country." Have you ever considered facts? They are fascinating. Plus, Obamacare, you state, is a disaster. Do you think the 20 million people who gained insurance under this plan agree with you?
Food for thought, I hope it's still being served in US Senate, and the House as well, long after our great nation's holiday.
1
Mr. Mulvaney is quoted as saying "So if you left for work this morning in the dark, if you came home after your kids were asleep, if you feel lucky to get overtime pay to support your aging parents or adult children, if you’re working part-time but praying for a full-time job, if your savings are as exhausted as you are . . ." That's the best argument for a unionized work force that I've seen in a long time.
4
The US is solidly in the third world when it comes to general level of knowledge. Vast numbers of people don't know vital facts about their own country, never mind the world. I would not be surprised if more Nigerians than Americans could tell you who the secretary general of the UN and the president of the IMF are, whether Jalubistan is a real country or not, and whether the Rhine flows through Paris. I would not even be surprised if more Nigerians than Americans could name the chief justice of the US Supreme Court.
This level of mental poverty is not going to be eradicated in less than two generations.
This level of mental poverty is not going to be eradicated in less than two generations.
3
When faced with the mounting nursing home care, most would want tap the paychecks a little more --- the Republicans are the only ones I know wanting to cut taxes? They take candy from a baby, and throw grandma out on the street, too.
"For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first. ... Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft."
So according to Mulvaney taxation is thievery? If so, by his own standard his very salary is thievery!! Clearly he is taking money from someone without the intention of paying it back. Apparently, so does every worker.
So according to Mulvaney taxation is thievery? If so, by his own standard his very salary is thievery!! Clearly he is taking money from someone without the intention of paying it back. Apparently, so does every worker.
I would please remind the US Congress that health-care is not a political football.
I would also observe that the "for profit" health-care and/or insurance industries have had more than a quarter-century of "telling us how good it was going to be," and that "the Senator from HCA" has been in the Senate the entire time. However, their business model is obviously a FAILURE. It is simply not possible to provide health care "for profit," nor to pay for it "for profit." The failures of their concept are intrinsic to it.
These industries wrote the ACA to be everything they could ask for – and they are still FAILING. I'm absolutely not willing to pay billions of My dollars to continue propping-up this DEAD horse. We should not throw good money after bad, at a business concept that is Intrinsically Flawed and thus irredeemable.
Congress, your job is to provide "health care for everyone." And it should be abundantly clear that we must do it as the British do. And yes, we can afford it. (We spend billions each month on killing people in far-off lands. We can spend money to save people, here.) It's your real-job, now, to make this happen.
The "for profit" people thought, perhaps earnestly, that all their promises would come true. They were wrong. It's time to move on. It's YOUR JOB to move on.
I would also observe that the "for profit" health-care and/or insurance industries have had more than a quarter-century of "telling us how good it was going to be," and that "the Senator from HCA" has been in the Senate the entire time. However, their business model is obviously a FAILURE. It is simply not possible to provide health care "for profit," nor to pay for it "for profit." The failures of their concept are intrinsic to it.
These industries wrote the ACA to be everything they could ask for – and they are still FAILING. I'm absolutely not willing to pay billions of My dollars to continue propping-up this DEAD horse. We should not throw good money after bad, at a business concept that is Intrinsically Flawed and thus irredeemable.
Congress, your job is to provide "health care for everyone." And it should be abundantly clear that we must do it as the British do. And yes, we can afford it. (We spend billions each month on killing people in far-off lands. We can spend money to save people, here.) It's your real-job, now, to make this happen.
The "for profit" people thought, perhaps earnestly, that all their promises would come true. They were wrong. It's time to move on. It's YOUR JOB to move on.
3
Edsall is a modern day Cassandra. It's a tragedy of ancient Greek proportions that so many of the very voters the Medicaid tax cuts are going to destroy, (white, working and middle-class Republicans) just ain't hearing this.
The inherent racism in the Republican plan to deceive and misdirect white Americans is only outdone by Republican support for Corporate Welfare. White Americans who carried the fake President across the finish line are the primary recipients of welfare, food stamps, Medicaid while imagining that Black and Brown Americans are victimizing them. They are really angry too.
Permitting this deception is not acceptable. Democrats who have chosen to mask their own complicity in the genuine theft Corporate Welfare or have failed to support the poor, working poor, elderly and children are the primary problem. Obama was silenced regarding race by Republicans, Hillary was silenced regarding misogyny, and Sanders was called crazy because he was loudly calling for the defense of the New Deal. Democrats are called partisan when they oppose Trump's attempt to end democracy, turn the Presidency into a dictatorship, and destroy all social welfare programs by seizing funding and giving it to the wealthiest. Democrats hesitate to call Trump and Republicans racists, or the party of the rich. They don't want to offend rich Democrats and racist Democrats. That explains the weak responses to Trump by the DNC.
Permitting this deception is not acceptable. Democrats who have chosen to mask their own complicity in the genuine theft Corporate Welfare or have failed to support the poor, working poor, elderly and children are the primary problem. Obama was silenced regarding race by Republicans, Hillary was silenced regarding misogyny, and Sanders was called crazy because he was loudly calling for the defense of the New Deal. Democrats are called partisan when they oppose Trump's attempt to end democracy, turn the Presidency into a dictatorship, and destroy all social welfare programs by seizing funding and giving it to the wealthiest. Democrats hesitate to call Trump and Republicans racists, or the party of the rich. They don't want to offend rich Democrats and racist Democrats. That explains the weak responses to Trump by the DNC.
1
'There, but for the grace of God, go I'. There are people, who can not imagine themselves on Medicaid and who are cold enough to be able to watch their neighbors die. All in the service of Pure Capitalism.
2
Great piece, Mr. Edsall. And so we see that Trump's populism is as phony as his spray-on tan. In fact, it's just the same scam Republicans have been running since 1964--- pander to the racial and cultural hatreds of the white proletariat in order to drive huge windfalls for the rich. I could almost feel sorry for the folks who fell for it, but they've been suckers for fifty years now and still haven't wised up. Sooner or later, you deserve your victimhood. I think they've reached that point.
Of course, when the Republicans finish with Medicaid they will come after Medicare, and then Social Security. They won't be satisfied until anyone who isn't a billionaire is living in a cave, eating grass and drinking rain water. Maybe, four years from now, looking across the blasted heath of their post-Trump lives, the "white working class" will finally realize just how badly it's been taken. But I wouldn't bet on it.
Of course, when the Republicans finish with Medicaid they will come after Medicare, and then Social Security. They won't be satisfied until anyone who isn't a billionaire is living in a cave, eating grass and drinking rain water. Maybe, four years from now, looking across the blasted heath of their post-Trump lives, the "white working class" will finally realize just how badly it's been taken. But I wouldn't bet on it.
1
How does in remain possible to ignore that Medicaid is essential - or we reduce people to the most abject forms of poverty, which mean crippled beggars hoping for a pittance from those who have.
2
Imagine the result if they worked this hard to help people instead of harm them.
2
The answer to the question of why X percentage of "Murricans" believe something is easy. Most of us (but not most readers here and at similar places) are ill informed about most everything. On slow news days, the local cable news station does man/woman on the street questions about current events or historical/civic knowledge. The results are predictably woeful. I hate to bash public schools (or struggling parents) but how are we educating young people these days?
As to Medicaid, both the Dixie wing of the GOP and more importantly the Murdoch cable operation always associate a black or brown hand on government programs, crime, and anything else negative they can find. White backlash and now with the "alt-right", white victimhood mongering, go a long way politically.
As to Medicaid, both the Dixie wing of the GOP and more importantly the Murdoch cable operation always associate a black or brown hand on government programs, crime, and anything else negative they can find. White backlash and now with the "alt-right", white victimhood mongering, go a long way politically.
Republicans are terrible. They will destroy the fabric of America.
But why are states going after children. Children don't have a say if elderly parents purchase long-term care insurance or life insurance. I personally can't afford to help out otherwise I won't be able to have any savings to pay for my future medial bills.
But why are states going after children. Children don't have a say if elderly parents purchase long-term care insurance or life insurance. I personally can't afford to help out otherwise I won't be able to have any savings to pay for my future medial bills.
Unfortunately, the affected population that voted for Trump will do it again because as Trump pointed out, he can shoot somebody in 5th Avenue and his followers will still be with him. Trump will find a way to blame Muslims, blacks or Latinos for it.
I just hope that the Senate sit down to negotiate across the aisle and delete the cruel parts of the Bill.
I just hope that the Senate sit down to negotiate across the aisle and delete the cruel parts of the Bill.
GOP truly believes that Reagancare or EMTALA with no funding source will solve the health care needs of the masses. Its just the wait at the local ER that might kill you. Here in red state Georgia the GOP made sure Georgia had none of that Obamacare Medicaid enhancement money flowing in to the moochers wanting something for nothing. They have even gone in a whole new direction here with no opposition- funding the state's share of Medicaid by taxing hospital beds of the paying patients to the tune of 300 million dollars ( with 600 million federal matching funds). Of course no one is willing to admit that Reagan care and the Georgia tax on hospital beds is fee shifting or pure socialism but heck at least it keeps the rich and average Joe from contributing their fair share through income taxes and the state has a huge surplus. Life is good- let the poor, elderly and handicapped and children get jobs or wait in the local ER waiting room.
This what happens when venal prejudices, abysmal ignorance and galactic incompetence excites a primitive ideology which, as it spreads, becomes a substitute for thought. Mitch McConnell may be a cunning and formidable politician but in the service of what? The providing of the general destruction, death, servitude and the pursuit of sorrow.
1
Perhaps Mr Mulvaney plans to help Mr Trump push the beds of elderly patients out of nursing homes to parking lots when the cuts come in Medicaid.
1
So. I see, In Mulvaney's world there's a sort of bizarro Robin Hood - where taking from the rich - to give to the poor - is no longer honorable and worthy of a childhood morality story - a Walt Disney production and a hero on the big screen played Douglas Fairbanks and Sean Connery and Kevin Costner, accompanied by Friar John - to do the right thing.
But more on the level of the view of the Sheriff of Nottingham, the villain, who ironically sees Robin and his Band of Merry Men as "thieves" taking that money not for their own use but to benefit the people from whom the rich had wrongfully wrested it in the first place - but still no "intention to pay it back".
What small, mean, greedy little worlds Mulvaney and the Sheriff must inhabit.
I'm sure the Sheriff had his followers and admirers - surely the rich whose gold he sought to "protect" - the Conservatives who liked the world just as it was - wanted more of it actually because life was pretty sweet for them - for the rest? Let them eat cake.
We all know how that worked out for Marie but there are several versions of the Sheriff's fate, some more ironic than death. My favorite is when he loses the favor of the King and is banished to hard labor for life - the real fate of many Trump loyalists.
But more on the level of the view of the Sheriff of Nottingham, the villain, who ironically sees Robin and his Band of Merry Men as "thieves" taking that money not for their own use but to benefit the people from whom the rich had wrongfully wrested it in the first place - but still no "intention to pay it back".
What small, mean, greedy little worlds Mulvaney and the Sheriff must inhabit.
I'm sure the Sheriff had his followers and admirers - surely the rich whose gold he sought to "protect" - the Conservatives who liked the world just as it was - wanted more of it actually because life was pretty sweet for them - for the rest? Let them eat cake.
We all know how that worked out for Marie but there are several versions of the Sheriff's fate, some more ironic than death. My favorite is when he loses the favor of the King and is banished to hard labor for life - the real fate of many Trump loyalists.
3
Why aren't these stats presented at least as often as the GOP false representations and deliberate catering to prejudices? Call them out. Deliver a huge multi-media campaign. Saturate local markets w/ the facts regarding their states.
4
"I just read an article in the New York Times, and I have to say, the statistics they presented changed my opinion," said no one who ever voted for Mitch McConnell.
4
Once again, we have another piece about the health care debacle and it only focuses on one thing: Medicaid. Either that or the opioid crisis.
I see where the divisiveness comes into play among the population. I want to know how this health care bill will affect people who do work, earn well south of $100k a year but need to buy their own insurance. You know, the large portion of the population that are not destitute, but not well off by any stretch. Those for whom a broken leg would wipe out their savings if they had no help to pay.
Everyone, rich or poor, faces the possibility of being beset with any number of medical diagnoses even if one eats properly, exercises and does not take unnecessary risks. What does a person do if they have a sore throat and need an antibiotic? Or have hemorrhoids. Or cut themselves accidentally and need stitches. How much will they have to pay out of pocket? The entire cost? What if they don't have $800. to pay? People on Medicaid do not have those worries and the perception that that is unfair has some merit. That no one is addressing these things is ridiculous.
I see where the divisiveness comes into play among the population. I want to know how this health care bill will affect people who do work, earn well south of $100k a year but need to buy their own insurance. You know, the large portion of the population that are not destitute, but not well off by any stretch. Those for whom a broken leg would wipe out their savings if they had no help to pay.
Everyone, rich or poor, faces the possibility of being beset with any number of medical diagnoses even if one eats properly, exercises and does not take unnecessary risks. What does a person do if they have a sore throat and need an antibiotic? Or have hemorrhoids. Or cut themselves accidentally and need stitches. How much will they have to pay out of pocket? The entire cost? What if they don't have $800. to pay? People on Medicaid do not have those worries and the perception that that is unfair has some merit. That no one is addressing these things is ridiculous.
46
Join the club, ShirlWhirl. According to Paul Ryan you buy an insurance plan from your friendly insurance company that takes your money if you are eligible. They will make you pay the entire bill or most of the bill. Like it was in the good old days before the ACA. If its a minor outpatient injury it might cost you $1500-$2000 depending on which part of the country you are in. If its a major disease, good luck. Your "insurer"will find a hundred different ways to not pay your bills. You may as well book a plot in your local cemetery, but it might be cheaper to cremate...
How the ACA helps non-Medicaid folks (and agree that help for individuals whom don't qualify for subsidies needs to be addressed):
- ACA established basic Essential Health Benefits that needed to be in policies so that Apple to Apple comparisons could be made. Previously, many people only found out what their "lower cost" insurance didn't cover when they or a family member became ill.
- The ACA prevented insurance companies from throwing folks with preexisting conditions out of their insurance plan.
- The ACA prevented insurance companies from imposing lifetime caps, such that a child born premature could reach his lifetime insurance cap before the age of one.
- Because the ACA guaranteed that many more folks had insurance to pay, hospitals no longer needed to increase pricing on others when the hospitals had to absorb the cost of indigent care (more insurance = less unreimbursed care). This also prevented hospitals from closing in rural areas and stabilized trauma centers.
- The ACA imposed cost saving measures on health systems.
None of the above is in the proposed Senate Republican tax cut masquerading as a health plan.
- ACA established basic Essential Health Benefits that needed to be in policies so that Apple to Apple comparisons could be made. Previously, many people only found out what their "lower cost" insurance didn't cover when they or a family member became ill.
- The ACA prevented insurance companies from throwing folks with preexisting conditions out of their insurance plan.
- The ACA prevented insurance companies from imposing lifetime caps, such that a child born premature could reach his lifetime insurance cap before the age of one.
- Because the ACA guaranteed that many more folks had insurance to pay, hospitals no longer needed to increase pricing on others when the hospitals had to absorb the cost of indigent care (more insurance = less unreimbursed care). This also prevented hospitals from closing in rural areas and stabilized trauma centers.
- The ACA imposed cost saving measures on health systems.
None of the above is in the proposed Senate Republican tax cut masquerading as a health plan.
1
Indeed, one shouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg to receive routine medical care.
If our money says in God we Trust, whose God, would inflict such harm, dispair, and heoplessness that the Senate and House bills do?
4
The AHCA is "grate", like the bottom of a stove.
$174K/yr is over 15X the SS I receive and I'm probably better off than most. These guys are either clueless or willfully ignorant and I opt for the latter.
There is no reasonable defense for any changes short of universal health care that any in Congress can offer and the fact we are scraping the barrel so the very wealthiest above us can fly first class is untenable.
I've rarely considered us a particularly dumb people or our representatives to be particularly greedy, but in light of the way our Legislative and Administrative branches of government are proceeding coupled with the fact they were elected to their offices have caused me to reevaluate both positions.
Let's stop beating around the bush, universal health care is civilized, cost effective, needed and "great".
$174K/yr is over 15X the SS I receive and I'm probably better off than most. These guys are either clueless or willfully ignorant and I opt for the latter.
There is no reasonable defense for any changes short of universal health care that any in Congress can offer and the fact we are scraping the barrel so the very wealthiest above us can fly first class is untenable.
I've rarely considered us a particularly dumb people or our representatives to be particularly greedy, but in light of the way our Legislative and Administrative branches of government are proceeding coupled with the fact they were elected to their offices have caused me to reevaluate both positions.
Let's stop beating around the bush, universal health care is civilized, cost effective, needed and "great".
6
It would have been shorter to just say that the majority of those on Medicaid had at least one relative who was a Trump voter. How do we define stupid in this country?
2
As always, people of color have always been used by whites as the cause of what ills America. I say cut, cut, cut and eliminate all social programs and then we'll get a more accurate picture of who's on what. Some folks in the US have been lying a long long time...
2
Y e s, Vampire, Paul Ryan says he's been Dreaming of doing so since he was a young man. Drug smuggling beneficiary, Mitch McConnell, was hatched under a slimy rock. If there were a devil, these two would be his spawn.
6
the GOP loves to talk about death panels ... and now they have created their own.
Since when did "conservative values" and the Christian values so many of them espouse include the infliction of suffering (physical, mental, and financial) on millions of their fellow citizens.
AND the cost of emergency care for these uninsured individuals will be charged back to all of the rest of us with health insurance - yet another tax on everyone who is not in the top 10%
Bad. Sad. Stupid. Cruel.
Since when did "conservative values" and the Christian values so many of them espouse include the infliction of suffering (physical, mental, and financial) on millions of their fellow citizens.
AND the cost of emergency care for these uninsured individuals will be charged back to all of the rest of us with health insurance - yet another tax on everyone who is not in the top 10%
Bad. Sad. Stupid. Cruel.
3
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft." -Mick Mulvaney
Says a loyalist whose head of party is someone who habitually took money (and services) from someone without an intention to pay it back.
Says a loyalist whose head of party is someone who habitually took money (and services) from someone without an intention to pay it back.
3
Ah, now I understand: The real goal of the Senate "health care" bill is to fight crime, and Mitch McConnell is pushing hard for its passage because there are so many Medicaid thieves in his own home state! My thanks to Mick Mulvaney for clearing that up.
4
When are we going to stop calling those Mick Mulvaneys "Conservative?"
1
I was just reading something about healthcare in Scandinavia and how they started developing communal healthcare services in the late 19th century. What stroke me was how the idea that healthcare is a product never even entered their considerations. Rather, it was something that was required to maintain the health of the community and prevent the spread of disease that at the time was far more widespread than now. Moreover, it was a way to make the great advances of medical science available to the public that could never otherwise afford them. The US is light years behind when it comes to these attitudes, more suited to the backwards thinking of the early 19th century. In addition, healthcare debate in the US is a luxury. This debate would end on the day that one or two of those old diseases would choose to come back to haunt us just as quickly as it will end if a generation of new easily transferable serious diseases appears. Then we would instantly understand why access to healthcare cannot be controlled by extortionate costs for bad insurance plans. This is a debate for idiots created by the Republican party that is not only out of touch with people but also with nature.
2
The Republicans raised this tiger from a cub. Now they have to ride the tiger. Or it will eat them.
1
Edsall's analyses carry a lot of water with me precisely because they are considered and well thought out, and studiously avoid the knee-jerk, bombastic attacks so common with other opinion writers, such as Paul Krugman.
Where on earth did Mick Mulvaney grow up? Taxes are collected for the benefit of all, for various services that we all need. Everyone "chips" in and if one has more than another, it is a terrible to begrudge those who have less and have to work "double time" just to stay above water. Medicaid has been in place for over 50 years and it is grown and matured and is critical care at this point in time.
4
Just wait until all these Cult45 followers begin to lose their health care (provided by Medicaid, and to a lesser extent, the ACA). They will sound like the citizens (who also voted for trump) who's family members are being rounded up by ICE. "It wasn't supposed to happen to us, it was supposed to be the 'others,' who were going to be deported."
Here in MI, there was a lengthy article in our state paper about how the Chaldean community is so upset with their family members being rounded up for deportation after supporting trump. As a matter of fact, Joseph Kassab, head of the Iraqi Christians Advocacy and Empowerment Institute, and a big supporter of trump who encouraged the community to vote for him, actually stated he doesn't blame trump, but ICE (who does he thinks ICE gets their policy orders from?).
Why people didn't believe him when he said what he was going to do is beyond me. Of course, he lies every time he opens his mouth, but do these people really think he's going to stand by them? And if Mulvaney & Price have their way, not only will Medicaid be gone, but you can kiss Medicare goodbye also. So all those bigots who voted for trump assuming they would be "safe," are going to be in for a rude and extremely unpleasant surprise.
Here in MI, there was a lengthy article in our state paper about how the Chaldean community is so upset with their family members being rounded up for deportation after supporting trump. As a matter of fact, Joseph Kassab, head of the Iraqi Christians Advocacy and Empowerment Institute, and a big supporter of trump who encouraged the community to vote for him, actually stated he doesn't blame trump, but ICE (who does he thinks ICE gets their policy orders from?).
Why people didn't believe him when he said what he was going to do is beyond me. Of course, he lies every time he opens his mouth, but do these people really think he's going to stand by them? And if Mulvaney & Price have their way, not only will Medicaid be gone, but you can kiss Medicare goodbye also. So all those bigots who voted for trump assuming they would be "safe," are going to be in for a rude and extremely unpleasant surprise.
2
The people of McConnell's Kentucky, like so many in red states, again and again vote against their own best interests and support the likes of the duplicitous and rule-bending Senator McConnell and his cohort of co-conspirators: those who would render the American dream inaccessible to so many who vote for them.
Just how far has this country moved to the right?
An extremely "conservative" GOP now controls both the legislative and executive branches of the government; nonetheless McConnell was forced to delay voting on the GOP healthcare bill.
Did McConnell announce this delay because he wishes to halt the hurt it would deal to "his own people"?
No.
Why? Because a few center-right Republican senators would not vote for it because it is too mean spirited. The large group comprising the current middle of the road GOP senators--those who support McConnell no matter what--would vote for it because it was just mean spirited enough. A few ultra-right regressive Republicans, like Senator Rand Paul, would not vote for it because it is not nearly mean spirited enough.
Too mean spirited. Just mean spirited enough. Not nearly mean spirited enough.
Shades of "Goldie Locks and the Three Bears."
To bad that so many Kentuckians who hated Obamacare, but loved their own Kynect Care, didn't know that Kynect was their state's version of Obamacare--and voted contrary to their own best interests.
Dan Quayle warned: "A mind is a terrible thing to lose."
Miseducation has consequences.
Just how far has this country moved to the right?
An extremely "conservative" GOP now controls both the legislative and executive branches of the government; nonetheless McConnell was forced to delay voting on the GOP healthcare bill.
Did McConnell announce this delay because he wishes to halt the hurt it would deal to "his own people"?
No.
Why? Because a few center-right Republican senators would not vote for it because it is too mean spirited. The large group comprising the current middle of the road GOP senators--those who support McConnell no matter what--would vote for it because it was just mean spirited enough. A few ultra-right regressive Republicans, like Senator Rand Paul, would not vote for it because it is not nearly mean spirited enough.
Too mean spirited. Just mean spirited enough. Not nearly mean spirited enough.
Shades of "Goldie Locks and the Three Bears."
To bad that so many Kentuckians who hated Obamacare, but loved their own Kynect Care, didn't know that Kynect was their state's version of Obamacare--and voted contrary to their own best interests.
Dan Quayle warned: "A mind is a terrible thing to lose."
Miseducation has consequences.
4
So, according to Mulvaney's thinking, doctors, auto mechanics, police, fire, garbagemen, teachers, retail clerks, etc. are all thieves? Then what does that make Republican elected officials? The Mafia blushes.
2
How is it possible that all these same white constituents continue to vote for these conservative republicans? Stupidity. Pure stupidity. And there is no easy cure for that malady.
3
Our President is an ignorant fool followed by Republican Legislators who believe they will kill the bad social State.
1
Repeated surveys show the Trumpkin demographic believes their government payouts are deserved, but Those (lazy) People's are not. Trumpcare is the closest they can come to race-testing benefits.
2
Government "small enough to drown in the bath tub" is very mean indeed!
The Trump voters are about to experience that result themselves.
The Trump voters are about to experience that result themselves.
When media are no longer required to be honest and fair, the rich can control the narrative. They have done a superb job. I know of a man who was in distress because his TB/cable was not working and he couldn't get his hourly "fix" of fake news from Fox. Fox fills up their brains so they don't have to think.
Because if they allowed any cracks in their world view they would be lost.
And they are lost. They just don't know it.
Because if they allowed any cracks in their world view they would be lost.
And they are lost. They just don't know it.
Criminalization of filial support laws is clearly something many a GOP voter hot to eliminate Medicaid is not aware of. I am sure there is a class of lawyers ready to capitalize on that and are donating to the GOP.
The true slogan of the Trump administration: "You can't fix stupid."
2
How sick can a person's mind be! GOP willing to give "welfare " (tax cuts) to the rich at the expense of the poor. How immoral, anti-Christ can you get. Venal GOP are pandering to the rich hoping the free money given to the rich will come pack to the GOP coffers in the form of political donations.
1
Paying a hundred thousand dollars a year to pay for someone to languor and die a slow death in bed might be worth it if it was on a cruise ship with a balcony at least.
The rhetoric from Mulvaney is rich, but stupid. Most of us are working our backsides off trying to make ends meet and get ahead, but the cost of basic health care is almost out of reach. The cost of actual medical needs that arise in the course of being alive is insane. Acting like social insurance is theft is pathetic posturing.
Mulvaney speaks only to the prejudices of his sponsors' donor class. Reality is something else entirely.
Mulvaney speaks only to the prejudices of his sponsors' donor class. Reality is something else entirely.
What's next for the compassionate Republicans?
Bring back Debtor's Prison? Stocks and pillories? Public flogging?
(Run by the private sector, of course.)
Bring back Debtor's Prison? Stocks and pillories? Public flogging?
(Run by the private sector, of course.)
