Posted on 04/14/2025 2:10:08 AM PDT by RandFan
The House cleared a hurdle Thursday in adopting a budget resolution needed for filibuster-proof legislation on President Donald Trump’s policy priorities. But now, another obstacle stands in the way: how to find $1.5 trillion in spending cuts without cutting Medicaid benefits, as Trump and House leadership have promised.
The budget resolution directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in savings — a feat that would prove extremely difficult without making deep cuts to Medicaid, the massive health program covering 72 million Americans, including low-income adults, children and people with disabilities.
Some Republicans say they won’t support legislation that would cut the program.
“If they’re going to cut qualified, legal people, whether they’re disabled, whether they’re senior citizens, whether they’re working poor … we’re not supporting that. Period,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., who along with a dozen other Republicans met with Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this week to emphasize their objections to Medicaid benefit cuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at rollcall.com ...
Lemme tell ya’ll something: My parents are not well off, but comfortable in their retirement. They are also octogenarians, which is ironic if you knew all the details.
Some of you know that I have an unpublished book on health. Thousands of hours of research and I believe that I’ve solved the puzzle of the tragic health landscape for many Americans.
But I digress. My parents enjoy going out to eat. Often. Like daily. In spite of their declining health, it continues.
Myself, I prepare >90% of my meals, often times greater than that. I got my health back over the prior decade. I selectively eat out for lunch. VERY selectively. Ask anyone.
But every time I go visit my parents, they insist on taking me out to dinner/breakfast; out of politeness I accede...
...and I’m not well for several days. It literally takes over a week to recover. Despite my best efforts of selecting friendly meals, the result is nearly always the same.
At the heart of all that I discovered in my research were certain revelations; this is but merely one of them.
But I’d prefer RFK Jr focus on the covid era crimes FIRST before he tackles the insurmountable task of reversing the health decline of a nation of ignoramuses (yeah, I went there).
And rand can still KMA.
This also creaates an incentive to find a real doctor, pay him, and stop clogging up 'emergcercy care' with runny nose situations.
And it makes being an illegal less attractive AND sends illegals too lazy to at minimum 'find a doctor' to be send home. You've got a good one there central_va/ A few tweeks here and there and it's a total winner.
>Yikes. That’s a pretty big problem what is the answer?
Big problem?? No. It’s got a simple, LEGAL ‘solution’: Eliminate the extra-Constitutional (illegal) Ponzi schemes, along w/ S.S.+ (actually, the WHOLE welfare state in every shape, matter, form & type).
IMMEDIATE halving of the debt AND budget. Boomers can dip into their (higher than any other generational ‘class’) savings & every generation since isn’t economically enslaved to the one(s) before.
Smaller govt in size/scope, restoration of Rights: WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN...
Pointless to wonder. The process is in motion. When the results are in we will know the full picture. All the articles with suppositions are just churning: for clicks, to push a narrative or because they have to say something.
Eliminate SS which citizens paid into for their entire working lives? The US cannot be a democratic Nation and confiscate SS. It can be phased out into self investment accounts but that is as about as far as they can go.
It’s not just illegals.
Betcha a lot of Medicare/Medicaid dual eligibles are scamming the system, too...
There should be an ICE van parked in front of every emergency room in the USA.
>Eliminate SS which citizens paid into for their entire working lives?
Not a SINGLE person “paid into”...ANYTHING (SEE: ‘FICA’ [SEE: ‘TAX’]).
Nothing would be ‘confiscated’ (SEE above) &, as like ALL Ponzi schemes, it was broke from day 1 (By SSA’s own admission. REF: https://www.ssa.gov/history/idapayroll.html).
There is NOTHING in govt that can be ‘phased out’ (IE: Congress cannot mandate {X} to its future self). IOW: Phasing out TODAY can be undone via Congress of TOMORROW. The only legal & valid method is termination NOW.
I don’t think the five year rule should even be. If you owe for Medicaid, pay your bill. Your money isn’t for your kids, it’s for your retirement years including needs of Medicaid.
Until they go into assisted living or nursing home then they go on Medicaid because most transfer their money to the kids. That needs to stop immediately!
I think children have a right to an inheritance if there is one. However, many times when old people with no money get sick, Medicaid pays for it, the only proviso being some amount of savings and/or limited value house they live in. All other assets are used to offset that which Medicaid paid for on behalf of the patient.
Largely, however, getting sick and sicker is a drawn out process and some patients actually try and transfer assets to spouse or children - against the rules. I don’t really know what the cutoff time limit for this would be, but if Medicaid spends hundreds of thousands on you, they (we the taxpayers) become heirs, too.
Your post is opinion not fact. The government established ss and did not invest the money it used that money which it pledged as payments to senior citizens.
Unless you want to descend further into the state of a banana republic that pledge needs to be kept.
You are out to sea saying that ss could be abolished but not modified to become individually directed accounts for all working American citizens under some defined age.
So eliminate the Medicaid and all other entitlements and convert Social Security to a non governmental investment program as in Chile where recipients receive about twice as much payout in relation to contributions as we do.
How about kicking illegal aliens, dead people, and people who refuse to get a job and live on welfare off Medicaid?
Yep. If a person is living on social security, then that person can get Medicaid with loss of social security check. If a person has two million, I think that money should be exhausted and then Medicaid kicks in. If the person doesn’t use all the two million, the kids gets the remaining balance. The reason we are in trouble is the stupid five year rule where you can transfer every dime to your heirs and Medicaid pays the whole bill. How stupid! Another trick thieves do is put their money in a revocable trust so Medicaid has to foot the whole bill. What BS!!!
Medicaid trusts