1
The election system in America pretty much guarantees that after a certain level of local government only the wealthy are able to run for office. Trump has taken it even further by only picking the wealthiest Americans for cabinet positions. The gang of rich white men who cobbled together this mess of a healthcare bill probably haven’t had to worry about the price of hamburger for a while. They haven’t had to take off work to drive their disabled child 40 miles away just to get a cavity filled or survive on Raman noodles until their next paycheck because the tooth wasn’t covered. They haven’t had to quit their job to care for their aging mother. They give us a pat on the head and tell us to sit quietly in the corner until they’re finished because they alone know what’s good for us. During the campaign, Trump exposed a deep vein of anger in America over jobs and it gave him the White House. Watch what happens when our healthcare goes and our kids start suffering.
When I was a kid in the 50s and 60s most families had 1 wage earner. There was someone at home to care for parents and children. Fast forward to 2017 and both parents work and, according to Mulvaney, maybe you are "lucky enough" to get overtime for working more that 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. Those that look for the government to help make ends meet are thieves. Those that pay low wages, only allow part time work to avoid paying benefits, and do anything possible to avoid paying overtime are America's heroes from Mulvaney's perspective. Well, if the wealth in American corporations and business people felt more of a duty to invest in Americans maybe there would be fewer "thieves" Mulvaney detests.
3
I moved from New York City to Toledo, OH in May 2002 to care for my mother, a breast cancer survivor from 1984 who subsequently contracted four metastases. Without her solid pension from having worked for the Maumee City Schools as a school secretary, her excellent insurance, and her Medicare supplemental insurance, she would NEVER have been able to live for the seven years that we were lucky enough to have her after her first metastasis was diagnosed. She was home until two days before she died in hospice, surrounded by her children, many of her grandchildren, and her two best friends.
The idea that any human being isn't entitled to these things after working one's entire life, paying taxes, playing by the rules in American society, raising a family, and contributing in a myriad of ways to our lives and those of her community is appalling and WRONG.
Without insurance, pension and Medicare - things she WORKED FOR - she would have struggled, probably lost her home, and certainly died sooner and from a broken heart at the country and the systems that would have let her down. There is NO WAY she could have saved enough money to pay for those things on her own.
It is unconscionable that any political party could be so craven and contemptuous of the lives of our country's citizens, especially its most vulnerable - the sick, elderly, aging, the physically and mentally challenged, and the poor.
Mitch McConnell and his cronies would rather save face than save Americans.
The idea that any human being isn't entitled to these things after working one's entire life, paying taxes, playing by the rules in American society, raising a family, and contributing in a myriad of ways to our lives and those of her community is appalling and WRONG.
Without insurance, pension and Medicare - things she WORKED FOR - she would have struggled, probably lost her home, and certainly died sooner and from a broken heart at the country and the systems that would have let her down. There is NO WAY she could have saved enough money to pay for those things on her own.
It is unconscionable that any political party could be so craven and contemptuous of the lives of our country's citizens, especially its most vulnerable - the sick, elderly, aging, the physically and mentally challenged, and the poor.
Mitch McConnell and his cronies would rather save face than save Americans.
4
If you add in the retired population of Kentucky, you are getting close to Leader McConnell's state being more than half on Medicaid or Medicare. Add in those on some type of military health care and those in government (taxpayer paid) job health care programs, and you're darn near a single payer system. And the Affordable Health Care Act health insurance exchange is said to be working in Kentucky better than most states, and has benefitted many Kenuckians. Yet these people keep re-electing this man? Perhaps their eyes will be opened now.
81
You can't open a group's eyes when they are sewn shut with propaganda by the Right.
1
Of course a tax break disproportionately benefits the "rich" when the tax system is progressive. It should! That's entirely appropriate and expected. Switch to a flat tax, the only FAIR method of taxation, and tax cuts will benefit everyone equally. And yes, btw, recipients of Medicaid are thieves no matter their race.
As long as we have to suffer through a government occupied by only 2 political parties, Americans have to gain a better understanding of cause and effect. If I vote for a Party that believes the Social Net should disappear and wants South Americans and Muslims out of the country, I shouldn’t be surprised when healthcare costs skyrocket, millions lose care, but the U.S. has less foreigners . What is more important to you? If I vote for a Party that wants to greatly reduce EPA restrictions on companies and de-fund Planned Parenthood, I shouldn’t be shocked as our air and water become more polluted, but most Planned Parenthood offices close. What is more important to you. We all must compromise every time we vote. Washington needs to do the same.
1
Washington is Wholly Owned by Corporate America and Big Banks.
Does the GOP "Health" Care bills from two houses amount to compromise.
Have you heard or read Warren Buffet's recent statements? He was tense and nervous as he mouthed them.
Does the GOP "Health" Care bills from two houses amount to compromise.
Have you heard or read Warren Buffet's recent statements? He was tense and nervous as he mouthed them.
1
This situation also results from our society's fundamental acceptance of our health as a legitimate target for profit making -- this is the basic difference between the hated "socialized medicine" of nearly every other industrialized country and our health care as business model, which for some reason most Americans think is just dandy. So poor and minorities are targeted as the culprits in this very unfair system. What about the businesses that are profiting mightily from our poor national health and are not paying their fair share of taxes (think pharmaceutical companies who are allowed to jack up prices beyond any reason and then park their profits overseas; hospital conglomerates that gobble up others and even smaller clinics reducing or eliminating any competition; hospital "groups" that are also in the business of insurance, huge conflict of interest)? These businesses are protected and encouraged by the system, especially by Republicans. Republicans also want to do away with and even demonize (think Michelle Obama) of the no brainer programs that attempt to educate for better health habits and emphasize prevention and lifestyle changes that would make a huge difference to the system. That might cut into profits of their buddies, hence their campaign contributions, and ya da da da da, we all know the story. A national health system, which now goes by the absurd name of "single payer" is really the only answer, yet I think hell will freeze over before we ever get there.
1
Mick Mulvaney's philosophy is: "I'm for myself and the heck with everyone else." He has no understanding of the art of living together in society.
1
On Mulvaney, he's from South Carolina, so I suppose one we can feel sorry for him. He doesn't know any better. The cruelty of the stars and bars is embedded in his psyche. Enough said about him. The rest, they will end up in Dante's lowest location of hell. The one reserved for hypocrites. A pox on all their souls and their progeny to follow for a 1000 more years, that is if we survive that long.
Something wrong with this picture, just can't seem to figure it out. Work fifty years starting out at sixty five cents an hour, moved all the way to the big money, seven fifty an hour, wore out now, one of my callouses got infected, got run over by a doctor/administrator at the state hospital late for his lunch date. The lawyer(some guy named Mulvaney) says the M3 is a writeoff an the bill for services and a new Audi is $312,034.23. They're referring it to collection, the Mulvaney Agency. Won't even go into the wife's story, she died. Now there's some Indian at the door, she says I owe rent for the last 350 years....an the landlord, some guy named Mulvaney.....I'm not tired, or bored, could go on, but my daily AM radio entertainment, some guy named Mulvaney.....
And all those Republican voters in all those red states will blame Obama, Democrats, brown people, immigrants, gays and coastal elites when they die from drinking poison water and breathing poison air without access to healthcare, housing or affordable food. And when they go bankrupt trying to keep Grannie in the nursing home, they will still not look to the Republicans who unleashed all this hell on them and hold them to account.
Republicans have some brass nerve talking about theft.
Letting giant corporations get away with non payment of taxes and, worse yet, receiving refunds over and above that, is disgusting.
So is a House and Senate that gets NOTHING done to benefit the majority of the voters who installed them on their princely thrones.
You want to see some theft? Look in the mirror.
Letting giant corporations get away with non payment of taxes and, worse yet, receiving refunds over and above that, is disgusting.
So is a House and Senate that gets NOTHING done to benefit the majority of the voters who installed them on their princely thrones.
You want to see some theft? Look in the mirror.
Trump loves "winners" and despises "losers", just ask John McCain. If you are young, healthy, white, wealthy, and strong you're a winner; otherwise you are thieving scum. The Big Lie has always been that blacks absorb welfare benefits while whites pay them. The irrationality of this argument must be attacked and debunked otherwise it is just collusion with the old guard. Taxes are needed to provide services to the needy. Taxes are also the price for the PRIVILEGE of being wealthy in America. There are no free riders here. The 1% does not "own" America but they have compromised her. No wonder the GOP can only operate by high jacking the truth.
2
Come out of the ”closer” closet, Junior, and take a long, very deep breath of reality:
You are losing, Donald and the Dems are going to win.
And that’s because none of your Senatorial GOPpers, all of whom are wetting their undergarments Right now wants to get trampled by their constituents anytime soon.
It’s called “politics”, Junior, and it isn’t some quivering contractor or apartment owner or renter you’re facing, across your desk, you big Closer-ette you, but hundreds of millions of Americans — voters all — all grateful for Obamacare — all realizing now what’s at stake, and the why’s and who’s of it, too:
Their healthcare and that of other family members and friends and neighbors.
Republican or not, they have realized you spinned them and theirs back in November.
And what’s worse:
They TRUSTED you!
You’re in a deep hole. I can’t even see your golden fauxdome anymore amongst the crowd.
The incredible shrinking Donald!
Go for it!, Fisher-Price! :)
You are losing, Donald and the Dems are going to win.
And that’s because none of your Senatorial GOPpers, all of whom are wetting their undergarments Right now wants to get trampled by their constituents anytime soon.
It’s called “politics”, Junior, and it isn’t some quivering contractor or apartment owner or renter you’re facing, across your desk, you big Closer-ette you, but hundreds of millions of Americans — voters all — all grateful for Obamacare — all realizing now what’s at stake, and the why’s and who’s of it, too:
Their healthcare and that of other family members and friends and neighbors.
Republican or not, they have realized you spinned them and theirs back in November.
And what’s worse:
They TRUSTED you!
You’re in a deep hole. I can’t even see your golden fauxdome anymore amongst the crowd.
The incredible shrinking Donald!
Go for it!, Fisher-Price! :)
Hmm. Let's see: Trump is President. GOP has majority in House and Senate, and 1000 other public offices including 37 Governorships, and oh yeah -- control of SCOTUS.
If that's your definition of losing...I'll take it!
If that's your definition of losing...I'll take it!
Why continue to discuss social problems with Republicans as if they cared a jot for fellow citizens. Sooner or later they will have to be cleared from blocking the future and they will not go peacefully in response to majority will. Republicans are a cancer which must be excised. Talking with them is akin to bargaining with Hitler. They are his offspring.
I cannot believe Mulvaney is ignorant of white Americans' enormous dependence on Medicare. I can believe, though, that he and those of his ilk care or little for poor whites or poor anybody -- especially if Mulvaney and his ilk are footing the bill.
The sanctified disdain the successful are allowed to have for the poor is rooted in part in the Protestant ethic as defined by Max Weber -- especially the Calvinist strand -- which, in the simplest terms, sees a person's misery as a sign they are not one of God’s elect and that prosperity is a sign a person is one of the elect, predestined to achieve a heavenly reward. If people are poor and ailing, then well, that's just part of God's plan.
That's just the way it is.
And why should the elect have to be burdened by supporting the souls of the damned, paying out hard-earned money to the un-elect? Which is another way of saying "For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first."
In some quarters being born with Down syndrome or suffering other infirmities, like old age, is judged a curse and the Senate’s healthcare bill in effect concurs. However, people living in the real world disagree, and Americans give the Senate’s bill only 12% approval rate.
In all likelihood every nursing home resident except the ultra wealthy will exhaust their nest egg and qualify for Medicaid.
Republicans infamously claimed the ACA would pull the plug on grandma. But now they're getting ready to throw grandma into the street.
The sanctified disdain the successful are allowed to have for the poor is rooted in part in the Protestant ethic as defined by Max Weber -- especially the Calvinist strand -- which, in the simplest terms, sees a person's misery as a sign they are not one of God’s elect and that prosperity is a sign a person is one of the elect, predestined to achieve a heavenly reward. If people are poor and ailing, then well, that's just part of God's plan.
That's just the way it is.
And why should the elect have to be burdened by supporting the souls of the damned, paying out hard-earned money to the un-elect? Which is another way of saying "For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first."
In some quarters being born with Down syndrome or suffering other infirmities, like old age, is judged a curse and the Senate’s healthcare bill in effect concurs. However, people living in the real world disagree, and Americans give the Senate’s bill only 12% approval rate.
In all likelihood every nursing home resident except the ultra wealthy will exhaust their nest egg and qualify for Medicaid.
Republicans infamously claimed the ACA would pull the plug on grandma. But now they're getting ready to throw grandma into the street.
1
Having read all the blish-n-blather about how many are depending on Medicaid I am STILL with Uncle Mitch..."...if they would rather die then let them and decrease the surplus population."...and STOP STEALING FROM ME
What good are they to the nation if they only TAKE from the working productive members?
We convinced them to quit their unions (fools...haha) and convinced them the government was their enemy (fools again...haha) and then we convinced them to chant "Lock Her Up" about the one person who would have protected them (Big Fools...hahahaha)....NOW they are ON THEIR OWN ....each one is "free" to bargain for a job and pay and equally free to plead his case before the Government of the united States (hahaha).
THEY GOT WHAT THEY SAID THEY WANTED ...freedom...so now they can use their "freedom" to self-terminate...Bye-Bye Deplorables... have a nice ride to the graveyard.
What good are they to the nation if they only TAKE from the working productive members?
We convinced them to quit their unions (fools...haha) and convinced them the government was their enemy (fools again...haha) and then we convinced them to chant "Lock Her Up" about the one person who would have protected them (Big Fools...hahahaha)....NOW they are ON THEIR OWN ....each one is "free" to bargain for a job and pay and equally free to plead his case before the Government of the united States (hahaha).
THEY GOT WHAT THEY SAID THEY WANTED ...freedom...so now they can use their "freedom" to self-terminate...Bye-Bye Deplorables... have a nice ride to the graveyard.
I am not by any means poor, nor am I "wealth," that being said I'm astounded why American or those who support the GOP are so hell bend on accumulating more at the expense of their fellow citizens. What is it about humanity that these people do not understand. Continuing to press our government to enable the rich to accumulate more as vast numbers of people suffer from a lack of quality healthcare is just plain wrong and in my opinion immoral. Do these callous individuals think that they can take it with them?
1
I still find it inconceivable that many of the people mentioned in this article who receive Medicaid seem to be unaware from whence it comes or that they are even recipients. How can we then expect such boneheads, wallowing in ignorance, to make intelligent choices about for whom to vote? The fact that Kentucky can repeatedly elect McConnell and Paul is a more damning indictment of the education level in this country than any elaborately "scientific" measure.
135
This comment gets at an essential and puzzling problem. At the same time, a big part of politics is taking credit for good things, and that process doesn't happen by accident. I think very highly of Barack Obama, but what if he'd gotten out there and made a point of highlighting people and families -- and small businesses too -- who benefited from the ACA, and had done so again and again? Maybe he did do some of that, but it should have been a much higher-profile part of his first term. People generally won't make essential political connections unless you help them to those conclusions -- and if you don't, they'll be vulnerable to all sorts of groups wanting to mis-lead them toward conclusions that make no sense.
The point here is not that citizens and voters are stupid, but rather that aggressive leadership is essential --
The point here is not that citizens and voters are stupid, but rather that aggressive leadership is essential --
1
What both the folks on the Left and the folks on the Right utterly fail to grasp is that the issue of medical care is about raw economics. Without Medicaid and without an expansive national health care program, we all still pay for medical expenses for those who have the need but not the means. Before the ACA (Obamacare), those costs were paid by those of us who paid higher premiums for their own insurance and by the criminal justice system. Both are very expensive and the least efficient method for providing this care. This is not about self-sufficiency as the wags on the Right spew or compassion as those on the Left wail. It is facing the undeniable fact that we will not have people dying in our streets. I have yet to meet a Republican who has ever actually read what portion of our national and state expenditures actually are paid for "those on the dole". (Hint: it is less than they think). The Republicans once again sneakily cut the hamstrings of the ACA by making certain that insurance carriers did not have a safety net if sign ups did not go as planned. Of course the ACA is struggling. There is nothing difficult about these concepts. The electorate needs to stop allowing the Right wing from quietly cheating. Stop complaining about mean-spirited legislation and start educating about simple economics.
What a remarkable state of affairs. We have the majority of congressional Republicans supporting health plans that are no such thing, professing allegiance to a 35% base that does not understand just how badly it would hurt their precarious lives.
2
Then Paul Ryan would be a thief as he has been living off social insurance since he was a kid. He has never worked int he private sector. Of course we are a better country for his genius as a parliamentarian and legislator: as member of the House since 1998, he has authored 3 bills in 19 years.
2
Barack Obama never worked in the private sector. Indeed, his first "job" was in his 40s -- as an Illinois State Senator. All Obama did was volunteer community organizing -- UNPAID.
Bernie Sanders likewise never worked a day in his life, until elected to the US Congress in his 40s.
I'll bet there are other examples in Congress, if we looked hard.
Bernie Sanders likewise never worked a day in his life, until elected to the US Congress in his 40s.
I'll bet there are other examples in Congress, if we looked hard.
Whereas trump has worked hard to earn what he has? How foolish
Then you should be able to commend someone who is willing to work for free. I guess didn't work till he was 70 either by your logic.
I would tell conservatives this, that they will pay for it one way or the other, whether through increased taxes to cover the costs of doctors providing free medical care, or by sustaining 'welfare' programs that protects their family members. The government will not let them die.
Great analysis. This needs to be in outlets other than the New York Times.
1
To summarize: Mitch McConnell was born in Alabama, owns a token home in Kentucky, lives in Maryland. The Affordable Care Act that McConnell and Rand Paul are in the process of dismantling is the reason so many more Kentucky citizens are now receiving the healthcare they need. Meanwhile, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump's budget director asserts that because these Kentucky citizens would not be able to pay back the cost for their healthcare, they are thieves.
1
I'm ready to see Trump voters suffer for their choice. The Left should not protect them from the consequences of their actions, for then they will never learn that their actions have consequences.
It's time for Democrats to step aside and let Republicans enact their agenda. Take medicaid away, cut taxes for the rich, privatize everything, and then lets see what happens. With the tax savings, Blue states can enact their own generous welfare policies and free the federal government of the burden of helping the citizens it is intended to serve. Moreover, Blue states can stop sending their money to Red states that do not want it. If poor people in Kentucky lose their benefits, why should I care? They surely would not care if I were to lose my right to be gay-married.
Yes, this might sound like a cruel position to take, but why should we liberals protect those who would not do the same for us? And if we're concerned with liberal voters stuck in Red states, then I say to you rich liberals in rich blue states: fund their resettlement. Bring them home to the coasts, help them get jobs, and prove to the GOP once and for all that compassion makes more financial and moral sense than austerity.
The Right goes on and on about state's rights; perhaps it's time that the Left take their argument seriously.
It's time for Democrats to step aside and let Republicans enact their agenda. Take medicaid away, cut taxes for the rich, privatize everything, and then lets see what happens. With the tax savings, Blue states can enact their own generous welfare policies and free the federal government of the burden of helping the citizens it is intended to serve. Moreover, Blue states can stop sending their money to Red states that do not want it. If poor people in Kentucky lose their benefits, why should I care? They surely would not care if I were to lose my right to be gay-married.
Yes, this might sound like a cruel position to take, but why should we liberals protect those who would not do the same for us? And if we're concerned with liberal voters stuck in Red states, then I say to you rich liberals in rich blue states: fund their resettlement. Bring them home to the coasts, help them get jobs, and prove to the GOP once and for all that compassion makes more financial and moral sense than austerity.
The Right goes on and on about state's rights; perhaps it's time that the Left take their argument seriously.
1
These logical arguments do not matter. There are a lot of people at the bottom 90% of the income ladder who have adopted an ideology that benefits the top 10% at the expense of their own interests. Conservatives, quite skillfully have managed the incredible feat of selling this to the American voter. Liberals think of it as such obvious nonsense that they did not even bother to entertain the possibility that it just might succeed. Well, it has succeed, indeed spectacularly so, and now Americans have chosen one from the top 0.01% to care for them. The only treatment for this schizophrenia is to let those who voted, and those who did not, suffer the consequence of their choices.
Fundamentally it is racism. The heart of Trump's support -- demographically and attitudinally -- has always been about race. If the same programs were called "Bushcare" it would take off a lot of the sting. "Repeal and replace" actually means pretending that that Black President never happened. That's why all these good facts are, sadly, beside the point. Trump and McConnell embody these obsessive attitudes.
2
Within the next week my guess is that there will be another essay in the NY Times that will call for respect and dialogue with Trump voters. Liberals will be told again that their snooty condescension is both a moral and political failure. When we get that essay just recall that a majority of GOP voters have characterized medicaid as a welfare program. We all know that welfare is a dog whistle for race for the GOP and has been since Reagan. Bottom line, a majority of GOP voters are in fact racists. If you see that as a lack of respect you are correct.
1
Medicaid really, truly IS a welfare program.
It is not "insurance" by any possible definition.
Now, you can support the idea of Medicaid welfare, but you cannot deny it IS welfare. It is pure charity, with no obligations -- no copays or premiums or deductibles.
And BTW: it has nothing whatsoever to do with race, and if you keep insisting that most Americans are racists -- or deplorables in a basket -- you will keep LOSING ELECTIONS.
It is not "insurance" by any possible definition.
Now, you can support the idea of Medicaid welfare, but you cannot deny it IS welfare. It is pure charity, with no obligations -- no copays or premiums or deductibles.
And BTW: it has nothing whatsoever to do with race, and if you keep insisting that most Americans are racists -- or deplorables in a basket -- you will keep LOSING ELECTIONS.
Basically, what we see here is that Republicans have a minority view which considers government assistance as helping others --not themselves. Where does such idea come from? It seems very reasonable to consider this idea a sort of psychosis (mental illness) based on an ignorant notion that the welfare of others is not in one's self-interest. It's a sort of fear or mistrust of others which makes no sense, thus reasonably termed 'ignorant'. In short, Republicans are generally not as smart as the rest of us.
And we'd better start knowing this, and making it known that we know it.
And we'd better start knowing this, and making it known that we know it.
1
As a supposedly "Christian" nation, it appears the so-called Christians have forgotten their Sunday School lessons. Here's a reminder - 'As you do unto the least of them, so you do unto Me'.
Sad that you have to bring ethnicity into debate about Medicaid in order to demonstrate its universal appeal. It should be just about medical necessity not the color of a person's skin tone.
Important, well-crafted analysis. Few have focused as Edsall does here on the key issue: the American economy does not produce jobs or income sufficient for millions of Americans to afford health care. This has been true since doctors gave up their saws little black bags full of patent medicines.
Medical science simply outpaced the economy, beginning not long after the turn of the 20th Century. GOP "free market" ideology refuses to face this fact. Or, Ayn Rand cultists like Paul Ryan do face this fact but believe the "moral" thing to do is leave the suffering and dying behind. They are unproductive by Randian lights. The consequences of that thinking are deadly: people will get sicker or die, families will go bankrupt.
In the Ryan/McConnell/Trump future, we could look back over our shoulders and see them dying there by the side of the road while we walk on. Not in my America.
Medical science simply outpaced the economy, beginning not long after the turn of the 20th Century. GOP "free market" ideology refuses to face this fact. Or, Ayn Rand cultists like Paul Ryan do face this fact but believe the "moral" thing to do is leave the suffering and dying behind. They are unproductive by Randian lights. The consequences of that thinking are deadly: people will get sicker or die, families will go bankrupt.
In the Ryan/McConnell/Trump future, we could look back over our shoulders and see them dying there by the side of the road while we walk on. Not in my America.
1
Unfortunately all this worthwhile data, if presented at all, is received by the Fox viewership as fake news. This white contingent of voters who believe that Medicaid is thievery have strong and loud voices to rally them and funnel their rage. But each individual's quiet singular voice will not even be audible when s/he begins hollering about loss of coverage. Most likely the blame will fall on Obama or "others" who have "abused" the system. One thing about Trump world is that Trump and company are never guilty and always victims.
1
The "relief for the rich" (as Warren Buffett puts it) is directly in line with the absurd Republican view that it is the rich who are the real victims. Republicans and conservatives (and some Democrats) have swallowed their own Kool-Aid. Forget percentages. Forget all the loopholes, dodges, and havens available to the elite. In the elite delusion, because they pay more raw dollars in taxes, it is the 0.1 percent who are being robbed most. So they deserve the most protection and greatest redress. That this just happens to benefit the conservatives drafting the 'reformed' tax policy in the first place is a 'coincidence.'
Worse, not one Republican and few Democrats would dream of condemning as "theft" what employers do to workers. Corporations have done very well in recent decades while workers have barely broken even. Employers have been siphoning off the added value created by workers. Executives pretend that they are entirely responsible for improved corporate performance. Nonsense. If there is theft taking place in our political economy, it comes primarily in the form of the 0.1 percent stealing from the bottom 80 percent — the opposite of what elitist money-grubbers like Mick Mulvaney, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump pretend.
Finally, and most troubling, the Donald Trumps, Steve Bannons, Charles Kochs, and Robert Mercers deeply believe they are naturally superior, naturally deserving of preferential treatment. One step away from a rehash of "divine right" . . . or worse.
Worse, not one Republican and few Democrats would dream of condemning as "theft" what employers do to workers. Corporations have done very well in recent decades while workers have barely broken even. Employers have been siphoning off the added value created by workers. Executives pretend that they are entirely responsible for improved corporate performance. Nonsense. If there is theft taking place in our political economy, it comes primarily in the form of the 0.1 percent stealing from the bottom 80 percent — the opposite of what elitist money-grubbers like Mick Mulvaney, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump pretend.
Finally, and most troubling, the Donald Trumps, Steve Bannons, Charles Kochs, and Robert Mercers deeply believe they are naturally superior, naturally deserving of preferential treatment. One step away from a rehash of "divine right" . . . or worse.
1
I think it's time for voters to Repeal and Replace today's Republican Party.
1
To point out that there are more white Medicaid recipients than any other ethnicity is evidence ONLY that white people are still a plurality.
Mr. Edsall can do better than this.
Mr. Edsall can do better than this.
This makes no sense, Howard. Whites could be a great plurality yet be a minority of Medicaid recipients.
Edsall's point is that this is not the case.
Edsall's point is that this is not the case.
Dear Mr Trump,
On the subject of healthcare that you would provide as a replacement for the ACA, you said:
- "There will be insurance for everybody
- "Healthcare will be a “lot less expensive” for everyone — the government, consumers, providers
- "There will be no cuts to Medicaid
- "No one will lose coverage
- "Nobody will be worse off financially
- "Everybody's going to be taken care of
If you bothered to read the bills that the Republicans in Congress have drafted, you would find that NONE of your statements are achieved by what are basically tax cuts for the rich dressed up as heath care bills.
This being true, I presume that you would stand by your statements and VETO these bills were they ever to arrive on your desk for signature.
Sincerely
Ted Morton
On the subject of healthcare that you would provide as a replacement for the ACA, you said:
- "There will be insurance for everybody
- "Healthcare will be a “lot less expensive” for everyone — the government, consumers, providers
- "There will be no cuts to Medicaid
- "No one will lose coverage
- "Nobody will be worse off financially
- "Everybody's going to be taken care of
If you bothered to read the bills that the Republicans in Congress have drafted, you would find that NONE of your statements are achieved by what are basically tax cuts for the rich dressed up as heath care bills.
This being true, I presume that you would stand by your statements and VETO these bills were they ever to arrive on your desk for signature.
Sincerely
Ted Morton
1
Please give credit where due: it's the Trump-Ryan-McConnell Sinkhole. Branding matters.
In yesterday's meeting with Republicans Mr. Trump said that he knows how difficult it is to get McConnell's secret health care bill passed, but if it doesn't pass, "that's ok" he declared to the astonishment of the Senators present.
The callous indifference the Republican Party is demonstrating about passing any legislation at all is the most frightening aspect to this whole Trump nightmare.
The callous indifference the Republican Party is demonstrating about passing any legislation at all is the most frightening aspect to this whole Trump nightmare.
Warren Buffett described the Senate health care bill as the “Relief for the Rich Act.”
Obviously, we elected the wrong businessman for our President.
Obviously, we elected the wrong businessman for our President.
1
Try single payer. Try raising taxes - perhaps a Harmonized style sales tax based on consumption and service. The country is rotting from within. It's falling apart structurally and is done morally. Republicans should not even be in power. ALL religion should be severed from law. This is so obvious.
Our taxation system has many blue state Democrats paying more in federal taxes than they get back in benefits. These people, ironically, have few problems doing so as they believe in, among other things, the real benefits of programs like Medicaid. Equally ironically many red state Republicans, often beneficiaries of these entitlement programs, support politicians who want to gut Medicaid. Wow. And these are "value voters".
The hypocrisy of Senators McConnell and Rand Paul, both from Kentucky, is amazing, even for politicians. Kentucky, along with Alaska, home of the Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin, are basically welfare states, living off of New York and California. Oh the irony!
The hypocrisy of Senators McConnell and Rand Paul, both from Kentucky, is amazing, even for politicians. Kentucky, along with Alaska, home of the Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin, are basically welfare states, living off of New York and California. Oh the irony!
The Republicans are just plain bad economists: tax cuts to the wealthy don't trickle down, our long history with this experiment has shown. And in the end, the very wealthy don't profit from a middle class where wages have stagnated. If the large majority of consumers can't buy more, GDP doesn't grow and equities don't rise as fast. It's really quite a simple equation, but Republicans are too obtuse and limited in their thinking to grasp it.
1
Great article, very informative. Now how do we get this information broadcast on right-wing media? The answer, I suspect, is we don't. And the fog of willful ignorance on this and so much else that pervades the right wing in this country will continue undisturbed.
Ah, facts, remember them well.
That was a pretty hard-hitting column. Usually, you strike a more scholarly tone. Obviously, you feel very strongly about this issue, and it must have been difficult to maintain as measured an approach as you did. Very nicely done.
Thank you for this! I have long felt there is an undercurrent of racism in the Republican obsession to stamp out Medicaid and give the money to the rich--as if the poor and the non-white deserve the problems they get, so let them suffer the consequences while others, more fortunate, and more advantageously born should not be burdened by them. There is a sickness about their hatred of Medicaid and Obamacare and all it stands for, They should be ashamed.
Have some of our "representatives" forgotten or perhaps never known what "patriotic" means literally, that is, "to care about our fatherland"? Is our fatherland just some territory, where we are free to ignore the needs of fellow citizens and grab as much as we can, or is it a commonwealth where we care about each other? Is our President supposed to be some kind of Nero Junior who fiddles with the government while many get burned or is the President the Father of our Country who with thought and empathy cares for the well-being of fellow citizens? Was the United State of America founded on ethnicity and on greed, or rather on the ideals of the Preamble to the Constitution to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity?'" Are we a country or just a bunch of selfish losers?
2
From age 98 to age 101 my Grandmother received Medicaid to pay for nursing home care. She was a "spend-down"--all her considerable savings went to pay for the nursing home from age 92 to age 97. She also received $18/month for expenses. She would give the $18 every month to the aides who took care of her, "because they need it more than I do". Most of the rest of the nursing home residents were the same. A few had long-term-care insurance. Those had families constantly battling the insurance companies for payment. Sometimes the checks would bounce, or payments would be denied.
These are the thieves of which Mulvaney complains.
These are the thieves of which Mulvaney complains.
4
It is often cited that all advanced economies have single payer healthcare systems and more generous social safety nets. All these advanced economies also have more racially homogeneous societies. So, if the USA looked more like Canada in racial demographics, would we have single payer system? Sad, but it may be true.
1
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft." - Mulvaney
Theft? How about CEO's earning 300 times what the average worker earns. Or the defense budget, a $637 billion/year killing machine with no redeeming social value. Or corporate welfare, billions in tax breaks for corporations (talk about no intention to pay it back!) And on an on. This is just a taste of what a Republican "paradise" will look like when they succeed in eliminating all governmental social programs and regulations.
From "A New Economy: The System (http://davidkorten.org/the-new-economy/)
Ownership is the key to power. Every two years, we the people may exercise the power of our vote. By contrast, we depend on economic institutions for our daily means of living and we direct our daily labor to their service. They determine whose needs are met, whose are not, and under what conditions. Short of revolution, those who own these institutions, our means of living, hold society’s real power.
When ownership of the means of living is held by the few, with no obligation beyond maximizing short-term personal financial return, the certain outcome is destruction of the social and environmental foundations on which the health and well-being of all depends—exactly as the current economic system does. To change the outcome, we must change the system.
Theft? How about CEO's earning 300 times what the average worker earns. Or the defense budget, a $637 billion/year killing machine with no redeeming social value. Or corporate welfare, billions in tax breaks for corporations (talk about no intention to pay it back!) And on an on. This is just a taste of what a Republican "paradise" will look like when they succeed in eliminating all governmental social programs and regulations.
From "A New Economy: The System (http://davidkorten.org/the-new-economy/)
Ownership is the key to power. Every two years, we the people may exercise the power of our vote. By contrast, we depend on economic institutions for our daily means of living and we direct our daily labor to their service. They determine whose needs are met, whose are not, and under what conditions. Short of revolution, those who own these institutions, our means of living, hold society’s real power.
When ownership of the means of living is held by the few, with no obligation beyond maximizing short-term personal financial return, the certain outcome is destruction of the social and environmental foundations on which the health and well-being of all depends—exactly as the current economic system does. To change the outcome, we must change the system.
19
The game being played is pretty obvious. First, deliver on the promise to "repeal and replace" Obama Care, and second deliver a tax cut to high-income Americans (who according to the ideology will use this largess to grow the economy and create jobs). But how to pay for it? Because, after all, the Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility. Ideally, one would like to pay for it by cutting expenditures on those who wouldn't vote for you anyway. Next, you attempt to push as many of the negative consequences far enough into the future to get you through the next two election cycles. It's how we deal with all long-term existential problems nowadays. One might call it the Scarlet O'Hara approach: "I'll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day."
3
What we are witnessing is the glacial pace of change in our culture.The demographic breakdown of Medicaid recipients may have changed significantly over the past 50 years but the stigma remains.Similarly, the myth that anyone willing to work hard can earn a living wage lives on in the minds of too many Americans, including those who have first hand experience of the change but remain in denial and vote against their own self interest.Sadly, no one is willing to tell the average ignoramus that it's time to grow up and face reality; we can either overcome challenges together or sink individually clinging on to past.
6
Edsall: "contrary to the view that Medicaid is a welfare program, in real life Medicaid has become a financial, emotional and practical lifesaver for millions of Americans."
I trust that Edsall's numbers are sound and well researched. But what is the argument made here: Because Medicaid beneficiaries are mostly white and white Trump-leaning states benefit disproportionately from the program, therefore Medicaid is worthwhile? Medicaid is a lifesaver for "millions of Americans", therefore it's not welfare? Welfare on the other hand doesn't help millions of Americans, it merely helps welfare recipients (wink wink) who somehow don't count as Americans (perhaps only three fifth of a citizen)? ???
I trust that Edsall's numbers are sound and well researched. But what is the argument made here: Because Medicaid beneficiaries are mostly white and white Trump-leaning states benefit disproportionately from the program, therefore Medicaid is worthwhile? Medicaid is a lifesaver for "millions of Americans", therefore it's not welfare? Welfare on the other hand doesn't help millions of Americans, it merely helps welfare recipients (wink wink) who somehow don't count as Americans (perhaps only three fifth of a citizen)? ???
3
This article sets up a war footing, calling one side essentially racist. Personally when I think of Medicaid, I think of an old white person in a nursing home, at over $100,000 per year. He/she may be honestly destitute, or he/she may have hired elder lawyers to assist in the gifting of their substantial assets to family with an eye towards the five year look-back. Either way, through payroll taxes we all pay for Social Security and Medicare. We don't all pay for Medicaid. So it's a safety net, but it's not insurance.
2
Is is a huge government cash flow that was lied about to get through Congress. Even as it cheats the doctors providing services it costs more than the taxpayers can afford.
If any good-sounding thing is destined to bankrupt the U.S. and collapse the dollar, we should not be doing it. I'd rather have the one place on the planet that puts people absolutely first and then feel bad that families abandoned their weakest members.
If any good-sounding thing is destined to bankrupt the U.S. and collapse the dollar, we should not be doing it. I'd rather have the one place on the planet that puts people absolutely first and then feel bad that families abandoned their weakest members.
What almost the entire national media, including Edsall, misses is what happens after 22 million people lose coverage. They will still continue to get sick, and they will continue to go to emergency rooms and continue to get treated. Only this time there will no coverage for the hospitals to bill.
So what happens? Cost-shifting. Costs go up for every other paying customer of the hospital -- which drives up insurance rates for everyone.
Not that 22 million people losing coverage isn't important, but also important is what happens to everybody else's costs once the GOP essentially takes a trillion dollars out of the system to give to rich people. Everybody with health insurance -- incuding employer plans -- is going to be paying more, a lot more - as a result. And when premiums skyrocket, even more people will be unable to afford insurance and start showing up at emergency rooms, and going bankrupt.
The thing that needs to be more widely understood is that EVERYBODY benefits from having the 22 million covered, not just the 22 million.
So what happens? Cost-shifting. Costs go up for every other paying customer of the hospital -- which drives up insurance rates for everyone.
Not that 22 million people losing coverage isn't important, but also important is what happens to everybody else's costs once the GOP essentially takes a trillion dollars out of the system to give to rich people. Everybody with health insurance -- incuding employer plans -- is going to be paying more, a lot more - as a result. And when premiums skyrocket, even more people will be unable to afford insurance and start showing up at emergency rooms, and going bankrupt.
The thing that needs to be more widely understood is that EVERYBODY benefits from having the 22 million covered, not just the 22 million.
22
The day is coming when the common people in Kentucky are going to wake up and realize what Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell are trying their hardest to do to them. When that day arrives, those citizens will turn on their senators.
7
That's not coffee you're smelling, Madeline, it's ether. Neva hoppen.
Thank you Mr. Edsall for this article. When people are tossing around numbers like 22,000,000 v the 23,000,000 in the last bill, and percentages of GDP, you tend to depersonalize the huge numbers and forget the real people and lives behind them. Your numbers are much more understandable and "real" to the reader.
And then you get the stories from the real people recounted in the comments below. One hit me, from "pedigrees" whose mother died after only 1 month in a nursing home funded through a government program where had to turn over all of her assets, everything she earned during her life, in order to qualify.
At age 64, after a lifetime of working, I took "early" retirement and was given Social Security Disability benefits amounting to a whopping $1,197 a month. This is pretty much my income since my savings were wiped out during the two bubbles.
The dental work I need done is not covered under any health care program - and although I would qualify under the income requirements for free care at a government funded clinic - they also count assets - and I'm unfortunate enough to have made big mortgage payments for 20 years - paying off my home.
My asset is now my liability, keeping me from qualifying from many benefits - even though my house doesn't put food on the table or pay property insurance or dental bills. I guess maybe I could turn over my house and then could qualify for rent assistance and food stamps and dental care - if they still existed.
And then you get the stories from the real people recounted in the comments below. One hit me, from "pedigrees" whose mother died after only 1 month in a nursing home funded through a government program where had to turn over all of her assets, everything she earned during her life, in order to qualify.
At age 64, after a lifetime of working, I took "early" retirement and was given Social Security Disability benefits amounting to a whopping $1,197 a month. This is pretty much my income since my savings were wiped out during the two bubbles.
The dental work I need done is not covered under any health care program - and although I would qualify under the income requirements for free care at a government funded clinic - they also count assets - and I'm unfortunate enough to have made big mortgage payments for 20 years - paying off my home.
My asset is now my liability, keeping me from qualifying from many benefits - even though my house doesn't put food on the table or pay property insurance or dental bills. I guess maybe I could turn over my house and then could qualify for rent assistance and food stamps and dental care - if they still existed.
4
Those are indeed the facts. And one need not have the statistics to know they are true; so true that if one is white in America one only need look around to one's own family, one's extended family, one's friends' and neighbors' and co-workers' families to see reliance on social insurance programs - Medicaid. Medicare, Social Security - in every direction. Even if one is rich, odds are all one's relations and close acquaintances are not; one's employees are not.
It is a measure of the hardly abated power of racism in America, in its modern form of racial resentment, that people, however egalitarian in their personal interactions, can be so blinded by hatred when they go to the polls that they cut off their nose to spite their face. When will white Americans wake up to the reality that without taxes on the most fortunate, on the most wealthy, it is also the white middle class and white working poor that will be broken by picking up the tab for the least fortunate that are their own near and dear?
It is a measure of the hardly abated power of racism in America, in its modern form of racial resentment, that people, however egalitarian in their personal interactions, can be so blinded by hatred when they go to the polls that they cut off their nose to spite their face. When will white Americans wake up to the reality that without taxes on the most fortunate, on the most wealthy, it is also the white middle class and white working poor that will be broken by picking up the tab for the least fortunate that are their own near and dear?
7
Perception almost always wins over facts in political discourse.
It's easy to spin the lie that Medicaid is a welfare program because it is funded out of general tax revenues. Both social security and medicare have dedicated payroll levies that even workers who earn too little to pay federal tax are assessed. The state portions of disability and unemployment insurance also often have dedicated payroll levies.
When people see these withholding amounts on their paychecks, they can believe that they have paid into social security, medicare, disability insurance, and unemployment insurance. Should you need assistance, you're not taking money from other tax payers. You're getting the benefits that you paid for.
Of course, the reality of the funding of those programs is far different. But, the perception matters.
Want to change the conversation about Medicaid? Just show a medicaid withholding on workers' pay stubs.
Of course, the challenge with that plan is to set it up so everybody's tax burden remains the same.
It's easy to spin the lie that Medicaid is a welfare program because it is funded out of general tax revenues. Both social security and medicare have dedicated payroll levies that even workers who earn too little to pay federal tax are assessed. The state portions of disability and unemployment insurance also often have dedicated payroll levies.
When people see these withholding amounts on their paychecks, they can believe that they have paid into social security, medicare, disability insurance, and unemployment insurance. Should you need assistance, you're not taking money from other tax payers. You're getting the benefits that you paid for.
Of course, the reality of the funding of those programs is far different. But, the perception matters.
Want to change the conversation about Medicaid? Just show a medicaid withholding on workers' pay stubs.
Of course, the challenge with that plan is to set it up so everybody's tax burden remains the same.
3
The expansion of Medicaid is unsupportable without major changes to taxation as it hits its full impact on the Federal Budget. Whether that is a variant of 'soak the rich' or much more likely a VAT, the need for huge increases in Federal funds is very clear. It is only now that the costs of Obamacare are phasing in, and the trends are accelerating. If retirement and health care are fundamental rights, without individual contribution or ultimate responsibility, then a solid 30% of GDP is going to be transfer payments to support these two programs - and the demand for increasing 'benefits' will be uncapped and insatiable. People have no limits on their needs and wants for ease of retirement and health care, paid for by others. It is a major shift in how this society and country function, with immense opportunity for unintended consequences and disruption.
2
That's why virtually all ther advanced countries have turned to socialized medicine or asingle payer system or a private insurance system in which the government regulates all aspects of costs and benefits.
The cost per capita in all of those systems is less and the medical outcomes as measured by mortality and morbidity statistics are better than ours.
The cost per capita in all of those systems is less and the medical outcomes as measured by mortality and morbidity statistics are better than ours.
it is refreshing to see a Trump administration official be brutally honest about something, that is, the view that those who receive public assistance are thieves. This has been an undercurrent in conservative coffee shop conversations for decades. Mr. Edsall's numbers, however, don't help the cause because if you look at percentages of ethnic groups receiving assistance, you may find that a higher percentage of minorities receive assistance than whites. Conservatives assume that most if not all of these minorities are receiving assistance because they are somehow socially irresponsible. This belief is imbedded in their culture and no amount of data will ever change it. Perhaps the only thing that will change it is to give conservatives what they want and let the entire public assistance program collapse. Then they would be forced to be face to face with their own family members who perhaps unnoticed, have also been the beneficiaries of public support. So many people have not been the recipients of my father's sage advice - don't criticize until you have walked a mile in the other person's moccasins.
7
@Tom from Iowa: His numbers were thorough, and I think they speak for themselves. The overwhelming number of people who receive Medicaid benefits are white, both in raw numbers and in percentages. I think the people you speak of know that their family members receive public assistance, but the difference is that they think their family members are deserving whereas people of other racial and ethnic groups are not. I don't blame them for thinking that. I blame GOP politicians and right-wing media for spreading stereotypes and lies that seek to divide (and conquer). They ought to know and do better.
Mick Mulvaney has failed to remember that the American people can't steal their own money. Everyone in this country pays some form of tax, which should come back to them in the form of programs that assist all Americans when they need it, whether it's fighting fires out West, cleaning up after tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest, or receiving Medicaid at the end of a long and productive life or a short and valued one.
Mick Mulvaney has failed to remember that the American people can't steal their own money. Everyone in this country pays some form of tax, which should come back to them in the form of programs that assist all Americans when they need it, whether it's fighting fires out West, cleaning up after tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest, or receiving Medicaid at the end of a long and productive life or a short and valued one.
4
Do Republicans not understand insurance? These are ways that we all protect ourselves. We provide a way to add comfort to all of us. I live better because Medicaid exists whether or not I or anyone I know uses it, and no matter what color they are. It is like unemployment insurance, life insurance, etc. We can choose to live better.
5
I would like to see Republicans do a survey of all the taxpayers who will benefit from the $800B tax cut: would they prefer to receive the cut or should the funds remain in the healthcare system? I'd be willing to wager that only a small proportion---say 5%---would be in favor of the tax cut.
If my estimate is correct, then congressional Republicans are going to bat for only 5% of the 1%. Their base. Their founders.
If my estimate is correct, then congressional Republicans are going to bat for only 5% of the 1%. Their base. Their founders.
2
You have to look at both sides.
While Medicaid is an important program, the huge costs are gradually destroying many parts of the country. In New York State, the program is funded through property tax. Outside the NYC metro area, these burdensome taxes sap the economy. People can't afford to stay on their houses and farms, and are forced to move where the cost of living is bearable. The economy barely sputters along, as Cuomo's touted business incentives cannot offset the ongoing cost that is attached to each piece of property.
In the New York of 50 years ago, before we spent so much on these expensive social programs, we had modern infrastructure and low-cost tuition in the state university system. Now, of course, tuition costs are high and there is no money to fix the subways or the roads. Overall medical spending is closing in on 20% of the GDP.
I suspect that eventually the US populace is going to decide that they don't really want to spend all their money on medical care. Good health is important, but you also need to be able to pay the rent.
While Medicaid is an important program, the huge costs are gradually destroying many parts of the country. In New York State, the program is funded through property tax. Outside the NYC metro area, these burdensome taxes sap the economy. People can't afford to stay on their houses and farms, and are forced to move where the cost of living is bearable. The economy barely sputters along, as Cuomo's touted business incentives cannot offset the ongoing cost that is attached to each piece of property.
In the New York of 50 years ago, before we spent so much on these expensive social programs, we had modern infrastructure and low-cost tuition in the state university system. Now, of course, tuition costs are high and there is no money to fix the subways or the roads. Overall medical spending is closing in on 20% of the GDP.
I suspect that eventually the US populace is going to decide that they don't really want to spend all their money on medical care. Good health is important, but you also need to be able to pay the rent.
1
I'm interested to know what you think an acceptable percentage of spending on good health is, since good health both precedes and supersedes most other quality of life measures. (Your last sentence almost sounds like you would say that earning a living should come before good health, which most people ultimately disagree with.)
My ultimate point is that we shouldn't let political opposition lead us into false either/or dichotomies between earning a living and living a healthy life. Most people want, and believe it is possible, to do both.
My ultimate point is that we shouldn't let political opposition lead us into false either/or dichotomies between earning a living and living a healthy life. Most people want, and believe it is possible, to do both.
1
@John - Each medical procedure in the US costs between two and three times as much as the comparable procedure in countries like Germany and Switzerland. If we were paying the same as they pay, we could offer medical care to more people and still spend half of what we are now spending.
The big problem is how to get there. Unfortunately, one man's expense is another man's income, and the gigantic medical establishment in the US would be certain to resist fiercely.
The big problem is how to get there. Unfortunately, one man's expense is another man's income, and the gigantic medical establishment in the US would be certain to resist fiercely.
1
In contrast to this claim, the fact is that "In New York State, the property tax is a local tax, raised and spent locally to finance local governments and public schools ... the State itself does not collect or receive any direct benefit from the property tax."
In contrast to what Jonathan says, you don't need to "look at both sides". You only need to look at the factual side and ignore Jonathan's fictional side.
In contrast to what Jonathan says, you don't need to "look at both sides". You only need to look at the factual side and ignore Jonathan's fictional side.
This is just business- nothing to do with health care.
Trump is following the outline Putin payed him to follow in order to undermine America at home and abroad in every possible way.
The Republican party has signed on and its leaders operate the rackets to collect campaign donations for personal gain.
Trump is following the outline Putin payed him to follow in order to undermine America at home and abroad in every possible way.
The Republican party has signed on and its leaders operate the rackets to collect campaign donations for personal gain.
5
this is the death knell for LBJ's Great Society, which was established with equitable taxation for wealthy. unless we bombard our Congressionals with phone calls and letters.
5
The first line of this article is not shocking. That's the sad part. Much like global warming, this is a problem with lack of knowledge.
One argument that remains consistent is that many voters are politically illiterate. White voters without post secondary education make up a large portion of Mr. Trump's base--they also make up a large portion of the republican base.
This article presents some great facts, but how many people with less than a college degree will read this article? Even if Mitch McConnell stood in front of his supporters citing these numbers--as if to proclaim he had changed his mind--many of them would not fully comprehend these facts, much less care about the impact.
Political campaigning is about presenting vague plans, catch phrases, and heated words about the opposition. Republicans are especially good at this, not because they necessarily have better delivery, but because lower socioeconomic voters are often driven by what they hear from others, religion, fake and conservative news outlets, and a strong disconnect from educated individuals.
Most people are no longer surprised by these statistics, and that's a big problem for Democrats. Republicans pushed their anti-liberal agenda for the past 7 years, and that got Donald Trump elected. Democrats need to be strategic and think about how the past decade has shaped the Republican party. We can't just wait for republican policies to fail and hope that gets a Democrat elected.
One argument that remains consistent is that many voters are politically illiterate. White voters without post secondary education make up a large portion of Mr. Trump's base--they also make up a large portion of the republican base.
This article presents some great facts, but how many people with less than a college degree will read this article? Even if Mitch McConnell stood in front of his supporters citing these numbers--as if to proclaim he had changed his mind--many of them would not fully comprehend these facts, much less care about the impact.
Political campaigning is about presenting vague plans, catch phrases, and heated words about the opposition. Republicans are especially good at this, not because they necessarily have better delivery, but because lower socioeconomic voters are often driven by what they hear from others, religion, fake and conservative news outlets, and a strong disconnect from educated individuals.
Most people are no longer surprised by these statistics, and that's a big problem for Democrats. Republicans pushed their anti-liberal agenda for the past 7 years, and that got Donald Trump elected. Democrats need to be strategic and think about how the past decade has shaped the Republican party. We can't just wait for republican policies to fail and hope that gets a Democrat elected.
11
All we hear from the GOP is the same "talking points" which are really dog whistles to their voters about "personal responsibility," "freedom to choose," "an individual's/state's right to use 'their money' the way they want, "putting taxpayers first, and this gem "taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It's theft." Wow, just wow. So, my step-father with Alzheimer's who lives in a supportive residential care home is stealing my state's Medicaid money so he can live in safety and be taken care of? My now deceased grandmother, who lived to 99 1/2, also stole my state's Medicaid money to live in a safe environment and be taken care of? My lower income clients are stealing my state's Medicaid money because they cannot work due to mental and/or physical disabilities? I have a proposal - How about all of you Cabinet members and their families, their aides, and the Trump family try living on Medicaid in low income housing for a month and then come back and say they were stealing money from the system and still insist on their "reforms?" I doubt very highly they'd be acting this cruel and entitled if they actually did it.
12
Yes, Mr. Edsall, they do intend to destroy our safety net. Central to the modern GOP is the evil that only the successful matter, wealth is and position are fruits of it, and those who haven't succeeded, should, or aren't blessed by their god, and of no consequence. Prosperity Christianity really does exist.
They've engaged in a 4 decade long campaign of lies to build a completely deceived voter base, they gerrymandered the Red States, and they've captured government.
Any who believe this hasn't been all intentional is living in La-La Land. When a party this evil can convince the "Christian" Right that the GOP is on their side, it amounts to the proverbial bloody knife, the smoking gun, and the blood stained candle stick, combined.
They always intended to capture, then subvert and then destroy government and Trump is only too happy to help.
They own most of the nation's income and wealth, and intend to own more of it. They do intend to destroy the safety net.
They've engaged in a 4 decade long campaign of lies to build a completely deceived voter base, they gerrymandered the Red States, and they've captured government.
Any who believe this hasn't been all intentional is living in La-La Land. When a party this evil can convince the "Christian" Right that the GOP is on their side, it amounts to the proverbial bloody knife, the smoking gun, and the blood stained candle stick, combined.
They always intended to capture, then subvert and then destroy government and Trump is only too happy to help.
They own most of the nation's income and wealth, and intend to own more of it. They do intend to destroy the safety net.
28
After my father died, my mother lived on a social security check of about $800. Medicaid paid for her prescriptions in her last years. On her death in 2002, in Nebraska, Medicaid sent a bill for about eight thousand dollars to her (modest) estate. Medicaid is hardly a handout, and that fact is never mentioned.
12
My imagination simply can't comprehend the psychology of a McConnell or a Mulvaney. I can't understand that much disregard for the suffering of truly vulnerable people. Do they truly believe that those who will die for lack of care are "guilty" enough to be deserving of capital punishment? How does one get to be so hard-hearted --are they all sociopaths?
20
The answer to your question is, "yes." They are all sociopaths to one degree or another because they have been captured by a philosophy in which the independent individual is the be all and end all of the society. As soon as you cannot stand alone you are outside the rules of their concept of "independence" and therefore expendable.
It's up to the media to get this data out in front of the public in order to offset the Republican spin. Please keep providing these informative articles.
7
If I were a betting person, I'd put all my chips on McConnell and his crew going down the sinkhole and taking this country along with them -- except they'd still be the ones who have health insurance.
There's something rather shameful about a country as wealthy as this, having difficulty taking care of those less fortunate, regardless of their age or color; especially when the riches have been concentrating at the top for decades, which has only exacerbated the decline of the middle-class, and fostered a booming under-class.
There are many things that are hard to fathom about Mick Mulvaney's logic when it comes to "putting taxpayers first" -- because the only taxpayers who will be "first", are those in the upper income tax brackets.
It's also hard to understand how he's able to take an axe to Medicaid in the very Southern and Rust Belt states that came out so overwhelmingly for Trump and the G.O.P. to begin with.
For those who think Medicaid should be abrogated because it makes people "lazy", or because it mainly supports Black and Brown people, the joke is on them -- or will be, once they see their very own coverage rescinded.
It's nothing less than a cold comfort that the Congressional Budget Office recently reported the G.O.P health care bill will result in 22 MILLION Americans losing their coverage, instead of the previously reported amount of 23 million.
Apparently one must be grateful where one can.
So much for great surprises.
There's something rather shameful about a country as wealthy as this, having difficulty taking care of those less fortunate, regardless of their age or color; especially when the riches have been concentrating at the top for decades, which has only exacerbated the decline of the middle-class, and fostered a booming under-class.
There are many things that are hard to fathom about Mick Mulvaney's logic when it comes to "putting taxpayers first" -- because the only taxpayers who will be "first", are those in the upper income tax brackets.
It's also hard to understand how he's able to take an axe to Medicaid in the very Southern and Rust Belt states that came out so overwhelmingly for Trump and the G.O.P. to begin with.
For those who think Medicaid should be abrogated because it makes people "lazy", or because it mainly supports Black and Brown people, the joke is on them -- or will be, once they see their very own coverage rescinded.
It's nothing less than a cold comfort that the Congressional Budget Office recently reported the G.O.P health care bill will result in 22 MILLION Americans losing their coverage, instead of the previously reported amount of 23 million.
Apparently one must be grateful where one can.
So much for great surprises.
5
Yes, it is an excellent article--except that Edsall and the NYT continue to promulgate the language that the Right wing has foisted on our country. The large complicated different-in-every-state legislation that the Dems compromised with the Reps to pass is the ACA. Pls use the correct term. (I don't care if the Dems accept the term; they have proven to be hapless, even if they are the only hope for America.)
7
Definition of a welfare program: Military, Industrial Complex. Total cost annually, $500 Billion dollars. Effectiveness of Military Industrial Complex: 9/11 saw 15 foreign soldiers kill 4000 Americans in a matter of minutes, 16 years later we are still losing the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
11
Nicely brief, factual article.
Medicaid is an insurance policy in case something happens to you, and you can't work, or become underemployed and can't cover your serious medical expenses. I don't mind having paid taxes to support medicaid as long as it is still available to me if I should need it someday. And I hope that day never comes.
I see nothing wrong with trying to help workers that have been adversely affected through no fault of their own. If anything needs to be done with medicaid it would be to fight fraud, and increase the penalties for fraud in medicaid applicants that aren't really sick. Those are the crooks, but they are a small number of Medicaid applicants.
Medicaid is an insurance policy in case something happens to you, and you can't work, or become underemployed and can't cover your serious medical expenses. I don't mind having paid taxes to support medicaid as long as it is still available to me if I should need it someday. And I hope that day never comes.
I see nothing wrong with trying to help workers that have been adversely affected through no fault of their own. If anything needs to be done with medicaid it would be to fight fraud, and increase the penalties for fraud in medicaid applicants that aren't really sick. Those are the crooks, but they are a small number of Medicaid applicants.
13
If you look at Medicaid fraud, the incidence of fraud is higher among Drs and insurance providers.
1
Probably more "crooks" in the White House.
On a less cynical note, has anyone heard what the GOP and President see as the outcome for their legislation? What will happen to places like Idaho where 98% of the Medicaid (white) recipients no longer have a safe home for their elderly parents or disabled children? Women, most likely, will no longer have a full-time job so that they can be care givers instead. A probable outcome is that the economy will be impacted and certainly the quality of life for half of the population will be stunted.
On a less cynical note, has anyone heard what the GOP and President see as the outcome for their legislation? What will happen to places like Idaho where 98% of the Medicaid (white) recipients no longer have a safe home for their elderly parents or disabled children? Women, most likely, will no longer have a full-time job so that they can be care givers instead. A probable outcome is that the economy will be impacted and certainly the quality of life for half of the population will be stunted.
1
Actually doctors and other medical providers commit far more Medicaid and Medicare fraud than all participants combined. But instead of putting those who commit the fraud in prison, we slap them with minimal fines and then get them elected governor of Florida. Rick Scott defrauded us of tens of millions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. He paid a measly $10M fine and is now governor of Florida passing laws that require Medicaid recipients to undergo drug testing, at clinics he owns of course.
Brilliant piece, but unfortunately way over the heads of most of the Trump supporters, those that are not in the top 10% of income earners. These are the people we need to reach, the ones who voted so decisively against their own interests. How do we do that?????
9
Excellent article with facts! It gives a clear picture of the reality supported by data. But of course, for republicans and the president this is fake news as it speaks the truth. Republicans who support this bill are OK to find people on the streets in large numbers without health coverage while they tuck themselves in the remote rich suburb to live in peace and additional $$ in their pockets as a result of tax cuts.
6
A nice analysis, Mr. Edsall--and none of these low information Calvinist/Social Darwinist "I me mine" Republican politicians, and the low information Fox news parroting bigoted voters who put them in office, are going to ever be convinced by a single word of it, even when they themselves are impacted by it. They WANT struggling people to have resources withdrawn and then die, because dead people use even fewer resources. To them, it's a virtuous circle.
Rigid self-righteous belief is the last thing to go. Most people will starve first rather than give that up. People will die due to lack of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, EPA watchdogging, etc.--and they'll STILL vote for those who promise to cut more of it. Even when the people who die are their friends or their relatives. The belief system is that strong.
The only solution is to mobilize enough voters from the sane populations to "throw the bums out". Are all of you lazy "it doesn't make a difference" complainers willing to go stand in line at a polling place? Because it does make a difference.
No more excuses. Register. Vote.
Rigid self-righteous belief is the last thing to go. Most people will starve first rather than give that up. People will die due to lack of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, EPA watchdogging, etc.--and they'll STILL vote for those who promise to cut more of it. Even when the people who die are their friends or their relatives. The belief system is that strong.
The only solution is to mobilize enough voters from the sane populations to "throw the bums out". Are all of you lazy "it doesn't make a difference" complainers willing to go stand in line at a polling place? Because it does make a difference.
No more excuses. Register. Vote.
6
When evaluating how much to allot or to spend on a program like Medicaid, we need to look at ALL aspects of government spending. That critical analysis seems to be missing in all of this. I religiously read the NYT and the WaPo daily and have yet to see anyone mention this. There is so much government waste and pork barrel spending and yet that is not debated, discussed, or analyzed.
I can not fathom how those running our country are considering decreasing spending for healthcare, which just seems to me to be a basic human right, without taking their red pen to other aspects of our federal budget. And I include both Democrats and Republicans in this oversight.
And that those in power are essentially trying to ram through legislation that will adversely affect millions without a thorough review of all federal spending, in the name of controlling costs, is grossly negligent and a dereliction of their duty. True, it would take time and a lot of hard work with this approach but isn't our future as a society worth the time and effort?!?
I can not fathom how those running our country are considering decreasing spending for healthcare, which just seems to me to be a basic human right, without taking their red pen to other aspects of our federal budget. And I include both Democrats and Republicans in this oversight.
And that those in power are essentially trying to ram through legislation that will adversely affect millions without a thorough review of all federal spending, in the name of controlling costs, is grossly negligent and a dereliction of their duty. True, it would take time and a lot of hard work with this approach but isn't our future as a society worth the time and effort?!?
2
Apparently Edsall's piece is aimed at disabusing GOP racists of the erroneous notion that their racism is well served by disabling Medicare. It's disturbing to think this notion is widely held in both the GOP and the Trump administration, and that these actors wish to fan this fire among their voters.
Perhaps more disturbing is that these politicians are supported in these actions by their billionaire supporters who fund their activities and decide what their policies will be.
Perhaps more disturbing is that these politicians are supported in these actions by their billionaire supporters who fund their activities and decide what their policies will be.
4
History will not be kind to those who are trying to ram this bill and these cuts through Congress.Ryan, McConnell, Price, Trump are lying and hoping that no one is paying attention even though they know that their work will, if successful, cause millions to suffer. Is this really who we, as a nation are? Yes, healthcare is complicated ( as Trump has finally figured out). But it need not be mean, greedy and vicious and inflict additional long term suffering on those who depend upon it. Enough is enough.
3
They "bank" on their constituents ignorance, in every sense of the word. Cynical doesn't even come close. And then when their voters reap the consequences, they scream "Obama"! Although this behavior is appalling, we would not be where we are today without the right-wing propaganda. Not nearly enough enmity is heaped upon them for perpetuating these lies. I wish a prominent Democrat would make it his/her mission to continually attack Limbaugh, Hannity, et al.
7
How sad have we become as a nation that in order to convince people to do what is good and right, we have to convince them that "their" people are the majority beneficiaries first? What sort of soul sickness would have us look at the sick, the elderly, and the disabled (especially children) as "thieves"? How can the people who espouse any of these notions call themselves moral, let alone followers of Christ, who said "as you do unto the least of these, you do also unto Me"? I am just old enough to remember when such selfishness would have been roundly condemned by our society, not celebrated. It makes me sick to my soul, and I am lost trying to figure out how we undo the damage the worst of us has done to our nation and stop this spasm of hatefulness and greed. How do we move beyond despair and energize our citizens to look at the world through more charitable and less fearful eyes?
6
The thought that accepting food or shelter, even for the children, is somehow morally reprehensible is itself repulsive. Most taxes are pooled funds theoretically earmarked for public purposes. One doesn't accuse farmers of criminality when they take subsidies; no one indicts a CEO for finessing a reduced tax bill and taking a share of it. Both the collection and allocation of taxes will never be equitable for all individuals, but this whining and caterwauling from the oligarchy on the right is just disgusting. Ever since Reagan we've been waiting for the trickle to lift us out of hopelessness. Turns out they used the wrong word... should be trickle on.
7
Republicans want to cast this as "keeping our promise" to end Obamacare to voters. What the voters didn't understand is that "ending Obamacare" is going to mean taking away healthcare from further millions and making it more expensive for almost everyone who is not young.
But let's talk about Republicans' other promises. They promised to "drain the swamp". You can only think they did that if "swamp" meant "Democrat". Instead, they appointed Wall Street folks from Goldman Sachs, extreme right-wing and/or unqualified people like Rick Perry, and openly corrupt Trump cronies.
They promised to go after Hillary Clinton for her misdeeds. I'm not upset that they didn't do this, but here again Trump promised one thing and did something quite the opposite. He not only didn't go after Clinton for alleged financial misdealings, he is doing far worse himself.
He promised "so much winning". I don't think anyone feels that this promise has been kept.
He said he would "Make America Great Again" and we're the laughingstock of the world, especially on how pitiful and exploitative our healthcare system is compared to those in the rest of the industrialized west.
So after breaking aaallll those other promises, they're going to get on their high horse and say they have to keep this one? By taking away healthcare and/or making it more expensive for their own voters? It would be laughable if it were not deadly serious.
But let's talk about Republicans' other promises. They promised to "drain the swamp". You can only think they did that if "swamp" meant "Democrat". Instead, they appointed Wall Street folks from Goldman Sachs, extreme right-wing and/or unqualified people like Rick Perry, and openly corrupt Trump cronies.
They promised to go after Hillary Clinton for her misdeeds. I'm not upset that they didn't do this, but here again Trump promised one thing and did something quite the opposite. He not only didn't go after Clinton for alleged financial misdealings, he is doing far worse himself.
He promised "so much winning". I don't think anyone feels that this promise has been kept.
He said he would "Make America Great Again" and we're the laughingstock of the world, especially on how pitiful and exploitative our healthcare system is compared to those in the rest of the industrialized west.
So after breaking aaallll those other promises, they're going to get on their high horse and say they have to keep this one? By taking away healthcare and/or making it more expensive for their own voters? It would be laughable if it were not deadly serious.
4
The big problem is that the 'Alternative World' of Tump does not believe any of this. Nothing.
If the 35% of american voters believed this information to be true they would certainly start asking questions - but they do not.
This is the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in. Poor USA.
If the 35% of american voters believed this information to be true they would certainly start asking questions - but they do not.
This is the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in. Poor USA.
2
According to Mulvaney's definition of "theft", then, let's include the many businesses that receive various forms of corporate welfare from the federal and state governments, and then skip out on the communities and jurisdictions that offered them large incentives to locate in those places...
5
One of the things I like about Thomas Edsall is that he thoroughly explicates an issue, and while sometimes a little pedantic, he likes to fixate on factual data. Me, too. This may be the very best column I've ever seen from TE, although I admit it may be because, for the first time, I agree with every word.
The long-running joke is that facts have a liberal bias, but it certainly looks like this is true for the Medicaid "genocide" that McConnell is pushing, buttressed by falsehoods from the Leader and Trump that Democrats refused to work with the GOP.
Let's note that the GOP's current definition of "bi-partisan cooperation" is for Democrats to simply roll over and accept GOP proposals without objection. That's not how legislation works, nor has it ever worked that way.
But I'm still disconcerted that vast numbers of voters in WV, Kentucky, Tennessee and other red states are still convinced that the actions of McConnell, Ryan and Trump will benefit THEM, while cutting out support the "others": Immigrants, people of color, LGBTQI, "lib'ruls", and, of course, Muslims. As TE points out, the reverse is simply the truth. 52% of Medicaid goes to White people, and in many of those coal and rust-belt states, the vast majority of recipients are White, not "others".
Finally, TE's point about the tax cuts is startling: Those at the median get a 0.4% increase in income, those over $875K get at least 2%, and those making over $5m will get a 2.5% increase of 1/4 million!
Good Job, TE!
The long-running joke is that facts have a liberal bias, but it certainly looks like this is true for the Medicaid "genocide" that McConnell is pushing, buttressed by falsehoods from the Leader and Trump that Democrats refused to work with the GOP.
Let's note that the GOP's current definition of "bi-partisan cooperation" is for Democrats to simply roll over and accept GOP proposals without objection. That's not how legislation works, nor has it ever worked that way.
But I'm still disconcerted that vast numbers of voters in WV, Kentucky, Tennessee and other red states are still convinced that the actions of McConnell, Ryan and Trump will benefit THEM, while cutting out support the "others": Immigrants, people of color, LGBTQI, "lib'ruls", and, of course, Muslims. As TE points out, the reverse is simply the truth. 52% of Medicaid goes to White people, and in many of those coal and rust-belt states, the vast majority of recipients are White, not "others".
Finally, TE's point about the tax cuts is startling: Those at the median get a 0.4% increase in income, those over $875K get at least 2%, and those making over $5m will get a 2.5% increase of 1/4 million!
Good Job, TE!
6
Funny. Republicans think the elderly and disabled are thieves. And yet, when business fails to pay workers adequately and fairly for their time and effort in order to pocket more profit, that is not theft. Hmm.
5
"For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first. ... Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft."
That sounds like an admission that we have a robber for a US President.
That sounds like an admission that we have a robber for a US President.
4
Republicans don't like social safety nets, that is until they need them.
2
Medicare opposition is not about Medicare. It's about "lower taxes, less regulation, fewer benefits, smaller government ". It's the corporate mantra. It's the deadbeat corporations that won't support better infrastructure, education, healthcare, affordable housing, environmental protection, rehabilitation, or indeed any program that is not strictly focused upon their very own corporate advantage to the exclusion of helping anybody else too.
3
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft." Well our president should be able to speak to that issue. He has found ways to have people provide his companies with services while not paying the bill.
"For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first." No, they are putting the wealth care industry, the very, very rich, and corporations first. The only place taxpayers are first is in being robbed or put at the end of the line for services. When has Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pence, or anyone else in the current administration/GOP side of Congress ever had to choose between paying the rent/mortgage and paying for needed medical care? Answer: never. Will Scalise have to worry about losing his job when he gets out of the hospital? No. Will he have to file for bankruptcy because he can't pay his portion of the bills? No. But the rest of us would face all these worries.
The GOP is completely out of touch with working Americans. We do know the costs of medical care. It's one of the reasons why we don't go to the doctor as often as we should. Health insurance in America is scam. We're throwing good money that we've earned with our sweat down the rat hole called a health insurance policy that can be changed at the whim of the company in order to fatten their bottom line while denying us care. No other civilized country tolerates this.
"For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first." No, they are putting the wealth care industry, the very, very rich, and corporations first. The only place taxpayers are first is in being robbed or put at the end of the line for services. When has Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pence, or anyone else in the current administration/GOP side of Congress ever had to choose between paying the rent/mortgage and paying for needed medical care? Answer: never. Will Scalise have to worry about losing his job when he gets out of the hospital? No. Will he have to file for bankruptcy because he can't pay his portion of the bills? No. But the rest of us would face all these worries.
The GOP is completely out of touch with working Americans. We do know the costs of medical care. It's one of the reasons why we don't go to the doctor as often as we should. Health insurance in America is scam. We're throwing good money that we've earned with our sweat down the rat hole called a health insurance policy that can be changed at the whim of the company in order to fatten their bottom line while denying us care. No other civilized country tolerates this.
3
I continue to read the articles and comments on the health care and other contentious issues of the day. The overriding theme I see - and it's disheartening - is "us vs. them"; the "haves vs. the have-nots"; etc... What a sad state we are in. I feel very pessimistic about the future of our country and our people - especially the good, hard-working people who are the engine of this country. The "thems" and the "haves" seem to keep trying to find ways to make life miserable and hopeless for the "us's" and the "have-nots."
5
"How is it possible, then, that Senate Republicans are continuing to weigh the consequences of passing health care legislation that would inflict harm on millions of low- to middle-income white voters essential to the conservative coalition?"
Could it be because they are following the directions of the more than somewhat nutsy billionaires that finance their activities?
Could it be because they are following the directions of the more than somewhat nutsy billionaires that finance their activities?
5
A good part of the problem is found on the Democratic side. This is one of the few articles that even mentions the nursing home component of Medicaid, and the statistics in it are, to be frank, overwhelming and sometimes misleading.
And, in fact, Medicaid, like Social Security, is a very unsatisfactory compromise. They should be attacked by the left-wing policy for their inadequacies.
Instead, Harkins and Mikulski stated that Obama had the votes for single payer, but instead he went for Heritagecare with the law drawn up by Finance Committee with the head of its health subcommittee (Jay Rockefeller) excluded because he wanted something more than a payoff to the health industry interest groups. Even "liberals" like Krugman attack entitlements--e.g., the Canadian health system.
It is time for a revolution, but all three Democratic House leaders are above 75 and are only balanced by the 67-year-young Schumer in the Senate. McConnell is deliberately killing off the conservative health plan, and we will see what Trumpcare looks like. But why should the voters want to replace Trump with nothing.
And, in fact, Medicaid, like Social Security, is a very unsatisfactory compromise. They should be attacked by the left-wing policy for their inadequacies.
Instead, Harkins and Mikulski stated that Obama had the votes for single payer, but instead he went for Heritagecare with the law drawn up by Finance Committee with the head of its health subcommittee (Jay Rockefeller) excluded because he wanted something more than a payoff to the health industry interest groups. Even "liberals" like Krugman attack entitlements--e.g., the Canadian health system.
It is time for a revolution, but all three Democratic House leaders are above 75 and are only balanced by the 67-year-young Schumer in the Senate. McConnell is deliberately killing off the conservative health plan, and we will see what Trumpcare looks like. But why should the voters want to replace Trump with nothing.
2
"Instead, Harkins and Mikulski stated that Obama had the votes for single payer, but instead he went for Heritagecare with the law drawn up by Finance Committee with the head of its health subcommittee (Jay Rockefeller) excluded because he wanted something more than a payoff to the health industry interest groups. Even "liberals" like Krugman attack entitlements--e.g., the Canadian health system. "
This is delusional. President Obama barely had the votes to pass HeritageCare. It was a compromise position.
Now the Republicans want to destroy even this.
This is delusional. President Obama barely had the votes to pass HeritageCare. It was a compromise position.
Now the Republicans want to destroy even this.
1
Jerry--I agree, and I'm almost as old as they are. Time to pass the baton to younger, clearer thinkers (NOT Cory Booker, thank you) instead of sticking with the bought corporate yes-people, who will be the end of the Democratic Party. 21st Century, JusticeDems, or Our Revolution.
1
Sorry Mr. Edsall, too many facts. These are compelling and significant facts, but facts are not the driver of Republican politics. Their voters don't care about the poor, ill or elderly, they live in a world where everyone is going to be Tom Sawyer, floating through danger easily and returning to safety unharmed. It will take an unmitigated disaster to drive them to the Democrats. Unfortunately for them, the Republicans are busy arranging for that.
15
will: "Unmitigated disaster?" Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2008 Great Recession?
I'm in favor for social safety net, income redistribution, and higher taxes for higher income people. However, I think this opinion has an argumentation flaw in showing how whites are the largest group that benefits from Medicaid, with 41% of the total. The issue is that 72% of the US is white. So, it is true that other races benefit more from Medicaid than whites. Nothing wrong with that, as Medicaid assists populations with less income, and they tend to be non-whites. The better argument is that the GOP is waging a war on lower income people, but that's not really surprising.
7
" Nothing wrong with that, as Medicaid assists populations with less income, and they tend to be non-whites. The better argument is that the GOP is waging a war on lower income people, but that's not really surprising."
This is indeed the better argument. But it is not off topic to mention that the GOP harness racism to peddle their destructive policies to lower income white people.
This is indeed the better argument. But it is not off topic to mention that the GOP harness racism to peddle their destructive policies to lower income white people.
1
The GOP is waging war on anyone who may have to care for a parent or sibling or severely disabled child. We are legion. And many of us are above the middle income range Mr. Edsel sites. Even a couple with income in excess of $300,000 a year will find it difficult to provide full-time care for physically or mentally disabled parents, any other family member requiring similar care, in addition to the normal family expenses, education (their kids aren't getting scholarships w/ that income), mortgage, saving for retirement, etc. We don't live in villages of extended families any more. There are no big families with a spare spinster or two to assume care of the aged. Typically women assume these roles. If any GOP legislator had tried to juggle quality, compassionate full time care with work, family, and sanity, they would not be promoting this bill.
Yes. In addition Edsall seems to assume that Republications are against welfare only because they perceive that the program is designed to help people of color over "whites". It is possible that Republicans dislike welfare for anyone, whites included. I don't agree with Republican on this, but there is no need to imply they are racists.
My parents had long and successful careers. They put five kids through college and graduate school. My father had Ph.D. and MA degrees. My mother also had an MA and was a Mt. Holyoke graduate. When they retired they sold their two homes and settled in a comfortable retirement community. Their pension and Social Security was more than adequate. After several years they both moved into assisted living and nursing care. They lived into their mid and late 90s. Mother spent more than 10 years in the dementia unit, requiring full care. My brother and I were writing $14,000 monthly checks to the retirement home until the savings were depleted. That is when Medicare started to supplement their care costs. Under Trumpcare what becomes of these successful law-abiding citizens, both of whom trace their ancestry to 17th century English migrations? I guess the Republican solution is for their children to either shoulder these enormous costs, or quit their jobs to become full-time care givers. Is this where our post industrial society is heading? What would be the real economic costs in the face of an aging nation? The ramifications will certainly ripple through our entire society and economy making us all (except for the top one percent) poorer and less competitive in a global economy. Don't Republican policy makers care or think about such matters in their obsessive drive to cut taxes for the super rich?
33
Sorry, I meant to write Medicaid instead of Medicare.
1
Ironically many of the people who vote Republican have nothing to spend down... They go on medicaid immediately. The others justvknow how to hide or have souch they don't feel it.
"For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first. ... Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft."
So for Mulvaney and repubs, taxes (or tax-financed social programs) are theft. This puts them at the opposite end of the spectrum from 19th-century French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who declared that "Property is theft."
Looks like it's time to choose: Whose view is closer to what's realistic and humanitarian and viable? Even Germany's 19th-century iron chancellor, Bismarck, recognized that throwing some bones to the proles in the form of social legislation was conducive or necessary to national well-being. Even uber-capitalist Henry Ford recognized that paying workers a decent wage was necessary to enable them to buy his cars. Today's repubs make these guys look like pikers when it comes to radical "conservatism." May their radical, anti-democratic and greedy partisanship, as perfected by McConnell, sweep them into the dustbin of history and vindicate their nemeses Marx and Lenin (who had radical fallacies of their own).
Does McConnell deserve credit for stepping back from the brink for now, or was he just forced by circumstances? Let's see what emerges in the interim: substantive amendments that actually improve the bill to address citizens' real needs, or "alternative facts."
So for Mulvaney and repubs, taxes (or tax-financed social programs) are theft. This puts them at the opposite end of the spectrum from 19th-century French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who declared that "Property is theft."
Looks like it's time to choose: Whose view is closer to what's realistic and humanitarian and viable? Even Germany's 19th-century iron chancellor, Bismarck, recognized that throwing some bones to the proles in the form of social legislation was conducive or necessary to national well-being. Even uber-capitalist Henry Ford recognized that paying workers a decent wage was necessary to enable them to buy his cars. Today's repubs make these guys look like pikers when it comes to radical "conservatism." May their radical, anti-democratic and greedy partisanship, as perfected by McConnell, sweep them into the dustbin of history and vindicate their nemeses Marx and Lenin (who had radical fallacies of their own).
Does McConnell deserve credit for stepping back from the brink for now, or was he just forced by circumstances? Let's see what emerges in the interim: substantive amendments that actually improve the bill to address citizens' real needs, or "alternative facts."
9
@quentin c.: Brilliant comment.
Edsall spins Medicaid around race, as though race makes any difference when you’re sick. Medicaid requires people remain paupers for care, a welfare requirement Edsall completely ignores. Many states have “asset recovery” programs that seize any savings or property poor families earned if they participated in Medicaid before death, theft of the cruelest kind. The seniors he mentions in nursing homes are forced to sell off every dime before getting a bed. I live in the great Central Valley of California, one of the poorest regions in the country, and we see the devastating affect Medicaid has when people are told to remain paupers for care. Employees asked to be paid under the table because their kids are sick and they’d lose access to Medicaid for being a few bucks over. Medicaid exacerbates the underground economy as the ONLY means available to create a nest egg for Medicaid recipients. I know plenty of hard working parents who resent being forced to remain poor for health care when they could be productive, hardworking citizens. ACA subsidies have become a nightmare in our region and for every Millennial in the gig economy. Medicare is a social insurance program available to every senior regardless of income and should be the model for a national health insurance program for everyone.
11
You have completely missed the point here. Edsall's argument is that the Medicare program is not about race but that the Trump Administration and the GOP characterizes it as such. Please reread this essay.
5
@Keith: There are attorneys who help clients transfer wealth from the affluent elderly to family members so they can qualify as "impoverished" and receive Medicaid. I know several people who have done this. All of them are Republicans.
2
I got his point that white people are the primary beneficiaries of Medicaid, the theme of his article not Medicare. Republicans have always sought to throw the old and poor on the trash heap like wrinkled rinds, and criticizing his other theme that Medicaid is a social security system instead of welfare that traps people into poverty should be a progressive theme.
Some days I believe that Republicans secretly want single payer health care and unions back, because they keep pushing and pushing on depriving EVERYBODY of a proper compensation for their hard work.
11
While working poor Trump voters are justifiably accused of voting against their self interest, so too are are the wealthy benefactors insistent on their tax cuts. Who thinks shredding the social safety net will end well for them? A 3.8-percent surcharge on investment income that funds the Medicaid expansion will be seen as a small price to pay for social order when the pitchforks finally come out. Which they will. Eventually. Right?
15
That's all right: the wealthy will be defended by their security guards, who have assault weapons.
Oh, wait.
Oh, wait.
3
Well, yes. Torches and pitchforks ahead. But keep in mind the militarization of the police, Sessions's quiet ramp up of private prisons, the rise of corporate armies like Blacwater (or Xe or whatever) and a huge new investment in the military.
I think the 1% is fully aware of their peril and planning to deal with the Untermensch as the identify us
I think the 1% is fully aware of their peril and planning to deal with the Untermensch as the identify us
60
I agree. Occupy Wall St. woke all the 1%ers to their danger and they were systematically crushed. Militarized police, the present legality of using the military against US citizens domestically, the constant spying on us, the way the police treated the folks at DAPL. If the people rise up against the 1% in force, we will see a replay of Tiananmen square. It is only a matter of time. And we are running out of it. If we do not vote these people out of office, this is what will happen. History confirms this pattern.
The baby boomers have not even started to hit nursing homes in the tsunami wave that is coming. Just as schools needed to expand in the 1950s and '60s, so must we prepare with longterm care facilities and funding solutions. A related issue will be any restrictions placed on immigration; think, people: who will fill the low-paying jobs of supporting "activities of daily living" if not immigrants, who are already the majority of basic caretakers whether for in-home care or in the fanciest assisted living facilities. You think unemployed college graduates will grab those positions or be able to handle such challenging jobs with the patience and compassion needed? Maybe robots will be used instead.
11
The people born between the years of 1956 and 1964 are the ones being cheated now. We are the trailing edge of the baby boom generation in America. Each time our cohort approaches the age where we'll need something that was given without question to the earlier group requirements are changed, or we're told it's too expensive. We, and all the people born after us who are still working, have not been able to see our way to the American dream or even a smaller version of it.
Our parents have had a better standard of living than we have had. Our children and grandchildren may do worse than us. But we still buy that tired idea that socialism, even if carefully combined with capitalism, is akin to a nanny state. This even as various groups intrude into our reproductive lives in order to punish women for being raped or having sex outside of marriage.
We've elected the wrong people for decades. We're so in love with having more money in our pockets that we overlook the fact that tax cuts spell the end of programs that benefit us, lead to higher user fees, fewer services, and more poverty. Then again, as this election proved, you can't broke underestimating the intelligence of the American voter.
Our parents have had a better standard of living than we have had. Our children and grandchildren may do worse than us. But we still buy that tired idea that socialism, even if carefully combined with capitalism, is akin to a nanny state. This even as various groups intrude into our reproductive lives in order to punish women for being raped or having sex outside of marriage.
We've elected the wrong people for decades. We're so in love with having more money in our pockets that we overlook the fact that tax cuts spell the end of programs that benefit us, lead to higher user fees, fewer services, and more poverty. Then again, as this election proved, you can't broke underestimating the intelligence of the American voter.
2
Greedy Republicans always think that THEY WILL BE EXEMPT from the realities of life....they think there is a special secret hidden supply of clean water and food and medical care ...hidden away just for them...just ask Lyin' Mitch McConnell
My late father-in-law, the son of immigrants, was a World War II veteran who received a purple heart for injuries he sustained during D-Day. Upon returning from the service, he worked steadily until his retirement. He became a widower in his 80s, and soon developed dementia and needed full-time nursing home care for the rest of his life. Medicaid did not pick up the cost of his nursing home care until all his assets were liquidated, included his home, car, and life savings. I fail to see how this can be construed as "welfare."
29
A lot of boomers have been through the ordeal of their "greatest generation" parents going through the nursing-home mill, which includes writing a check for several thousand dollars every month. The Millennials and Gen-X are next in line for their parents' not-so-beautiful exit to the Kingdom, so you better pray Medicare doesn't go away or get ready to become a full-time caregiver at home.
3
If his assets were not intended to provide for his care, then what was their purpose? If he required skilled nursing facility care, why maintain a home, car, bank account? Many states allow home health care for elderly/disabled covered by Medicaid. Nursing visits, occupational health visits, meals on wheels, etc. For a single patient with profound dementia this would not really work.
1
Your father-in-law had assets, which were (properly) devoted to his care at the end of his life. His wife was deceased and he needed full-time care. I don't understand what is wrong with this. It was his money. Who had a better right to it than he did? When he ran out of money the state, in the person of Medicaid, picked up the bill, which again strikes me as appropriate.
Which party is having trouble moving this country along after the election? It is the Republicans. They continue to undo the past instead of improving the past to make a better final product. Our president continues in campaign mode. There is so much to be done and no one seems qualified to lead the charge. It is apparent that everyone needs to come together to make this thing called government work. I know our government is capable of something other than the appearance of a banana republic.
5
The Trump-McConnell-Ryan Republican government is the scariest thing I have seen in the US in my several decades of life. Amazingly, they are pushing the country to remake US in image of the Russia Trump so admires.
It is of the utmost importance that the rest of us stand up fiercely for a fair and decent society, governed with the welfare of all in mind and not centered around arrogant billionaires.
It is of the utmost importance that the rest of us stand up fiercely for a fair and decent society, governed with the welfare of all in mind and not centered around arrogant billionaires.
18
I like Mulvaney's basic framework, but it should not only apply to individuals, but to whole states. I propose the Ending America's Total Dependency on Interstate Revenue Transfers budget act (EAT DIRT). It will require that no state may receive more in Federal payments of any kind (defense, clean water, Social Security, etc.) than it pays in Federal taxes (Income, Social Security, etc.) If a state's contribution to the Federal government falls short, all Federal programs and payments to that state will be cut proportionately. Excess from states may be used to pay down the Federal debt or returned to the state as a block grant for the state legislature to dispose of. Time to end the dependency of certain states that breeds indolence in their citizenry.
15
The demographic "python eating a pig" comes home to roost.
The social changes were clearly forecast as the pig, the large baby boomer cohort, moved through the population (the python). Think of the social upheavals as the emphasis changed from the 1950's onward:
Benjamin Spock, MD, writes Baby and Child Care (1946)
National Highway Act passed (1956)
Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed (1956)
Enovid-E, the first oral contraceptive, is released (1960)
The American Way of Death is published (1963)
Medicaid is enacted into law (1965)
The Veterans Adjustment and Benefits Act is passed, giving Vietnam vets access to benefits for education and loans (1966)
The Summer of Love is celebrated in San Francisco (1967)
The Gray Panthers are launched to fight ageism (1970)
The first Earth Day is commemorated (1970)
First iPhone is released (2007)
ACA is passed (2010)
Thomas Pikety publishes Capital in the 21st Century (2013)
Trump elected (2016)
Our emphasis shifts from childhood, through early adult life and senescence and death as the pig moves on, getting smaller and smaller.
The social changes were clearly forecast as the pig, the large baby boomer cohort, moved through the population (the python). Think of the social upheavals as the emphasis changed from the 1950's onward:
Benjamin Spock, MD, writes Baby and Child Care (1946)
National Highway Act passed (1956)
Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed (1956)
Enovid-E, the first oral contraceptive, is released (1960)
The American Way of Death is published (1963)
Medicaid is enacted into law (1965)
The Veterans Adjustment and Benefits Act is passed, giving Vietnam vets access to benefits for education and loans (1966)
The Summer of Love is celebrated in San Francisco (1967)
The Gray Panthers are launched to fight ageism (1970)
The first Earth Day is commemorated (1970)
First iPhone is released (2007)
ACA is passed (2010)
Thomas Pikety publishes Capital in the 21st Century (2013)
Trump elected (2016)
Our emphasis shifts from childhood, through early adult life and senescence and death as the pig moves on, getting smaller and smaller.
1
Thank you for this clear presentation of the reality of Medicaid. Surely Republican senators are privy to these facts. Problem is, most of them just don't care. They are deaf to the argument that a basic task of a humane government is to provide care for those who most need it. They have no conscience. The situation in our nation is tragic.
17
Thank you for an excellent article that highlights statistically how Medicaid is part of the social contract that government has with vulnerable members of our society. That's what it means to live in a democracy. The proposed Trump Healthcare program is so malicious in nature that it seeks to destroy any reservoir of goodwill left between citizens.
36
In form and substance, this is probably the best, most informed explanation of the health-care debate, the larger inequality issue, and of the irrationality of our politics, in which low- and middle-income Whites vote for the person who acts in their worst interest.
That's why I'd like to see the GOP enact either the House or Senate health-care bill. As Edsall says, "If the Republican Congress cuts Medicaid along the lines of either the Senate or House legislation, Mulvaney’s hard-working taxpayers will face brutal choices." Let 'em reap what they sow. Maybe that's the only way things can change. The big question is, How would they pin it on Obama?
That's why I'd like to see the GOP enact either the House or Senate health-care bill. As Edsall says, "If the Republican Congress cuts Medicaid along the lines of either the Senate or House legislation, Mulvaney’s hard-working taxpayers will face brutal choices." Let 'em reap what they sow. Maybe that's the only way things can change. The big question is, How would they pin it on Obama?
14
The transfer of wealth from the most needy to the top 1% is justified if you feel that the wealthy are being shortchanged in the current economy, while the middle and working class have been prospering at the top 1%'s expense.
Once the laughter dies down, you can see the foolishness of this proposal to strengthen the already way overcompensated oligarchy.
If we want to retain the America that has existed since Teddy Roosevelt broke up the monopolies, we need to defeat this horrendous bill.
Once the laughter dies down, you can see the foolishness of this proposal to strengthen the already way overcompensated oligarchy.
If we want to retain the America that has existed since Teddy Roosevelt broke up the monopolies, we need to defeat this horrendous bill.
57
And rather than seeing this taxation as a transfer of wealth, could we regard it as a proportionate rate of taxation to support the government services that make this country great and have allowed these uber wealthy people to make and keep their wealth? They want the freedom and protections of a free, democratic society, but do not want to pay the "fair" and proportionate share of the taxes. And don't even get me started on the corporate welfare that these "corporoate socialists" look for when they get in trouble.
1
Once again: the power of narrative, the power of Fox News and talk radio, some denialism and a whole lotta anger. A house divided. I don't know how this storm will pass, how to dig out of this sinkhole we are in. I think it's too late. So the only solution is devolution, a new federalism, to try to create some new entities out of a sclerotic whole, and to do so peacefully and calmly. At least that way the pain the republicans wish to inflict will reach fewer people and the USA will be less scary to the rest of the planet. And surely the republicans will wish this, for they can then run their own show in their own private nirvanas with their own cast and audience members.
5
In response to Midway who feels Medicaid should be slashed and burned because some people cheat the system ( believe me , I know this is true as an owner of nursing homes) or even follow present regulations to get coverage, fixing the regulations which allow this to happen seems a more logical solution.
Some people cheat on their taxes, so get rid of the IRS? Employers game their employees benefits, dump the DOL? Your child's teacher is bad, drop education departments both federal and statewide? Reactionary policy development is narrow minded, unjust, and dangerous.
Some people cheat on their taxes, so get rid of the IRS? Employers game their employees benefits, dump the DOL? Your child's teacher is bad, drop education departments both federal and statewide? Reactionary policy development is narrow minded, unjust, and dangerous.
26
Dr. Ghertner
What do you think of people divesting their money to "qualify" for Medicaid so the rest of us can pay for their nursing home care?
Maybe that is where we need legislation to prevent Medicaid from bleeding to death?
MIMA
What do you think of people divesting their money to "qualify" for Medicaid so the rest of us can pay for their nursing home care?
Maybe that is where we need legislation to prevent Medicaid from bleeding to death?
MIMA
Shameful stuff. It's so obvious republicans don't care about the poor and disadvantaged. Yet these groups seem to represent significant numbers in many states. I hope the mean intentions of the republican bills will come back to bite them in the next round of elections. That is the poetic justice they need to open their eyes.
8
Not only do the Republicans not care for the disadvantaged -- they don't care for anyone but the rich. How can so many be so downright cruel?
5
Thanks you for sharing this outrageous reveal of the philosophy of the Trump administration and the Republican party. The very idea the those with dementia (most of whom were hard workers in an earlier life,) severely disabled children and adults, people who have the terrible misfortune of living with a life threatening disease or injury are THIEVES makes me ill.
Of course these people will never be able to reimburse the government for assistance in staying off the streets and increasing the homeless population. Paying for human needs is how many of us want our tax money spent.
Real theft is the billions of dollars enriching weapons manufacturers and militarizing the borders.
Of course these people will never be able to reimburse the government for assistance in staying off the streets and increasing the homeless population. Paying for human needs is how many of us want our tax money spent.
Real theft is the billions of dollars enriching weapons manufacturers and militarizing the borders.
33
And do Republicans understand all the JOBS that come from having Medicaid funds distributed? All those hospitals, care givers and on down the line have jobs BECAUSE we have Medicaid, and they pay taxes! And many of those covered, especially Elders, paid taxes, sometimes big taxes, all their lives. And those who are the working poor are paying some sort of taxes with every pay check. Many children on Medicaid have tax paying parents. So it seems, it's just SOME taxpayers the Republicans think need to be heard.
And you don't have to be a healthcare worker to benefit from healthcare jobs. All those industries that support health care facilities create food service, trucking, manufacturing JOBS. So why on earth are they shooting these "taxpayers" in the foot? If you're sick you can't work. Don't they get that?
And you don't have to be a healthcare worker to benefit from healthcare jobs. All those industries that support health care facilities create food service, trucking, manufacturing JOBS. So why on earth are they shooting these "taxpayers" in the foot? If you're sick you can't work. Don't they get that?
19
I'd like to see an analysis of Medicaid's "multiplier effect." After all, this money isn't simply flushed down the toilet. I'm guessing a significant portion goes to paying the salaries of care givers, who in turn pay taxes on their earnings. And when they spend their paychecks, these care givers provide economic support to other businesses in their communities, which also pay taxes. Nursing homes themselves presumably pay local property taxes--presumably this outlay is built into their Medicaid reimbursement fees. And because these care givers are employed, they're not on the unemployment lines.
Perhaps more important than Medicaid's contribution to our GDP, however, is its enhancement of GDH--Gross Domestic Happiness. Our collective contentment is a corollary of our commitment to help the less fortunate.
Perhaps more important than Medicaid's contribution to our GDP, however, is its enhancement of GDH--Gross Domestic Happiness. Our collective contentment is a corollary of our commitment to help the less fortunate.
12
Good points!
All of which goes to show that "Republican" citizens are ill-informed and supporting a political party that will do them enormous personal harm. These are people too busy or too uninterested or too unmotivated to educate themselves in objective truths that will impact their families immeasurably. This is also one of the unintended consequences of the racism directed against Obama, who helped their lives in ways they don't understand--a sad, harsh reality is that this racism directed against Obama and so expertly channeled by the Republican political establishment has rebounded against Trump / Republican voters with horrific consequences. Sadly, ignorance of the truth is its own punishment--but even worse, think of the damage done to hundreds of thousands of innocent children who deserve parents supporting government policies that help them.
7
The tax breaks in the TrumpCare plan are almost entirely given to investors who already pay lower rates than workers.
Clinton lowered the investor rate to the same rate as workers but that wasn't enough for these greedy people they want more.
Bush lowered it to 15, sank the economy and blew up the world.
Obama tried to clean up the mess and raised it to 20 and then tacked on 3.5% for the wealthy ones to fund the ACA. This is what drives their anger and fury and racism...a black man taxed them.
The fight to get the wealthy back to 15 and eliminate inheritance taxes is the #1 goal of Trump and his donors. We will all be Kansas.
I talk to Trump voters every day that earn $75-120K that believe they are over taxed and that is why they consistently vote republican. They don't care that the wealthy pay lower rates and they don't connect the dots that the reason there are no funds for infrastructure or education or healthcare is due to the fact that the investor class pays far too little.
Clinton lowered the investor rate to the same rate as workers but that wasn't enough for these greedy people they want more.
Bush lowered it to 15, sank the economy and blew up the world.
Obama tried to clean up the mess and raised it to 20 and then tacked on 3.5% for the wealthy ones to fund the ACA. This is what drives their anger and fury and racism...a black man taxed them.
The fight to get the wealthy back to 15 and eliminate inheritance taxes is the #1 goal of Trump and his donors. We will all be Kansas.
I talk to Trump voters every day that earn $75-120K that believe they are over taxed and that is why they consistently vote republican. They don't care that the wealthy pay lower rates and they don't connect the dots that the reason there are no funds for infrastructure or education or healthcare is due to the fact that the investor class pays far too little.
We continue to make the cardinal sin of debating health care in the abstract.
We spew out facts and figures ( while emphasizing the color of one's skin which is an utterly human construct ) We go further by dividing up the sex of participants. Then we talk about economic and social divisions. Then we talk about numbers across the country, or subdivided by state. We go on and on and on.
Look. Health care is about people. We are either going to help ease their suffering and\or save their lives... or not.
We are going to spread out the cost so that all people get health care ( preventative and not the triage of an emergency room ) ... or not .
I always use the analogy that if you are walking down the street and come across someone in distress health wise, you are going to help people and\or call 911. It is a given. Health care is a slow moving example of this analogy
Proponents of health care as a right will stop and help.
Opponents of health care and those that only want to offer it to you if you can afford it , want to keep on walking and ignore you.
It is THAT simple.
We spew out facts and figures ( while emphasizing the color of one's skin which is an utterly human construct ) We go further by dividing up the sex of participants. Then we talk about economic and social divisions. Then we talk about numbers across the country, or subdivided by state. We go on and on and on.
Look. Health care is about people. We are either going to help ease their suffering and\or save their lives... or not.
We are going to spread out the cost so that all people get health care ( preventative and not the triage of an emergency room ) ... or not .
I always use the analogy that if you are walking down the street and come across someone in distress health wise, you are going to help people and\or call 911. It is a given. Health care is a slow moving example of this analogy
Proponents of health care as a right will stop and help.
Opponents of health care and those that only want to offer it to you if you can afford it , want to keep on walking and ignore you.
It is THAT simple.
21
I think true economic conservatives do not make racial distinctions, like Mr. Edsall does here, between those using government social programs and those supporting themselves.
Do you think Americans are okay with "white" people being supported on a long-term timeline by their income taxes just because they don't have dark skin? I don't think so.
Do you think Americans are okay with "white" people being supported on a long-term timeline by their income taxes just because they don't have dark skin? I don't think so.
History shows that "conservatives" participated in redlining neighborhoods, supporting discrimination against Blacks in housing, employment, educations, job hires and health care.
"Conservatives" become most exercised (see Reagan) when they think that Black people (and people of other colors but White) are "getting" something for nothing.
"Conservatives" become most exercised (see Reagan) when they think that Black people (and people of other colors but White) are "getting" something for nothing.
I do think so. From Buckley to Reagan to bush to trump white racism is the driving force. Argument is merely a stick
Apparently, the only taxpayers Mr. Mulvaney is putting first are the ones who are spiriting away as much income in off-shore accounts as they can get away with. Talk about theft. The malefactors of great wealth have been siphoning off the resources of the middle-class and poor for decades and now hold the reins of government so they can at last finish the job.
Class war - they only call it that when you fight back.
Class war - they only call it that when you fight back.
14
Leave aside for the moment the issue of whether cuts are good or bad, why the insistence that it is about race? I think the answer is that for the left, it is almost always about identity.
Let's pretend it is about identity. Those dastardly Republicans (I'm independent) want to hurt minorities b/c they don't like their skin color. Again, I'll leave aside that Republican friends don't seem more prejudiced to me than Democrat friends, sometimes less so. The statistics here show not that Medicaid is predominantly for Whites, but that as a percentage of the population, it is predominantly for minorities. Of course, it is not presented that way because statistics are often politically presented in terms of gross numbers or as a percentage of the population depending on the position the writer is taking. For example, perhaps the contributing op-ed writer might, wanting to suggest police violence on minorities, present statistics showing a more blacks being shot by police as a percentage of the population, rather than the gross number showing more whites shot. A writer trying to diminish police violence on minorities might instead show the same statistics but present the gross numbers. Both sides do the same thing.
With respect to social insurance you will always have competing interests - on one side long term preservation and on the other protecting the vulnerable here and now. It is a balance. Which is why we need more moderates in gov't.
Let's pretend it is about identity. Those dastardly Republicans (I'm independent) want to hurt minorities b/c they don't like their skin color. Again, I'll leave aside that Republican friends don't seem more prejudiced to me than Democrat friends, sometimes less so. The statistics here show not that Medicaid is predominantly for Whites, but that as a percentage of the population, it is predominantly for minorities. Of course, it is not presented that way because statistics are often politically presented in terms of gross numbers or as a percentage of the population depending on the position the writer is taking. For example, perhaps the contributing op-ed writer might, wanting to suggest police violence on minorities, present statistics showing a more blacks being shot by police as a percentage of the population, rather than the gross number showing more whites shot. A writer trying to diminish police violence on minorities might instead show the same statistics but present the gross numbers. Both sides do the same thing.
With respect to social insurance you will always have competing interests - on one side long term preservation and on the other protecting the vulnerable here and now. It is a balance. Which is why we need more moderates in gov't.
So paying taxes is theft?
The only problem is, if taxes are not collected/paid, society dissolves, communities disappear, countries stop existing.
The big picture is: if Republicans succeed in their goal to abolish all taxation, which seems to be their goal, they will abolish the United States of America.
The only problem is, if taxes are not collected/paid, society dissolves, communities disappear, countries stop existing.
The big picture is: if Republicans succeed in their goal to abolish all taxation, which seems to be their goal, they will abolish the United States of America.
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft."
Since the John Birch Revolution (aka the Reagan Revolution) labor's share of the typical firm's revenues has dropped from 70% to 56%.
So who is taking from whom?
Since the John Birch Revolution (aka the Reagan Revolution) labor's share of the typical firm's revenues has dropped from 70% to 56%.
So who is taking from whom?
17
Thank you for this well informed and factual assessment of our health care system. Unfortunately, you're singing to the Choir. I loved your music. It makes me want to send this article to all of my well intentioned but uninformed Republican friends and family. The problem is that it will just fall on deft ears and eyes covered with blinders. I still really appreciate your article because it at least helps me cope with facts instead of FAKE NEWS.
5
Try as I might I see nothing here addressing the obscene funding for the Pentagon. No one ever seems to question the billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money wasted or gifted to cronies through the Pentagon.
How about we spend less time building our ridiculously out of control military and more on actually protecting our citizens.
Now that would really be bigly.
How about we spend less time building our ridiculously out of control military and more on actually protecting our citizens.
Now that would really be bigly.
22
These people have absolutely no sence of solidarity and common welfare.
In Germany there are two parallel health insurance systems. The majority are insured in "gesetzlichen Krankenversicherungen" (public health insurance) which is part of the public welfare system, which includes unemployment insurance, disability insurance, social security and long time care insurance. Everyone who works has a procent of their salary deducted for these insurances and that amount is matched by the employer. People earning above a certain amount or are self employed can opt out and get a private
health insurance. The money goes into the pot and anyone needing medical attention is covered, even the unemployed. The system began back in the 19th century. It could be that I pay and pay and never reep the benefits. But
someone else might. I do not consider this theft. I am part of a Gemeinschaft.
This is what the Republicans do not get. If you privatise everything, you are denying lots of people coverage, because they can not afford to pay for it themselves.
In Germany there are two parallel health insurance systems. The majority are insured in "gesetzlichen Krankenversicherungen" (public health insurance) which is part of the public welfare system, which includes unemployment insurance, disability insurance, social security and long time care insurance. Everyone who works has a procent of their salary deducted for these insurances and that amount is matched by the employer. People earning above a certain amount or are self employed can opt out and get a private
health insurance. The money goes into the pot and anyone needing medical attention is covered, even the unemployed. The system began back in the 19th century. It could be that I pay and pay and never reep the benefits. But
someone else might. I do not consider this theft. I am part of a Gemeinschaft.
This is what the Republicans do not get. If you privatise everything, you are denying lots of people coverage, because they can not afford to pay for it themselves.
17
Hmm. Then if this be true, Mr. Edsall should apologize for his work for St. Ronald, whose ambition was to undo the Great Society.
4
So all of the tax savings goes to the upper 1% and upper 0.1% of the taxpayers on the principle that it is their money? The master of disinformation is not Putin, but McConnell or Ryan. (Trump is ineligible because a skilled disinformer must know that he is disinforming.)
2
The opposition to Radical Conservatism needs to Get On Message. In fact, the McConnell Plan is BROKEN, a disaster from the "Let them Eat Cake" Trump Team. Why can't Dems reuse Republican/Fox New lingo? Gaslighting works, and is really moral when speaking the absolute truth. Know why? People are depending on Democratic leadership to expose well packaged Republican lies, lies which wreck the economy while making people sick (or worse). Make no mistake, McConnell is determined to have his way, cares little for ethics, and will change the rules like a school yard bully. We just don't know how his posse benefits, either financially, or morally, by hurting others. Can the media please explain how these individuals personally benefit?
2
Yes,indeed, if it is passed the way many Republicans wish, it will be a surprise.....a nightmare that will be with us long after we wake up.
Thanks for sharing this cogent opinion.
Thanks for sharing this cogent opinion.
I am one of those people who will lose my health insurance if Trumpcare passes. But I secretly want it to because when those folks in Montana lose their health care, they will finally feel some pain which may be necessary to wake them up. I am willing to suffer for awhile because I will be 65 soon, and I believe it will be the end of the Republican party.
4
Medicaid has a stigma that needs to be broken. A friend of mine qualified and she refused to accept it. It is not bad, but very limited, restricted care that most people wouldn't want.
The same people who resent poor people who get no choice medical care through Medicaid are the same people who go through hoops so their elderly relatives can hide money and get Medicaid in nursing homes.
The same people who resent poor people who get no choice medical care through Medicaid are the same people who go through hoops so their elderly relatives can hide money and get Medicaid in nursing homes.
5
Besides this, Trump is also attacking Food Stamps. I do not know how this is going will turn out in Congress. Nor can I know how the electorate will respond.
What I do know is that in the next election cycle we will determine what sort of nation we are to be. We are that close to being an all out plutocracy with a complete destruction of the poor and lower middle class, the environment, the public education system, and civil rights for minorities.
No one can pretend they don't understand what is at stake. Hating Hillary is no longer in play. How will we decide. To paraphrase a Nobel Laureate, "The answer is blowin' in the wind".
What I do know is that in the next election cycle we will determine what sort of nation we are to be. We are that close to being an all out plutocracy with a complete destruction of the poor and lower middle class, the environment, the public education system, and civil rights for minorities.
No one can pretend they don't understand what is at stake. Hating Hillary is no longer in play. How will we decide. To paraphrase a Nobel Laureate, "The answer is blowin' in the wind".
8
"Taking money from anyone without the intention of paying it back is not debt, it is theft."
I guess this is the kind of welfare Trump sought for himself with his many bankruptcies.
I guess this is the kind of welfare Trump sought for himself with his many bankruptcies.
9
Prospects for universal healthcare in the U.S.?
Doesn't look good to me--in fact the nation appears in a state of medical emergency. You have by a couple centuries of vast technological advance and conquest of globe overpopulation; people crammed into ever smaller space; decline of nature; rise of pure social climbing to arrive at a way out, prospect of a better life. You have any number of different types of human beings born, many with disabilities, at the same time as pressure to be an extravert, a leader, a person good with people, increases in an overpopulated world.
You have people crammed into homes and work--back and forth between the two--depressed, anxious, overeating and at same time expecting a longer life and to be kept alive longer by medicine. We seem to have a medical emergency of drugs legal and illegal needed for everything from anxiety to violence prevention, to help people work, to digest food, to live longer, to die more easily...
Universal healthcare does not seem a desire to keep a people as healthy as possible, to prevent sickness, so much as a rush to cure a populace that already feels sick in so many ways and wants to be better, wants plastic surgery, to be less obese, to feel good (opioids), to live longer, to get out of body, constricting home, and job...
For me health is solitude, getting out in nature, reading, trying to think up something original, trying to understand reality, trying to get above it all. Skinny, taking up less space...
Doesn't look good to me--in fact the nation appears in a state of medical emergency. You have by a couple centuries of vast technological advance and conquest of globe overpopulation; people crammed into ever smaller space; decline of nature; rise of pure social climbing to arrive at a way out, prospect of a better life. You have any number of different types of human beings born, many with disabilities, at the same time as pressure to be an extravert, a leader, a person good with people, increases in an overpopulated world.
You have people crammed into homes and work--back and forth between the two--depressed, anxious, overeating and at same time expecting a longer life and to be kept alive longer by medicine. We seem to have a medical emergency of drugs legal and illegal needed for everything from anxiety to violence prevention, to help people work, to digest food, to live longer, to die more easily...
Universal healthcare does not seem a desire to keep a people as healthy as possible, to prevent sickness, so much as a rush to cure a populace that already feels sick in so many ways and wants to be better, wants plastic surgery, to be less obese, to feel good (opioids), to live longer, to get out of body, constricting home, and job...
For me health is solitude, getting out in nature, reading, trying to think up something original, trying to understand reality, trying to get above it all. Skinny, taking up less space...
3
I always wished my mom, horribly disabled by ms, could've gotten out to nature, instead her original thoughts were driven by dementia. It wasn't solitude, it was unrelenting loneliness. Reading gave her solice but that was stolen by blindness. Understanding reality was useless, she knew her disability was permanent and progressive. Skinny, forget it, after 30+ years in a wheelchair...well you get the picture...health, what a concept!
Anybody have any thoughts on how we pay down a 17 trillion dollar debt and the relationship of growing Medicaid costs to this debt? We're stealing from our children and grandchildren.
1
I don't understand Mr. Edsall's focus on race in this piece. Mulvaney is despicable, certainly, but none of the statements Mr. Edsall attributes to him have a racist overtone. Rather, it is Mr. Edsall who inserts the racist dynamic. There was no reason for doing so, since the argument that it is the elderly, the disabled, and the working poor, not the unemployed, who are the chief beneficiaries of Medicaid is compelling.
1
Has it ever dawned on anyone that the Republican strong hold is in the states that are the poorest, worst educated, and receive most help from the federal government? Please note Trump did not win his home state. Thank God!
2
Ironically, the wealthy among us who don't need another red cent would be getting a tax cut for more money than they expect po'folks to live on for a year. Those who extract the lion's share of riches from the economy at the expense of labor and consumers are the real takers.
7
"How is it possible then..." that we always have money to fund a war? Is it 3 we're in now, not counting some covert wars?
5
I support a Single Payer, Universal, Not For Profit Health Insurance System for all, taxed and administered by the Federal Government- not the states. If that requires an Amendment to the Constitution- so be it.
Contrary to the Republicans, Americans of all income levels pay taxes and do so in an inefficient system at every level of government. Added up, many Working & Middle Class Americans pay a significant tax burden similar to countries with a Social Welfare State, but here we waste our tax Dollars on the Defense Department, Corporate Welfare and the Incarceration State where we have more people behind bars than any other democratic Country.
We are paying taxes- local to Federal- sufficient to support free University, universal Pre-K, Universal Health Insurance, Disability Insurance, and Long Term Care Insurance but are not getting our money's worth. The next time you see a picture of a Billion Dollar Stealth Bomber that cannot sit in the rain without damage to it's skin you might understand how our money is wasted.
Means testing is an inefficient method of distributing benefits and sucks up massive amounts on money by creating a huge bureaucracy to administer it. State and Local Governments hand out corporate welfare as they are played off each other by companies seeking concessions or credits- sometimes getting the payroll taxes of their employees refunded. Almost all the companies and states do it.
We are already paying for Socialism- we just are not getting it.
Contrary to the Republicans, Americans of all income levels pay taxes and do so in an inefficient system at every level of government. Added up, many Working & Middle Class Americans pay a significant tax burden similar to countries with a Social Welfare State, but here we waste our tax Dollars on the Defense Department, Corporate Welfare and the Incarceration State where we have more people behind bars than any other democratic Country.
We are paying taxes- local to Federal- sufficient to support free University, universal Pre-K, Universal Health Insurance, Disability Insurance, and Long Term Care Insurance but are not getting our money's worth. The next time you see a picture of a Billion Dollar Stealth Bomber that cannot sit in the rain without damage to it's skin you might understand how our money is wasted.
Means testing is an inefficient method of distributing benefits and sucks up massive amounts on money by creating a huge bureaucracy to administer it. State and Local Governments hand out corporate welfare as they are played off each other by companies seeking concessions or credits- sometimes getting the payroll taxes of their employees refunded. Almost all the companies and states do it.
We are already paying for Socialism- we just are not getting it.
7
Please, why can't we have single-payer? Let themmake their cuts in the military budget (an item that uses up half of our money).
1
I don't want to see Medicaid cut, but this is misinformation. Medicaid is not insurance unless there is a premium paid. There very thing that Republican's use to inflame opinions against Obamacare (Romneycare)-mandated coverage.
"Adverse selection" is the death knoll of any insurance plan, and it is exactly what you hear from anti-Obamacare critics. (E.g. "If I am young and healthy, I am forced to buy insurance that I don't need."). If the only people who are buying insurance is people who need/use it, the plan won't last long-that's called "stupidity." Why would anyone sell $100,000 of medical benefits/year for $7,000-10,000 ?
Insurance is socialism, which is of course economic democracy. United we stand, and quite literally for many poor Americans divided we die. There are three goals of protection for government-Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Apparently the pursuit of wealthy happiness Trumps Life.
"Adverse selection" is the death knoll of any insurance plan, and it is exactly what you hear from anti-Obamacare critics. (E.g. "If I am young and healthy, I am forced to buy insurance that I don't need."). If the only people who are buying insurance is people who need/use it, the plan won't last long-that's called "stupidity." Why would anyone sell $100,000 of medical benefits/year for $7,000-10,000 ?
Insurance is socialism, which is of course economic democracy. United we stand, and quite literally for many poor Americans divided we die. There are three goals of protection for government-Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Apparently the pursuit of wealthy happiness Trumps Life.
1
Republicans are correct that sick people often don't pay much tax, but overlook the obvious - sick people cannot work as much as healthy people.
1
Who receives Medicaid? Ask Paul Ryan, the man who calls Medicaid the "entitlement" which we've heard hiim growl about and criticize. Our Speaker of the House. But guess who received entitlements as a kid? Paul Ryan!
And what about Mitch McConnell when he was young and had polio?
Isn't it ironic? Our Congressional leaders think receiving Medicaid is despicable for everyone else, but not for them.
And what about Mitch McConnell when he was young and had polio?
Isn't it ironic? Our Congressional leaders think receiving Medicaid is despicable for everyone else, but not for them.
2
It seems possible that Congress will now be known as the Mother of all Death Panels. There is still time for them to come to their senses - but will they do the right thing?
1
I guarantee that many people who think this is welfare are on it, just don't know because each state has a different name for it.
2
My mom just retired at 67, she worked the past 30 years as a teacher and later administrator at a private school, and in other schools before that. She never took vacations, lived relatively frugally, and paid into her retirement plan the whole time. She worked 7 days a week (yes, including summers), and made sure she did everything to make sure she'd have enough to get by and not be a "burden" on me in her later years. Following the Republican model, she did pretty much everything she was supposed to do. It was never enough to pay for health care - she's not rich - 80% of her coverage will come from Medicaid, and the other 20% from private insurance. The private insurance, by the way, costs her twice as much per month (and a whole lot more if the Republicans have their way). This article seems to underscore the problem we have: the Republican presence in American politics hinges on the remarkable ignorance of the GOP constituency, and its policies on the breathtaking viciousness of lawmakers on the right. Republican senators (with their gold-plated retirement plans and healthcare paid for by the taxpayers) don't care, and they never have. It astounds me working people of any stripe are so benighted that they continue to believe the charlatans in the GOP. I guess that's why Republicans want to dismantle public education education, too.
390
Your mother is eligible for Medicare, not Medicaid. That's what she's paying for. Medicaid doesn't have supplemental insurance.
2
While I concur wholeheartedly with the gist of your comments, it must be pointed out that your mother's insurance situation is almost certainly MediCARE plus a "Medigap" plan. If Medicaid has a role in your mother's plan, it would negate the need for Medigap coverage. As described on the Medicaid.gov website, "Medicare enrollees who have limited income and resources may get help paying for their premiums and out-of-pocket medical expenses from Medicaid. Medicaid also covers additional services beyond those provided under Medicare, including nursing facility care beyond the 100-day limit or skilled nursing facility care that Medicare covers, prescription drugs, eyeglasses, and hearing aids. Services covered by both programs are first paid by Medicare with Medicaid filling in the difference up to the state's payment limit." This NOT to say you should not be alarmed. Medicare is next in Ryan & Co.'s crosshairs.
2
Why is she on Medicaid rather than Medicare?
1
Perhaps Mr. Trump's "great, great surprise" is that the GOP senators will work with the Democrats on a compromise plan to improve Obamacare and its faults, not just "repeal and replace." Last I heard, this is how government works in the United States. I could have told the GOP a year ago this is how to handle this issue. I also could have told them to figure out some way at the GOP convention not to nominate Donald Trump for President. He's a lot more trouble than he's worth.
1
The Republican proposals are shocking in their callousness. Is this really who we are as a nation? Is this really how we want America to be, and to be perceived? One of the rare truths to come out of the mouth of the current occupant of the White House is that the Republican bill is MEAN. Although he clearly does not comprehend the depth of that reality or he would not be standing ready to sign something just slightly less mean.
Mulvaney and others conveniently overlook, too, that many Medicaid recipients may not be working now, but that's because they've spent a lifetime, at hard work. They've earned their care. To suggest that they are somehow social sponges in their time of need is despicable. Also, as Mike Barnicle pointed out on Morning Joe recently, do current taxpayers who support this bill really plan to take on the daily, hourly care of their relatives now in nursing homes? Buying a sleeper sofa for their apartment? Quit their jobs to stay home to meet their needs? I don't think so.
Mulvaney and others conveniently overlook, too, that many Medicaid recipients may not be working now, but that's because they've spent a lifetime, at hard work. They've earned their care. To suggest that they are somehow social sponges in their time of need is despicable. Also, as Mike Barnicle pointed out on Morning Joe recently, do current taxpayers who support this bill really plan to take on the daily, hourly care of their relatives now in nursing homes? Buying a sleeper sofa for their apartment? Quit their jobs to stay home to meet their needs? I don't think so.
264
The preamble to the United States Constitution states:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, ESTABLISH JUSTICE, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Is the AHCA unconstitutional?
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, ESTABLISH JUSTICE, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Is the AHCA unconstitutional?
4
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft"
And retaining the services of vendors without an intention to pay them the originally stipulated amount is a favorite business practice of our President.
When a real estate developer uses high-priced lawyers to avoid fulfilling his financial obligations to a vendor or workers, it's no different ethically or spiritually as if he was using a gun.
And retaining the services of vendors without an intention to pay them the originally stipulated amount is a favorite business practice of our President.
When a real estate developer uses high-priced lawyers to avoid fulfilling his financial obligations to a vendor or workers, it's no different ethically or spiritually as if he was using a gun.
7
Merriam-Wabster's definition of social insurance is inadequate. In true social insurance – such as Social Security and Medicare – the insured person makes a contribution (FICA taxes) to his/her coverage, and eligibility is not based on financial need.
Medicaid definitely IS welfare, as it does not require the recipient to have made any contribution in order to receive it, and eligibility is based on need, not contribution. Welfare carries with it a stigma, which is mostly, but not entirely, a bad thing.
It serves no purpose to conflate Medicaid with social insurance, and doing so may be putting one or the other at risk down the road. For example, there is a possibly well-meaning, but horrible, idea floating around that we should "means test" Social Security. This would move Social Security out of the realm of social insurance and into the realm of stigmatized welfare. There are some not well-meaning people who would love to see that happen.
Medicaid definitely IS welfare, as it does not require the recipient to have made any contribution in order to receive it, and eligibility is based on need, not contribution. Welfare carries with it a stigma, which is mostly, but not entirely, a bad thing.
It serves no purpose to conflate Medicaid with social insurance, and doing so may be putting one or the other at risk down the road. For example, there is a possibly well-meaning, but horrible, idea floating around that we should "means test" Social Security. This would move Social Security out of the realm of social insurance and into the realm of stigmatized welfare. There are some not well-meaning people who would love to see that happen.
1
Social Security is already substantially taxed away from people with enough income to do without it.
What would be best for the people of the U.S. would be to FIX Obamacare. That would mean our legislators would have to put their constituents needs first. I guess that's not going to happen.
Fixing Obamacare makes good business sense.
Fixing Obamacare makes good business sense.
11
Beware beware MItch McConnell coming along after the recess bearing 'gifts' as tokens to mitigate some of the 'meanness' out of the Senate health care bill. In a wave of 'moderation' and a tip of the hat to bipartisanship, he hopes to get a win for President Trump.
This column is a clear eyed look at what Medicaid does for our society but Op Eds by Mulvaney and others are going to try the old GOP sleight of hand to demonize recipients.
The country must keep the pressure on and come from people in red states that have the most to lose from disengaging from a social contract.
This column is a clear eyed look at what Medicaid does for our society but Op Eds by Mulvaney and others are going to try the old GOP sleight of hand to demonize recipients.
The country must keep the pressure on and come from people in red states that have the most to lose from disengaging from a social contract.
10
While I agree with most of the points of the article, I don't see anywhere in Mulvany's comments where he introduces a racial component. This need to paint the other side as racists in order to make a point obfuscates the real arguments made in these situations. Edsall has done a disservice to the valid points he makes in his criticism of Mulvany by sensationalizing it.
2
Excuse me? Mr. Edsall bent over backwards to point out that the majority of Medicaid recipients are white in order to dispel the myths about Meducaid. How on earth can that possibly be racist?
I'm not sure we read the same article.
I'm not sure we read the same article.
3
I don't understand how McConnell can take the position that he does representing Kentucky-he is voting against the interests of much of his constituency. At least Rand Paul can claim some ideological purity in his libertarian beliefs-McConnell cannot. If the Senate bill somehow becomes law, he will have thrown many Kentuckians off of Medicaid and will have caused the death of many others from his state.
6
I think it rather obscene to give any credence to this Mulvaney idea that if most of the people receiving Medicaid are Black or Brown, then the program is somehow less worthy than if the recipients were White. The argument here is that most recipients are White, so therefore, what? Medicaid is alright because of the skin color of the people who benefit from it?? When did we get to this level of tribalism in this country?
Tribalism is fatal to the American system of government which relies upon reasonable compromises reached between competing economic interests. If a person is poor or old, or in economic straights then as a "Christian nation", which Republicans keep saying that we are, shouldn't we help our brother or sister in need, regardless of what color he or she is? Then the negotiation is how much we should help, not whether we should help.
Tribalism is fatal to the American system of government which relies upon reasonable compromises reached between competing economic interests. If a person is poor or old, or in economic straights then as a "Christian nation", which Republicans keep saying that we are, shouldn't we help our brother or sister in need, regardless of what color he or she is? Then the negotiation is how much we should help, not whether we should help.
4
Speaking of thievery, the author maintains that taking less tax money from Americans is theft. That’s as bizarre as his claim that Medicaid is not a welfare program. And the author’s is incorrect in asserting that Americans dismayed at soaring Medicaid costs think most who receive Medicaid benefits are white.
They do not think so. They think the recipients are "those other people." That's the whole point.
2
Republicans will cut Medicare and Medicaid because it meets their philosophic goals of smaller government that is powerless to function. In other words a smaller, non-functioning (bankrupt) government operated by oligarchs and plutocrats, will make the rich richer, the poor (underserving) poorer, and assure their own unlimited power.
Republicans continue to blame the plight of the un-derserving poor on their inability to be responsible for themselves and paint the poor as a non-working burden created by social welfare Democrats.
More than 30 years ago Ronald Reagan promoted "Starving the beast". That is a philosophy that promotes weakening and shrinking the federal government by cutting the budgets of each and then reducing taxes on the rich, thus giving the rich (job creators) more power and more money.
Everywhere the Republicans have had power they have turned it over to themselves and increased their power. Case in point, the Republican legislature and former governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania: The fully funded state pension program with over $75 billion in the two largest state pension plans, teachers and state workers, would no longer receive contributions from the state while Judges and the Legislature would receive increases of 50% and state retirees would receive 25% more. The result was bankrupting the pensions by ending state matching contributions. The Republicans blamed losses on Democrats and the state workers and teachers unions. The undeserving.
Republicans continue to blame the plight of the un-derserving poor on their inability to be responsible for themselves and paint the poor as a non-working burden created by social welfare Democrats.
More than 30 years ago Ronald Reagan promoted "Starving the beast". That is a philosophy that promotes weakening and shrinking the federal government by cutting the budgets of each and then reducing taxes on the rich, thus giving the rich (job creators) more power and more money.
Everywhere the Republicans have had power they have turned it over to themselves and increased their power. Case in point, the Republican legislature and former governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania: The fully funded state pension program with over $75 billion in the two largest state pension plans, teachers and state workers, would no longer receive contributions from the state while Judges and the Legislature would receive increases of 50% and state retirees would receive 25% more. The result was bankrupting the pensions by ending state matching contributions. The Republicans blamed losses on Democrats and the state workers and teachers unions. The undeserving.
13
No other political party on this planet so blatantly tells people to drop dead like the Republicans.
Liberals and Democrats must find a way to counter the argument that taxes are theft. Since the beginning of this country, our paper currency, federal taxes and federal debt have all been tied together... inseparable points in a triangle that has given the economy the liquidity it needed to grow and rule the world. There has been no liberal rebuttal to inaccurate conservative fables about the dangers of federal debt, the injustice of taxation (fears that stretch back to the beginning of the country) and the condemnation of our grandchildren to poverty, and so that remains the dominant narrative. Liberals and their leaders have failed us all by going along with it. That narrative threatens to reduce the whole country to the status of the Deep South.
3
The notion that government just burns what it taxes is an outright lie. The rapacious defense and gun industries are always first in line for federal money.
1
It appears Mr. Mulvaney, our nation's Budget Director, is willing to make public statements equating taxation, spent on broadly-beneficial public programs, as theft. If taxes are only justifiable if my tax expenditures come back to me, Mr. Mulvaney is on a very slippery slope.
What about all the Federal tax dollars that are sent from NY, CT, and NJ to southern states like Mr. Mulvaney's South Carolina? Should we demand those dollars back? Are Mr. Mulvaney and his fellow Southerners stealing from us?
At the least, Mssrs. Mulvaney, McConnell, Trump, etc. are stealing from us the integrity and purpose from government, and we should not be permitting that to occur.
What about all the Federal tax dollars that are sent from NY, CT, and NJ to southern states like Mr. Mulvaney's South Carolina? Should we demand those dollars back? Are Mr. Mulvaney and his fellow Southerners stealing from us?
At the least, Mssrs. Mulvaney, McConnell, Trump, etc. are stealing from us the integrity and purpose from government, and we should not be permitting that to occur.
29
Yes, would Mulvaney and other critics like to operate on the "get back what you pay in" principle? Those if us in states like NY, which ship billions to Washington, would get a huge tax holiday!
4
Having seen and heard Mulvaney on TV I immediately decided where he stands. First of all he is not too bright and secondly he is so far to the right he can't see straight.
In my opinion he is a greedy, hateful man. Typical of what Trump chooses for his cabinet. Loser Loser Loser.
In my opinion he is a greedy, hateful man. Typical of what Trump chooses for his cabinet. Loser Loser Loser.
Perhaps I am too focused on the original basis of government cost providers. WE the American people, are the providers of money to run our government and the programs for which it pays.
Simple minded me thinks that most of this money should eventually be returned to THE PEOPLE after paying for the government's expenses.
The hitches obviously occur between those two points.
Our elected representatives are our employees.
If we required these employees to perform as they must in private industry, most would have been booted out yesterday.
Ergo, how can they have the nerve to try to legislate away the backbone of the system that actually has been paid for by the people.
Simple minded me thinks that most of this money should eventually be returned to THE PEOPLE after paying for the government's expenses.
The hitches obviously occur between those two points.
Our elected representatives are our employees.
If we required these employees to perform as they must in private industry, most would have been booted out yesterday.
Ergo, how can they have the nerve to try to legislate away the backbone of the system that actually has been paid for by the people.
24
Mr. Mulvaney admits to his home state audience that "Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft."
Apparently this is how the current head of the Federal budget defines taxation, on which the operation of the Federal government depends.
"Most" people would consider this to be an extreme definition of taxation and a direct attempt to delegitimize government.
Did Mr. Mulvaney admit to such views in his confirmation hearing? No? Would he have been confirmed if he had done so? Perhaps not, the vote was very close.
And how is it that someone with these extreme views is willing to work for a President who as a businessman stole the tax benefits of the investors in his casinos, taking THEIR operating losses and applying it to his future income so that he could avoid almost a billion dollars in income tax? That is MY definition of debt equalling theft!
What do the Republicans think they are doing? A putative health care bill is carefully constructed to remove health coverage so that tax benefits can be provided for the wealthy. The EPA rolls back environmental regulations. The Education Department does not support public schools. HUD removes support for public housing.
The country did not vote for the dismantling of the Federal Government last November. The Republicans should stop acting as though they did.
Apparently this is how the current head of the Federal budget defines taxation, on which the operation of the Federal government depends.
"Most" people would consider this to be an extreme definition of taxation and a direct attempt to delegitimize government.
Did Mr. Mulvaney admit to such views in his confirmation hearing? No? Would he have been confirmed if he had done so? Perhaps not, the vote was very close.
And how is it that someone with these extreme views is willing to work for a President who as a businessman stole the tax benefits of the investors in his casinos, taking THEIR operating losses and applying it to his future income so that he could avoid almost a billion dollars in income tax? That is MY definition of debt equalling theft!
What do the Republicans think they are doing? A putative health care bill is carefully constructed to remove health coverage so that tax benefits can be provided for the wealthy. The EPA rolls back environmental regulations. The Education Department does not support public schools. HUD removes support for public housing.
The country did not vote for the dismantling of the Federal Government last November. The Republicans should stop acting as though they did.
43
Who cares if Medicaid is or isn't more like welfare versus insurance? The bottom line is that it's a program that helps people in our country who need help.
The basic questions are:
1) Who deserves help?
2) Who determines who deserves help?
3) Where does the help (i.e. money) come from?
4) Is it better to make sure that no money goes "undeserving" people, but risk not serving everyone who actually needs help? Or the converse?
Republicans believe:
- There are some people who don't deserve help. (Possibly due to laziness, poor life choices, wrong religion/race/sexuality/etc.)
- Each person, not the govt, should get to decide who deserves help.
- Each person should get to decide for themself whether they want to give money to help (and how much).
- Each person has the moral right to make "moral" distinctions when they give money.
- It's better to risk underserving some people rather than accidentally support moochers.
Democrats believe:
- It's a moral obligation for members of a society to help a broad range of people within their society as a whole (even if they have made some mistakes in their life or hold different beliefs/values).
- Decisions about who deserves help should be made by society as a whole, not by individuals (or exclusionary institutions like churches).
- It's better to risk giving money to people who don't actually need it (and thus ensure that all the needy get sufficient help) than to risk not giving help to some people who need it.
What Would Jesus Do?
The basic questions are:
1) Who deserves help?
2) Who determines who deserves help?
3) Where does the help (i.e. money) come from?
4) Is it better to make sure that no money goes "undeserving" people, but risk not serving everyone who actually needs help? Or the converse?
Republicans believe:
- There are some people who don't deserve help. (Possibly due to laziness, poor life choices, wrong religion/race/sexuality/etc.)
- Each person, not the govt, should get to decide who deserves help.
- Each person should get to decide for themself whether they want to give money to help (and how much).
- Each person has the moral right to make "moral" distinctions when they give money.
- It's better to risk underserving some people rather than accidentally support moochers.
Democrats believe:
- It's a moral obligation for members of a society to help a broad range of people within their society as a whole (even if they have made some mistakes in their life or hold different beliefs/values).
- Decisions about who deserves help should be made by society as a whole, not by individuals (or exclusionary institutions like churches).
- It's better to risk giving money to people who don't actually need it (and thus ensure that all the needy get sufficient help) than to risk not giving help to some people who need it.
What Would Jesus Do?
30
I detest Paul Ryan, he lived off of Social Security as a teen and now is the cruelest wanting to end it for everyone. I guess he does not know we all paid into that and he probably never has. A very dumb hateful cretin that I hope does not get elected again. I surely hope this is his last hurrah as Speaker.
My (white) mother is unable to get out of bed and requires assistance to eat and relieve herself. She is on Medicaid, which pays for her nursing-home care. Meanwhile, my family is dependent on my income from a full-time job. Without it, I couldn't pay the mortgage or even rent anywhere in eastern Massachusetts. As it is, I dedicate 10 hours or so per week to visiting my mother, advocating for her, handling her paperwork, and shopping for things she wants or needs, since she is unable to hold a pen or dial phone numbers, much less leave her bed. Without Medicaid, I would have to quit my job to care for my mother 24-7. Without a job, I would end up on the street with my mother. My family would have to dumpster-dive for food. Despite my best efforts, my very frail mother would not last long, I'm sure, under a highway overpass. My mother would soon die, and I would be destitute and homeless. This is the price that Republicans are asking me and millions of others like me to pay so that the superrich can boost their incomes by hundreds of thousands more dollars per year. Why aren't the media presenting this truth in these terms?
196
Well stated!!
4
God bless you Mark. I pray for you and others who will be without help if this dreadful Insurance bill goes thru. I am sure you have many sleepless nights. I am sick that our country has sunk so low.
I really don't think this will happen, it is close to being DOA and it should be.
I really don't think this will happen, it is close to being DOA and it should be.
2
Why can't Democrats make this case in a 30" ad?
Social insurance to protect individuals who cannot help themselves is noble. Handing money to people with no expectation of responsibility on their part is wrong- it is stealing from hard working, responsible people.
The ACA eliminated asset checks for people under 65 for Medicaid qualification. As a result, I have plenty of patients who are not working with a fortune in the bank, nice cars etc...., who for whatever reason are satisfied with Medicaid care. THAT IS A CRIME. There is no reason to allow this abuse of taxpayers. It is also unconscionable that medicaid recipients get services like homecare/transportation/tylenol that medicare or privately insured patients pay for.
Anything that you get for free that I pay for for myself is WELFARE. And you should be respectful of the people who give it to you and do your share, be responsible and be thankful.
The ACA eliminated asset checks for people under 65 for Medicaid qualification. As a result, I have plenty of patients who are not working with a fortune in the bank, nice cars etc...., who for whatever reason are satisfied with Medicaid care. THAT IS A CRIME. There is no reason to allow this abuse of taxpayers. It is also unconscionable that medicaid recipients get services like homecare/transportation/tylenol that medicare or privately insured patients pay for.
Anything that you get for free that I pay for for myself is WELFARE. And you should be respectful of the people who give it to you and do your share, be responsible and be thankful.
3
If the ACA had eliminated asset checks, then there wouldn't be the need for so many "Medicaid divorces." Many couples choose to divorce in order to leave the sick spouse with little or no assets (a few years ago it was $14,000 a year, I believe) and, therefore qualified for Medicaid. This is an awful situation for couples who've been married 50-60 years who are terrified of losing every single asset they own to pay for the sick spouse's care and lhereby leaving the "well" spouse, aged and impoverished.
Also, the process of approval for Medicaid is not instant by any means. It can take more than six months, during which families must hold their breaths and hope for approval, facing thousands of dollars of debt from, let's say, a nursing home, if they are not approved. It is a nerve-wracking and cruel system.
Are there abuses of Medicaid? Absolutely, but the vast majority of those applying for it are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Also, the process of approval for Medicaid is not instant by any means. It can take more than six months, during which families must hold their breaths and hope for approval, facing thousands of dollars of debt from, let's say, a nursing home, if they are not approved. It is a nerve-wracking and cruel system.
Are there abuses of Medicaid? Absolutely, but the vast majority of those applying for it are caught between a rock and a hard place.
3
States, who are partners in the Medicaid program, have asset checks before giving Medicaid. In New York, for example, the applicant is only allowed $22,750 in resources and it may include the assets of other people in the household, like spouses
Indeed, the Federal government requires the states to pursue the estates of Medicaid recipients for the Medicaid received during their lifetimes.
Indeed, the Federal government requires the states to pursue the estates of Medicaid recipients for the Medicaid received during their lifetimes.
Boy, am I glad I'm not a Medicaid patient under your care. Do you follow them down to the parking lot to see what they drive away in?
2
Let's face it: we Americans are on our own for our healthcare. We can manage.
1
Here's the thing: It's not necessary to "manage." ("Manage" in this case means poverty, degradation, and premature death in many cases.)
We can do better than "manage." We just have to care about one another and pull together to do it.
We can do better than "manage." We just have to care about one another and pull together to do it.
7
NO! A great many cannot.
Really? Do you know what a catscan costs? Insulin? Heart surgery?
The good news is that the general public is starting to seriously consider and understand the structure of health care insurance in this country. That apparently did not happen in the debates over Clinton's failed health care plan or Obamacare.
5
Wishful thinking.
How do you provide healthcare for folks who refuse to look after themselves? It's not a matter of race really. Most younger Americans will tell you they live the way they do because they don't intend to live to be older. That's cool. The problem is that most of them do live to be older and then it's everyone else's responsibility to take care of them.
4
Any empirical evidence of this? Because I believe this is absurd.
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft"
Providing money to someone who cannot pay it back is not a loan. It is compassion.
Providing money to someone who cannot pay it back is not a loan. It is compassion.
90
"Social Insurance" is living in a society where people care for one another. When younger and more able to carry more than one's "individual" share, you contribute to the overall society for everyone's benefit. You "pay forward" in many ways, taxes being only one of them. When less-abled (age, infirmity, unplanned disaster), you can be comforted by knowing it is a SHARED community who sees that neither putting your head in the sand or building HUGE fences (at HUGE cost) will save yourself in the long run.
Thanks for suggesting that this is not primarily a debate about medical costs, though surely that is a huge part of the discussion, but, at the core, a debate of what kind of society we want to belong. One where, like a close family unit, sees a progression from birth to death as changing in interdependencies and sharing; or one where there are deep sand holes and tall fences. Much of the American psyche, rich or poor, white or other, rural or urban, is sadly becoming the latter for many reasons. Collectively, we desperately need to change "the culture" of individual success (or failure) to one where we all share and contribute to the successes of all ages, birth to death, knowing that what goes around comes around. Without one another, we are doomed.
Thanks for suggesting that this is not primarily a debate about medical costs, though surely that is a huge part of the discussion, but, at the core, a debate of what kind of society we want to belong. One where, like a close family unit, sees a progression from birth to death as changing in interdependencies and sharing; or one where there are deep sand holes and tall fences. Much of the American psyche, rich or poor, white or other, rural or urban, is sadly becoming the latter for many reasons. Collectively, we desperately need to change "the culture" of individual success (or failure) to one where we all share and contribute to the successes of all ages, birth to death, knowing that what goes around comes around. Without one another, we are doomed.
34
Thanks for your comment; maybe the problem is trying to cram social programs into a business model of insurance.
4
Economically the Republican party has always held to a Darwinian philosophy. Survival of the fittest; if a company was fit the odds increased that it would prosper if a company was not fit the odds increased that it would fail and go bankrupt. if a worker was fit the odds increased that they would join the ranks of the wealthy if they were unfit the odds increased that they would join the ranks of the poor.
Republicans are now applying that principal to healthcare and it will become much more literal. If you are healthy employed or financially fit your chances of having health insurance and surviving are high, if you are unemployed, sick, poor or old your chances of affording health insurance and surviving will be much lower.
The Paul Ryans, Mitch McConnells, etc were elected to represent the best interests of their constituents in Congress but support of Trumpcare seems more like representing a grim ideology at the expense of their constituents.
Republicans are now applying that principal to healthcare and it will become much more literal. If you are healthy employed or financially fit your chances of having health insurance and surviving are high, if you are unemployed, sick, poor or old your chances of affording health insurance and surviving will be much lower.
The Paul Ryans, Mitch McConnells, etc were elected to represent the best interests of their constituents in Congress but support of Trumpcare seems more like representing a grim ideology at the expense of their constituents.
18
If the Rs weren't indebted to big Pharm and Ins companies we would no doubt have single payer. It is the only way to go.
Wait 'til those guys in Congress set their sights on Medicare and Social Security. They just haven't gotten around to exposing their thoughts and plans to daylight.
76
Yes they have. Just look at th the platform of the Republican Party.It is there in black and white.
It is a great article but it makes me sad. If the last election taught us anything, it is how little facts count in modern America. Telling people that in 18 states, at least 60% of Medicaid beneficiaries are white (and the majority in most other states) is unlikely to cause them to change their mistaken/wrong beliefs. They will continue to belief that only urban African-Americans benefit from Medicaid.
51
Among the many confusing things here... white people on Medicaid tend to be very frail, very elderly seniors in nursing homes. In other words, they are invisible to society.
Black people on Medicaid tend to be young, unwed mothers with multiple children by different fathers. They show up in the ER with hangnails (why not? it's FREE!) and they use many other social services, like TANF, WIC, SNAP, EITC, Section 8, Obamaphones -- all much more visible than granny in that nursing home.
However, it is factually true that "most people on welfare AND MEDICAID are white".
Black people on Medicaid tend to be young, unwed mothers with multiple children by different fathers. They show up in the ER with hangnails (why not? it's FREE!) and they use many other social services, like TANF, WIC, SNAP, EITC, Section 8, Obamaphones -- all much more visible than granny in that nursing home.
However, it is factually true that "most people on welfare AND MEDICAID are white".
Medicaid's expansion as part of the ACA has helped lay bare an essential truth about the United States--the country is chock-full of desperate, dirt-poor white people, concentrated especially in Appalachia and the corridor of land running from the Florida Panhandle to South Texas. If America were more like the European Union (a loose confederation of independent countries rather than one nation with far more significant transfers of wealth from rich states to poor ones), those white-majority areas of the country would look a lot like Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania in terms of comparative income and poverty levels.
28
Correct. Federalism has tended to raise wage rates in the interior and south. A weak federal government would result in these areas becoming considerably poorer.
7
A problem, not addressed here by Edsall, is the discrepancy between the academic and extra-US use of the word "welfare"to encompass income security or income maintenance program, including social insurance programs and programs for "deserving" poor populations of elderly, disabled, and the like, and the popular and journalistic use of welfare to refer to programs for the (presumptively "undeserving") long term poor (e.g. unemployed single mothers, unemployed alcoholics), a group effective identified by conservatives with Blacks (and eventually Hispanics) in the second half of the twentieth century.
Thus, since Medicaid is for the poor it us for wastrel non-Whites.
Thus, since Medicaid is for the poor it us for wastrel non-Whites.
2
While the article mainly focuses on Medicaid's impact on the lives of adults and older Americans, it also points out that of the 11.2 million children with special needs, 4.9 million have Medicaid coverage. I know of 4 friends whose grandchildren were diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, and all of them made excellent progress with an intensive early intervention program . Children born with spina bifada and cerebral palsy require surgeries as well as expensive adapted equipment. We're throwing them under the bus so that the wealthiest in our country can have a bigger tax cut?
29
Excellent column with particularly good insights into the impacts of cutting Medicaid in the swing states that elected Trump to office.
That said, let's dispense with something up front in the interests of intellectual honesty.
Whites are ~41% of Medicaid recipients and ~63% of US pop.
Blacks are ~22% of Medicaid recipients and ~12% of US pop.
Hispanics are ~25% of Medicaid and ~17% of US pop.
Asians / Other are ~12% of Medicaid and ~6% of US pop.
Look, Medicaid is a necessary health insurance program. Actually, I think Mr Edsall's characterization of the program as a quality of life saver is a better description. Hopefully, Medicaid should be a step towards Medicare for all. Healthcare is a basic human right and the US should be the world's leader. Reduce defense spending, raise the taxes and let's get on with it.
But for us to be credible, we have to recognize that non whites absolutely use welfare services in this country disproportionately to their population. There are a lot of reasons for that, some of them rooted in historical bias, some in hard luck, most of them rooted in personal or cultural choices.
To deal effectively with a problem we have to be honest about the problem.
That said, let's dispense with something up front in the interests of intellectual honesty.
Whites are ~41% of Medicaid recipients and ~63% of US pop.
Blacks are ~22% of Medicaid recipients and ~12% of US pop.
Hispanics are ~25% of Medicaid and ~17% of US pop.
Asians / Other are ~12% of Medicaid and ~6% of US pop.
Look, Medicaid is a necessary health insurance program. Actually, I think Mr Edsall's characterization of the program as a quality of life saver is a better description. Hopefully, Medicaid should be a step towards Medicare for all. Healthcare is a basic human right and the US should be the world's leader. Reduce defense spending, raise the taxes and let's get on with it.
But for us to be credible, we have to recognize that non whites absolutely use welfare services in this country disproportionately to their population. There are a lot of reasons for that, some of them rooted in historical bias, some in hard luck, most of them rooted in personal or cultural choices.
To deal effectively with a problem we have to be honest about the problem.
10
Well, there are actually 3 types of welfare in the United States: Social welfare, corporate welfare, and military welfare. Look at it that way and it becomes clear that white Americans also use welfare services disproportionately. What would happen to the South without military bases? The running joke about Mick Mulvaney's home state of South Carolina is that the place is so loaded down with military bases that if just one more base were built, the whole state would sink into the Atlantic Ocean.
21
What Mr. Edsall's article illustrates clearly is that lack of economic opportunity and poor education -- and the resultant poverty these factors engender -- are the surest indicators of which populations will be recipients of social assistance programs like Medicaid. In areas like Appalachia, where job opportunities are few and schools underperform, the recipents are almost entirely white Americans.
Rather than focusing on perceived "personal or cultural choices" -- code for "these people" are not like us? -- we would do better to remember that we are all Americans.
There but for the grace of God ...
Rather than focusing on perceived "personal or cultural choices" -- code for "these people" are not like us? -- we would do better to remember that we are all Americans.
There but for the grace of God ...
1
Yes, but those whites on Medicaid make up less than half, while they receive more than half of the funds.
The Republican version of American exceptionalism is white, nationalist, Social Darwinism, plain and simple. Men like Mulvaney don't believe that the general rules of economics and politics apply to America, and happily dismiss facts and statistics.
For instance, the proven success of Northern European social democracies is irrelevant to him, because "socialism" is for lesser creatures, and not for "culturally superior" Americans who are hard-working, innovating, job-creating, (white) Nietzschean supermen, who take the world in a stride. And those who don't, well, they deserve to be culled from the herd. The Republicans have abandoned reason and science long ago. Articles like this are preaching to the choir, even though they are important.
For instance, the proven success of Northern European social democracies is irrelevant to him, because "socialism" is for lesser creatures, and not for "culturally superior" Americans who are hard-working, innovating, job-creating, (white) Nietzschean supermen, who take the world in a stride. And those who don't, well, they deserve to be culled from the herd. The Republicans have abandoned reason and science long ago. Articles like this are preaching to the choir, even though they are important.
30
Well put. If you want to know what the Republicans think and believe about the races read Madison Grant's 1916 book, "The Passing Of The Great Race." A very chilling and somber account of how many in this country thought in 1916 and still do in 2017.
5
The cost of Medicaid was under 1 billion when it started, in 1966. In 2016 it had grown to 553 billion.
Did Mr. Edsall who wrote about this issue find the time to look at these two figures and do a bit of thinking?
There are states which are spending more money on Medicaid than they do on K-12 education. Is this the right way to spend our precious tax money?
Did Mr. Edsall who wrote about this issue find the time to look at these two figures and do a bit of thinking?
There are states which are spending more money on Medicaid than they do on K-12 education. Is this the right way to spend our precious tax money?
3
Would you know the population of the country in 1966?
Perhaps you can tell us the mean income of that population in comparison to today's, allowing for inflation. While you are at it, consider the figures for GNP, the military budget and just for the heck of it, congressional salaries, perks and pensions.
Of course, one cannot equate the ''no child left behind'' act with the monies spent on education. If your poor states pull the plug on Medicaid, do you really think they will divert funds to education?
Do a bit of thinking.
Perhaps you can tell us the mean income of that population in comparison to today's, allowing for inflation. While you are at it, consider the figures for GNP, the military budget and just for the heck of it, congressional salaries, perks and pensions.
Of course, one cannot equate the ''no child left behind'' act with the monies spent on education. If your poor states pull the plug on Medicaid, do you really think they will divert funds to education?
Do a bit of thinking.
1
Don't ask the hard, unpleasant questions.
Like "why is Medicaid literally the largest expense in the entire Federal budget? MORE THAN THE MILITARY?"
Just keep paying. That's the very core of lefty liberalism.
Like "why is Medicaid literally the largest expense in the entire Federal budget? MORE THAN THE MILITARY?"
Just keep paying. That's the very core of lefty liberalism.
How is Medicaid not a welfare program? There are no dedicated payroll taxes for Medicaid are there are for Medicare. Furthermore, Medicaid comes with strings attached, most notably means-testing. Otherwise, why doesn't everyone simply enroll in Medicaid?
3
I far prefer the millions we give in the well fare of people than the billions we give in subsidies to huge corporations that only line the pockets of a relative few billionaires and their bought politicos.
32
Your enrollment comes with your birth certificate and citizenship.
Arthur: As I said, there are no dedicated payroll taxes that pay for Medicaid. Funding for Medicaid comes from federal income taxes, towards which 47% of American adults pay absolutely nothing. So please refrain from the "we the people" trope unless you pay significantly more in taxes than you receive in benefits.
1
Taxes are the price of living in a democracy. As a reasonably well-off middle manager in a global firm, I was AOK with paying my share of the cost of our country's government. And once hitting the maximum SSI income where these taxes where no longer collected (in late Sept each year), the "extra income" made very little difference in our lifestyle. Now recently retired, I am amazed at the claims of Mulvaney, Ryan and McConnell that somehow I have been stolen from all these years. Exactly who do these men think should be paying for the social safety net? Apparently no one in their minds.
73
It is difficult to believe that all of the 10 million elderly Medicaid recipients who get Medicaid to cover long-term nursing home care really need to be in a nursing home. On NBC news the other evening they interviewed a lady who had been in a nursing home for 11 years with Medicaid paying. When I was a child, back in the fifties, my grandparents moved in with us when they could no longer care for themselves. That is what people did before Medicaid came along. If we returned to that practice today it would save a huge amount of taxpayer money. If at all possible let the families of the elderly take care of their own, as it was done for centuries.
3
and how would you write the law to mandate that?
1
Medicare made it easy to reduce our aged parents and grandparents to disposable people.
And will you be giving up your job to take care of your elderly parents or inlaws? Can you manage to take care of two more adults with half your income? Many elderly still need specialized care - are you able to provide that on your own? Is your house or apartment equiped to take in elderly parents in terms of space, accessability and comfort?
4
But the bottom line is that it is very expensive and killing states like my state of Vermont. So what we really need is a debate over how we reduce the cost of health care, how we insure that health care is universally available and how do we deliver it so rural areas are not starved for the kind of care that suburban areas take for granted. It is a real disappointment that the republicans so hungry for a victory are not doing the real work that is needed.
15
Nancy, it is "killing" states like Vermont because the federal government is not properly funding Medicaid. So the debate is how to restore federal funding, which will require political will to reverse the ruinous giveback of tax cuts to the wealthiest.
1
Despite the claims here (mostly invented and false), Medicaid has grown under EVERY Presidency -- from conservatives like Bush to liberals like Obama -- and it is literally the largest expense in the national budget, bigger even than the US military.
The GOP is not a political party in the traditional sense, it has become a sort of quasi-corporation, which is now marketing its lies on a grand scale. As you suggest, Mulvaney's use of the term "thievery" is politically and racially charged, but I'm sure it plays well in his home state. Around the nation, Republican Members of Congress use whatever pre-tested terminology they have been told will work well with their particular "market segment." It is dangerous for us to assume that these are just people spouting off. They have a plan...
81
What is happening around Medicaid reminds me of what we have been seeing lately around immigration. Increasingly there are stories in the press about Trump voters distressed because some undocumented immigrant whom they know and cherish (e.g., a business owner who employs a number of folks in a small Indiana town) is being deported. They sit sadly on camera saying that they did not expect their 'illegal' to be deported - they know him, they like him, he created jobs, he is good for their community. Plainly they expected Trump to deport someone else's "illegal" - you know, the "bad hombres."
Likewise, though their mom may depend upon Medicaid or their opioid addicted cousin may be getting help because of the program or the neighbor's disabled kid may be helped, they are assuming that only those lazy, non-working "takers" will be kicked off the rolls - until they get that rude awakening. Sadly, then it is too late.
Likewise, though their mom may depend upon Medicaid or their opioid addicted cousin may be getting help because of the program or the neighbor's disabled kid may be helped, they are assuming that only those lazy, non-working "takers" will be kicked off the rolls - until they get that rude awakening. Sadly, then it is too late.
106
Did you know that Goebbels said exactly the same thing 80 years ago about the German people and The Jews? Plus ca change.
The United States government has been showing the world for a long time what happens when our parties can't work together and, in fact, work to obstruct each other. This will show itself to the world also following President Trump's ,US first policies. We're all human beings stuck on this earth for a limited amount of time. We should be here helping each other, not obstructing. Let's not pour our money into defense, let's put it into medicine, education, helping the people who aren't born into great wealth. Black, white, red, yellow.
9
"It's going to be great." For whom?
Thanks for pointing out the draconian difference in party attitudes towards Medicaid. It can't be said enough that the GOP views every single social assistance or insurance program as somehow picking the pockets of the well-to-do. "In other words, recipients of Medicaid and other federal programs that the Trump administration proposes to cut are thieves, and Mulvaney, with the president’s backing, is determined to end this criminal activity."
So now it's a crime to outlive your money, get health insurance when you can no longer work due to age, disability, or infirmity, or fall on hard times when you're life savings are wiped out, perhaps due to some financial charlatan like Bernie Madoff?
If that's true, the children of nursing home patients are going to be surprised when they realize their parents are robber barons.
How this country got to this point is beyond the point, or maybe not. Because for all his talk of "fake news," Trump and his team have no problem falsifying the truth about Medicaid and who is more deserving: people in nursing homes or the supremely wealthy GOP patrons (the 400 families) who were asked for 8 years under the ACA to pony up a tad for the destitute.
Just look to the GOP, particularly this current administration, and see how many of their premises rest on shaky grounds, driving a continued huge transfer of wealth from governmental social assistance programs into the pockets of the rich.
Thanks for pointing out the draconian difference in party attitudes towards Medicaid. It can't be said enough that the GOP views every single social assistance or insurance program as somehow picking the pockets of the well-to-do. "In other words, recipients of Medicaid and other federal programs that the Trump administration proposes to cut are thieves, and Mulvaney, with the president’s backing, is determined to end this criminal activity."
So now it's a crime to outlive your money, get health insurance when you can no longer work due to age, disability, or infirmity, or fall on hard times when you're life savings are wiped out, perhaps due to some financial charlatan like Bernie Madoff?
If that's true, the children of nursing home patients are going to be surprised when they realize their parents are robber barons.
How this country got to this point is beyond the point, or maybe not. Because for all his talk of "fake news," Trump and his team have no problem falsifying the truth about Medicaid and who is more deserving: people in nursing homes or the supremely wealthy GOP patrons (the 400 families) who were asked for 8 years under the ACA to pony up a tad for the destitute.
Just look to the GOP, particularly this current administration, and see how many of their premises rest on shaky grounds, driving a continued huge transfer of wealth from governmental social assistance programs into the pockets of the rich.
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What's really sad is that the average Jane or Joe American is not the problem with Medicaid "theft," it's the unscrupulous doctors, for profit insurance companies, durable medical equipment suppliers, and occasionally, for profit hospitals that are the real thieves here.
Mulvaney - and McConnell - and their like make it clear that for the hard core GOP - there is no DMZ, no middle ground where it will be possible to recognize, publicly, the issues of real need along with how to negotiate handling the costs as a nation. Then we have Trump strutting around uttering inanities.
We do need to control Medical costs: but most of us want to retain a civil society where human beings' basic needs are met, and all value isn't measured by the buck.
We do need to control Medical costs: but most of us want to retain a civil society where human beings' basic needs are met, and all value isn't measured by the buck.
20
"How is it possible, then, that Senate Republicans are continuing to weigh the consequences of passing health care legislation that would inflict harm on millions of low- to middle-income white voters essential to the conservative coalition?"
How is it possible that these voters continue to empower this coalition?
How is it possible that these voters continue to empower this coalition?
45
They are as dumb as a box of rocks.
1
There are economic reasons why Republican policies which increase inequality are bad. In "Wealth and Democracy." Kevin Phillips points out that there is a feedback in economic distribution because as the rich get richer, they use their wealth to get more power. They then use their power to get more wealth & so on. There seems to be a tipping point where this process becomes impossible to reverse. When inequality becomes bad enough, the country soon goes down the tubes. He gives several examples, e.g. the 18th century decline of the Dutch Republic.
In "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" Thomas Piketty defines a quantity, β, which is the length of time it would take the entire income of a country to purchase the capital of that country. It is a measure of the relative importance of capital & labor, & roughly correlates with inequality. He shows with vast amounts of historical data that before WWI, β was about 8 years in capitalistic countries.
WWI & II destroyed huge amounts of capital & β declined, to about 4 years. After WWII an increase in government ownership & regulation, especially in the US, kept β from rising to its historic levels. It was thought this lower value of β to represent a maturity of capitalism that would persist.
Piketty shows, again with enormous quantities of data, that this has NOT been the case. β is trending inexorably back to 8 years probably because of the forces described by Phillips.
It is clear we must return to the policies of post WWII
In "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" Thomas Piketty defines a quantity, β, which is the length of time it would take the entire income of a country to purchase the capital of that country. It is a measure of the relative importance of capital & labor, & roughly correlates with inequality. He shows with vast amounts of historical data that before WWI, β was about 8 years in capitalistic countries.
WWI & II destroyed huge amounts of capital & β declined, to about 4 years. After WWII an increase in government ownership & regulation, especially in the US, kept β from rising to its historic levels. It was thought this lower value of β to represent a maturity of capitalism that would persist.
Piketty shows, again with enormous quantities of data, that this has NOT been the case. β is trending inexorably back to 8 years probably because of the forces described by Phillips.
It is clear we must return to the policies of post WWII
7
If the benefits of a rich and successful society were spread more fairly and evenly through wages and benefits, we would need far lower spending on Medicaid. As it is, the "free enterprise system" is carefully shaped to throw financial rewards to those at the top and, in many ways, exploit the vulnerabilities of those living below. In short, the entire system is set up to capture as much of the income of wage earners as possible before they ever have a chance to save or acquire assets which would allow them to better care for their own needs. "Getting ahead" in urban zones for anyone making less than three or four times basic living expenses is a bad joke.
We are all on this ship together. The problems we ignore or refuse to address come back to us as social costs anyway in the form of paying for police forces, putting people in expensive prison systems and the loss of economic productivity from people who lack medical care at critical times.
The only question we should ask is how we can achieve a society where everyone has access to good education, reasonably priced health care, clean, healthy food and water and use of well built, sustained infrastructure. The rich traditionally supported building roads, bridges and even, to a lesser degree, public transport, because these underly their ability to acquire and retain wealth. With Republican help, they refuse to see that investment in other areas of society also reward them and, ultimately, everyone else, as well.
We are all on this ship together. The problems we ignore or refuse to address come back to us as social costs anyway in the form of paying for police forces, putting people in expensive prison systems and the loss of economic productivity from people who lack medical care at critical times.
The only question we should ask is how we can achieve a society where everyone has access to good education, reasonably priced health care, clean, healthy food and water and use of well built, sustained infrastructure. The rich traditionally supported building roads, bridges and even, to a lesser degree, public transport, because these underly their ability to acquire and retain wealth. With Republican help, they refuse to see that investment in other areas of society also reward them and, ultimately, everyone else, as well.
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Oh you said this so well. Are you running for an elected office? Go do that.
Thank you so kindly for your comment. I have certain plans to try to shake up and rearrange our system for the greater benefit of more people.
When my 90 year-old mother suffered a stroke, in 2004, and was partially paralyzed and unable to speak, we were relieved to learn that, rather than commit her to a nursing home, we could bring her home and, with aides and physical therapy provided by Medicaid, allow her to live out her life surrounded by family. Medicaid would also provide us, her family, with the training needed to assist the aides in caring for her.
Sadly, before she could come home, my mother suffered a second stroke and passed away. Yet across the nation, elderly people who are partially invalided are able to remain at home, cared for by those who love them deeply, thanks to Medicaid.
Welfare? My mother had worked from age 15 to age 79, with a short break for child-rearing. Yet like most middle-class workers, she never could have afforded the care that she needed to remain at home. Neither could my sister and I, who had families to support, have paid for such care.
Mulvaney, McConnell, Ryan and the rest of the GOP are utterly contemptible, on all counts - including that they play to racism to win support for their evil, heartless policies and legislation.
By the way, my family is white - not that it matters.
Sadly, before she could come home, my mother suffered a second stroke and passed away. Yet across the nation, elderly people who are partially invalided are able to remain at home, cared for by those who love them deeply, thanks to Medicaid.
Welfare? My mother had worked from age 15 to age 79, with a short break for child-rearing. Yet like most middle-class workers, she never could have afforded the care that she needed to remain at home. Neither could my sister and I, who had families to support, have paid for such care.
Mulvaney, McConnell, Ryan and the rest of the GOP are utterly contemptible, on all counts - including that they play to racism to win support for their evil, heartless policies and legislation.
By the way, my family is white - not that it matters.
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"Republicans view Medicaid as a form of welfare, and pretty much everyone else views it as a government insurance program." (Kaiser CEO Altman) -- Herein lies the fundamental issue, the difference in understanding between GOP voters and others, the difference between "alternative facts" and the real world. Mulvaney puts it more starkly: most of the world sees social insurance has lending a hand to those in need; he (and the GOP base) see it as theft by the needy (who are thus seen as not needy, but rather as greedy). This difference in world-view is both the cause and the result of the "tribalism" and the self-feeding, self-reinforcing information bubbles into which our society is divided. The fundamental issue is not insurance or healthcare; the fundamental issue is the fragmentation of society and the demonization of one's neighbors. The fundamental issue is a failure of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have other do unto you.
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In the summer of 1989 my husband David, a 49 year old white school Psychologist was diagnosed with Leukemia. We lived in Connecticut and had one son in college and the other finishing high school. While his treatment was covered by his employer's insurance and I was self-employed our family's economic security would have been devastated had it not been for the monthly Medicaid check that saw us through that year. Rather than the lazy feckless people this administration describes Medicaid recipients are your neighbors struggling to survive. When it became apparent two years later that the cancer had returned my husband got up every morning, whether he had had a fever or transfusion the night before because he loved his work and the special kids and their parents that he served. He continued to work until three weeks before he died and they came in busloads from his school to honor him at his funeral. I imagine this pretty much describes many adult Medicaid recipients.
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Marylin, I am sorry for your loss, and for those special kids' loss.
You are old enough to recall Reagan's fabricated stereotype of the "Welfare Queen," the indolent and sly black woman bilking honest white tax payers. This kind of evil propaganda persists. "Mexican rapists" is but one of many such evil lies, perpetrated to influence the minds of the weak and ignorant voters who elect politicians who harm them.
You are old enough to recall Reagan's fabricated stereotype of the "Welfare Queen," the indolent and sly black woman bilking honest white tax payers. This kind of evil propaganda persists. "Mexican rapists" is but one of many such evil lies, perpetrated to influence the minds of the weak and ignorant voters who elect politicians who harm them.
Why was your husband on Medicaid at all -- when he had a good job, and good health insurance? Your post is very unclear.
If one is too ill to work due to a major illness eventually they use up their sick leave and vacation leave and your salary ceases because you are not working. Some co-worker were allowed to donate a small amount of vacation time. Medicaid is only a stopgap. It's not a lot of money. Its a stop gap. It's not close to your monthly household expenses or your lost salary. Some family members helped. I'd go to doctor visits with my spouse almost daily and worked many nights at home past midnight to keep my business from folding.
Since the ultra-rich want taxpayers to pay for their trillion dollar defense programs in order to keep trading available worldwide then it is only fair that they be fairly taxed at least 50% of their income. That way they can pay for their worldwide police force.
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Middle class families (if there are any left) need to be prepared to either pick up the bill for their aging parents' care in a nursing home, or someone will have to quit a job to care for an aging parent at home. It will be another tax increase that puts the lives of the aged at risk. Yes, the same folks who think Medicaid is welfare are going to have a great surprise. When this happens.
33
"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Republicans, to often, obsess over "Liberty" and are unconcerned with "Life" and the "Pursuit of Happiness" except their own.
Simply put, access to affordable health care is a matter of "Life" without which there can be no "Pursuit of Happiness."
Time to recognize that access to affordable health care is a "Right."
Only then can Republicans and Democrats work collectively to develop a comprehensive national system for providing a basic level of health care to all Americans.
Republicans, to often, obsess over "Liberty" and are unconcerned with "Life" and the "Pursuit of Happiness" except their own.
Simply put, access to affordable health care is a matter of "Life" without which there can be no "Pursuit of Happiness."
Time to recognize that access to affordable health care is a "Right."
Only then can Republicans and Democrats work collectively to develop a comprehensive national system for providing a basic level of health care to all Americans.
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Republicans have a very selective notion of what "freedom" means, and it's exactly like their notions of what "life" and "the pursuit of happiness" means: that you can have whatever amount of those things which you can buy, that all of the societal benefits which exist and helped them to accrue their wealth are not to be counted in the equation for themselves, just for those nameless, faceless "others", and that the rest of us aren't "deserving", because if we were, we would be wealthy, too. They are the people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and have come to the conclusion that whatever price they pay in taxes to be a citizen of this nation, it is too much and not worth it unless the benefits of same accrue to themselves directly. No wonder our founders feared oligarchy and inherited wealth. They would be ashamed of us now.
2
Didier,
I disagree with one thing you said. Republicans are overly concerned with "Life" as long as it's still in the womb. After that, not so much. If they were adamant about the sanctity of life from the cradle to the grave, we'd all have decent and affordable health care.
I disagree with one thing you said. Republicans are overly concerned with "Life" as long as it's still in the womb. After that, not so much. If they were adamant about the sanctity of life from the cradle to the grave, we'd all have decent and affordable health care.
3
This op-ed was deeply disturbing.
I'm not questioning Mr. Edsall's intentions, but the piece over and over again seems to imply that the reason to save Medicaid (and other social insurance programs) is because the majority of recipients are white.
At a minimum, he should issue a clarification or disclaimer.
These importants programs should be saved regardless of the skin color of their beneficiaries. (Even if some or many Republicans believe otherwise.)
I'm not questioning Mr. Edsall's intentions, but the piece over and over again seems to imply that the reason to save Medicaid (and other social insurance programs) is because the majority of recipients are white.
At a minimum, he should issue a clarification or disclaimer.
These importants programs should be saved regardless of the skin color of their beneficiaries. (Even if some or many Republicans believe otherwise.)
14
Republicans have a habit of demonizing "other people," and that typically includes everyone who doesn't vote Republican. Edsall is merely pointing out, and he certainly isn't the first to do this, that white Americans, many of whom typically vote Republican, are the biggest beneficiaries of Medicaid.
17
While I understand your comment, I read Edsall's references to white Medicaid beneficiaries differently. Most Trump supporters, at least the ones I know, wrongly believe that the primary recipients of Medicaid and other forms of "welfare" are African-American. Ronald Reagan's specious creation of the mythical black welfare queen is still strong among white, right wing conservatives. Very sad, but true.
15
I didn't read it that way. Mr. Edsall was trying to dispel the notion that Medicaid recipients are all minorities, with its implied racist notion that minorities are milking the system. Like Reagan's "Welfare Queen driving a Cadillac". But after explaining that anyone of us, regardless of ethnicity, could find themselves depending on Medicaid, Edsall could have concluded that the ethnicity of Medicaid users is irrelevant, even if they are all minority, or all white. What all Medicaid users have in common, is that they cannot afford regular health insurance or pay the sticker price for health care. And Edsall also points out, that even within that category, whites appear to receive preferential treatment, in that they receive over half of the funding, while they make up less than half of the recipients.
6
While I certainly understand the health insurance aspects and the critical nature of Medicaid, the real question is why was the growth of Medicaid increased so much under the Obama Administration? I believe the answer lies in the expansion of eligibility (similar to the Food Stamp Program). If the Republicans are attempting to change the requirements for eligibility, then maybe that is appropriate. However, I also understand the necessity of providing nursing home care for seniors with dementia. While my family and I paid for that care for some of our relatives, we did because we had the means to do so. For many families, that is not the case so Thank God for Medicaid.
10
Perhaps the growth "under Obama" that you refer to had something to do with the near collapse of the economy in 2007-2008, brought about to a large extent by the GOP mania for "deregulation", i.e. return to law of the jungle.
5
Is there any way for taxes to be lower or government to be even slightly smaller? Ever? Can we have government programs that are focused on reducing the need for social insurance in people's lives?
2
Yes, single payer with cost control - that amounts to about two thirds of the cost per capita than what it is in the USA, with better health outcomes, as all of the developed countries show, except the USA. And stop Union busting, and increase the minimum wage, and start thinking about a universal base income, that will reduce the need for social insurance as well.
7
Of course there is. Minimum wage made a living wage jobs with health insurance benefits. Republicans certainly aren't interested in that either. Quality safe neighborhoods and schools. Republicans are a nope to that too. Quality, preschool for working middle and lower income parents. Republicans not onboard for that. Trump who said no one will die on the street from lack of healthcare but the republicans don't care who dies. Really they don't.
3
No we can't if Republicans are in charge. Government programs? Hah! That's interfering with the all efficient, "free market capitalism" which Republicans worship more than Jesus Christ himself.
Excellent article refuting the standard Republican dogma about Medicaid.
The Republican use of the Reconciliation Process to bring forward their TrumpCare program illustrates their priorities. The Reconciliation Process was designed for one purpose and one purpose only: To make it easier to pass Deficit Reduction Bills.
Reconciliation was not intended to address substantive legislative issues involving public policy such as Health Care.
The real reason why TrumpCare doesn't address any of the problems with the ACA is that to do so under "reconciliation" would violate the Byrd rules.
Republicans are not interested in better Health Care for Americans. Their number one and perhaps only priority is a Tax Cut for the Rich.
The Republican use of the Reconciliation Process to bring forward their TrumpCare program illustrates their priorities. The Reconciliation Process was designed for one purpose and one purpose only: To make it easier to pass Deficit Reduction Bills.
Reconciliation was not intended to address substantive legislative issues involving public policy such as Health Care.
The real reason why TrumpCare doesn't address any of the problems with the ACA is that to do so under "reconciliation" would violate the Byrd rules.
Republicans are not interested in better Health Care for Americans. Their number one and perhaps only priority is a Tax Cut for the Rich.
30
My guess is that the majority of rural whites on medicaid voted for Trump, if they bothered to vote at all. They also vote for conservative republicans. They believe that they "deserve" medicaid, and worked hard for it. It's those "others" that don't deserve it. I also believe that these people do not understand/believe that they will be personally harmed by republican policies, and even if they are hurt a little bit, it will be worth it because the"undeserving others" will be hurt even more.
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"Alpha House" had an episode titled "Ruby Shoals." Senator Biggs returns to his home town while campaigning. There was a character at the local barber shop who told the Senator to, "Keep the government hands off his Social Security check."
Schadenfreude
I'd be willing to bet that most PEOPLE on Medicaid do not vote at all.
The very poor do not turn out to vote. Ignorant, uneducated people without jobs tend not to vote (or care about politics).
Clearly, many people on Medicaid are very old, frail seniors -- most with dementia -- in Medicaid nursing homes. They are not very likely to be out voting.
Trump supporters are largely middle class -- not poor - -they have a median income of $77,000.
The very poor do not turn out to vote. Ignorant, uneducated people without jobs tend not to vote (or care about politics).
Clearly, many people on Medicaid are very old, frail seniors -- most with dementia -- in Medicaid nursing homes. They are not very likely to be out voting.
Trump supporters are largely middle class -- not poor - -they have a median income of $77,000.
Paying Federal income taxes is the only way that most of us support our being "American". It is our ticket to the country. It is the way we express our American-ness. Most of us have not fought in a war, or patrolled our streets, or staffed our prisons. We do not individually build roads or bridges. Paying taxes is how we are American.
People like Mr. Mulvaney would like to convince me that somehow, if I pay less, I will get more; that all of my tax money is being wasted, or going to people who don't deserve the help. I don't believe a word of it. I know the value of my tax dollar, and I know that most civil servants use it well, and that it goes to people who need it. I think supporting our government, and paying my share is my duty, and an honor. I like being an American.
People like Mr. Mulvaney would like to convince me that somehow, if I pay less, I will get more; that all of my tax money is being wasted, or going to people who don't deserve the help. I don't believe a word of it. I know the value of my tax dollar, and I know that most civil servants use it well, and that it goes to people who need it. I think supporting our government, and paying my share is my duty, and an honor. I like being an American.
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As an American, you are free to pay all the taxes -- and then some! -- that you like. But you can't demand that others pay more than our fair share, just because you like to pay taxes because it makes you feel American and is the only way you give back to your country.
(Have you tried charitable giving, in addition to your tax payments?)
(Have you tried charitable giving, in addition to your tax payments?)
1
I agree wholeheartedly with your defense of federal taxes. The neoliberals who want to shrink government to size where it can be drowned in a bathtub have played on the American myth of rugged individualism for decades. Funded by billionaires and big corporations, right-wing think tanks and media have duped middle America into supporting an agenda that harms them. Now, with Republicans in control of Washington and most state houses, they have the power to accomplish their long-sought plan of dismantling the New Deal. But SURPRISE!, because of their over-reaching and the outrageous excesses of the president, the public is awakening, and the Republican project is in jeopardy of foundering, exposed as the massive fraud it is. Belatedly, people are beginning to realize that government at all levels provides an essential counterbalance to the private market economy. In the same way businesses seek to become more efficient and effective, public servants should strive constantly to improve government's functioning--not eliminate or hamstring essential programs contributing to the public good. For a thorough and eminently readable treatment of the balance between government and the private market economy that is essential to American democracy, see "American Amnesia: How the War on Government led us to Forget What Made America Prosper" by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson.
1
Well said, Patrick!
The misconceptions about Medicaid are the direct result of the non stop brainwashing propaganda put out by right wing media, which is the real "fake news". At least 25% of the electorate has bought into the lies. Those lazy bums that are stealing are actually the same folks that are blaming the bums. The propaganda has been so effective that it has produced politicians that truly believe it. Mulvaney is a perfect example.
In his heart, he truly believes his own policies. These people have created a false reality of gigantic proportions to justify their incessant tax cutting. Just take a look at Sam Brownback. He still doesn't accept that he was wrong in any way, even after he bankrupted the state of Kansas. Spending was too high, he says, even after it was slashed.
Spending is alway too high for them. Taxes are always too high. Their goal is zero. Funny thing though, it's much easier to be an anti government libertarian when you have billions in the bank instead of living from check to check with no savings at all.
Part of me wants Trump and company to slash Medicaid to bits just to show these people how essential it is. But then if that happened, the real fake news media would blame the Democrats and they would buy it.
So Republicans, if you are going to decimate Medicaid, do it now. Don't wait until 2020 for the cuts to kick it. Please enjoy the benefits of injuring your voters before the election.
In his heart, he truly believes his own policies. These people have created a false reality of gigantic proportions to justify their incessant tax cutting. Just take a look at Sam Brownback. He still doesn't accept that he was wrong in any way, even after he bankrupted the state of Kansas. Spending was too high, he says, even after it was slashed.
Spending is alway too high for them. Taxes are always too high. Their goal is zero. Funny thing though, it's much easier to be an anti government libertarian when you have billions in the bank instead of living from check to check with no savings at all.
Part of me wants Trump and company to slash Medicaid to bits just to show these people how essential it is. But then if that happened, the real fake news media would blame the Democrats and they would buy it.
So Republicans, if you are going to decimate Medicaid, do it now. Don't wait until 2020 for the cuts to kick it. Please enjoy the benefits of injuring your voters before the election.
300
I've used the following before but it's now time to apply it to Mr. Edsall's column today.
Here's what Republicans think:
Taxes can never be too low.
Profits can never be too high.
Wages can never be too low.
Regulations can never be too few.
Their philosophy doesn't even seriously consider things like health care or people in need.
Here's what Republicans think:
Taxes can never be too low.
Profits can never be too high.
Wages can never be too low.
Regulations can never be too few.
Their philosophy doesn't even seriously consider things like health care or people in need.
1
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest excuses in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
6
reply to Bruce Rozenblit. You are so right. People like Brownback are so delusional. They want to turn us into a third world dystopia in which all wealth accrues to a tiny minority. No pesky regulations to insure safe water, safe buildings, safe air, decent schools, etc. etc. etc. I am almost 70 years old. I was born into what I thought was an advanced, modern, wealthy country. Republicans are slowly turning us into a country of crumbling roads, filthy water and air, unsafe hospitals, & poorly educated children.
Of course Republicans use racism to promote their agenda- this is not news to anyone paying attention. Of course they do not accurately represent their agenda, because they know that agenda would be rejected if exposed to the light of day. They must manipulate voters in order to shrink government spending by shrinking popular government programs- and not just Medicaid, of course.
They are trying to pick the low hanging fruit first and then work their way up the tree to Social Security, Medicare, public funded education... eventually every function of federal government that is not in place to protect their property and economic legacy.
I wish the columnists of the NY Times would read Nancy Maclean's well researched book on this subject. Sometimes the sky actually is falling and some conspiracies are more than theoretical.
They are trying to pick the low hanging fruit first and then work their way up the tree to Social Security, Medicare, public funded education... eventually every function of federal government that is not in place to protect their property and economic legacy.
I wish the columnists of the NY Times would read Nancy Maclean's well researched book on this subject. Sometimes the sky actually is falling and some conspiracies are more than theoretical.
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"A plurality, 41 percent, of Medicaid recipients, are white; 22 percent are black; 25 percent are Hispanic; and 12 percent are other ethnicities, including Asian-American." Mulvaney looks at it this way: 41 percent of Medicaid recipients are white, 59 percent are non-white.
57
And the 41% group gets 51.8% of the dollars spent, while the other 59% gets 48.2% of all the dollars spent. Did Mr. Mulvaney read the whole sentence that you are quoting?
7
The whites get more over time because as a group they live longer.
Which is another essay for another day.
Which is another essay for another day.
2
And Mulvaney and rest of this cruel administration are willing to throw that 41% under the bus so the they can punish the other 59% for needing help.
2
"Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft."
Great! So when can I expect my refund check for the money stolen from me for corporate welfare, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and your health care coverage, Mr. Mulvaney? Hopefully it'll come soon, I could sure use it! No? There's no check coming? I didn't think so...
Ten million elderly Americans are Medicaid recipients who are in nursing homes or need some other sort of long-term care. Ten million. I guess Mr. Mulvaney believes that none of these ten million elderly ever worked or paid taxes. Given their age, they lived in a time when prosperity was widespread, when we didn't believe that every American who wasn't a multi-millionaire was a "taker," and they expected that the things they were paying taxes for would be available for them when they needed it. It's called paying it forward, Mr. Mulvaney. Ever heard of it?
Great! So when can I expect my refund check for the money stolen from me for corporate welfare, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and your health care coverage, Mr. Mulvaney? Hopefully it'll come soon, I could sure use it! No? There's no check coming? I didn't think so...
Ten million elderly Americans are Medicaid recipients who are in nursing homes or need some other sort of long-term care. Ten million. I guess Mr. Mulvaney believes that none of these ten million elderly ever worked or paid taxes. Given their age, they lived in a time when prosperity was widespread, when we didn't believe that every American who wasn't a multi-millionaire was a "taker," and they expected that the things they were paying taxes for would be available for them when they needed it. It's called paying it forward, Mr. Mulvaney. Ever heard of it?
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A lot of those 10 million elderly in nursing homes have "spent down" their assets, and created family trusts so that the family's next generation has inheritance money, while Medicaid covers the senior's "necessities" in their later years.
That seems nuts to me. Sell Grandma's house -- today -- and use all of that money to fund her care later in life. Or, let her stay at home with family help.
We are shifting so many assets from the wealthy elderly to their biological descendants to live off of with working Americans supporting two generations of those often with more assets them themselves, through income (workinug-man) taxes.
Enough with the "poor elderly" stories already. Here in farmland, they advertise ways to put your land in the next generation's hands today, so that government programs will pay for your care. Advertise it outright. This is legal. This is why American values are being skewed: the next generations should have to WORK for it, and I don't mean work for it by establishing family trusts to shelter their money making the "financial advisers" rich...
That seems nuts to me. Sell Grandma's house -- today -- and use all of that money to fund her care later in life. Or, let her stay at home with family help.
We are shifting so many assets from the wealthy elderly to their biological descendants to live off of with working Americans supporting two generations of those often with more assets them themselves, through income (workinug-man) taxes.
Enough with the "poor elderly" stories already. Here in farmland, they advertise ways to put your land in the next generation's hands today, so that government programs will pay for your care. Advertise it outright. This is legal. This is why American values are being skewed: the next generations should have to WORK for it, and I don't mean work for it by establishing family trusts to shelter their money making the "financial advisers" rich...
11
I'm sorry Midway, but I disagree. My mother died April 1. She spent her last month in a nursing home, paid for by Medicaid. In order to be eligible for that Medicaid my sister and I had to turn over her Social Security, the pension she got from my late father, and pretty much every dollar she had in the bank (all of about $1500). We had to cash in life insurance policies that my mother spent all of her life paying for thinking that the proceeds would go to her children. We even had to sell her 20 year old car. She didn't own a home or we'd have had to sell that too. All to pay for what turned out to be exactly one month in a nursing home. We have a lot of non-rich elderly in this country; not everyone is setting up trusts and passing land to the next generation.
I do agree that the next generation should have to WORK for it. That's why we need to reinstate and raise the estate tax, not eliminate it. Funny how the Mick Mulvaneys of the world are all about "personal responsibility" until it comes to millionaires leaving money to their kids. Apparently it's OK to create a culture of dependency and a sense of entitlement rather in one's heirs if one is rich enough. No personal responsibility needed.
I do agree that the next generation should have to WORK for it. That's why we need to reinstate and raise the estate tax, not eliminate it. Funny how the Mick Mulvaneys of the world are all about "personal responsibility" until it comes to millionaires leaving money to their kids. Apparently it's OK to create a culture of dependency and a sense of entitlement rather in one's heirs if one is rich enough. No personal responsibility needed.
463
but that's an entirely different issue from the one Edsall is discussing, providing efficient health care for the poor.
8
Medicaid is cheaper, and provides better benefits without copay or deductibles, much better than Medicare or most private insurance. We should have Medicaid for all.
227
Nice sentiment, however data shows that Medicaid fee schedules pay about 70 % of the actual cost of providing care. Whom do you propose pay the 30% difference?
2
Totally wrong. Medicaid is a pretty awful program - I used to work for Medicaid programs and finding doctors who accepted Medicaid was hard (no dentists would) and the benefits hard to secure.
Medicare works, Medicaid really doesn't.
Medicare works, Medicaid really doesn't.
3
The rest of us; healthy people who don't need the services. There are millions of us. Where's your sense of civility; social responsibility?
... or, maybe Mr./Ms. Concerned MD, perhaps you would consider reducing your $400k+ per annum salary?
... or, maybe Mr./Ms. Concerned MD, perhaps you would consider reducing your $400k+ per annum salary?
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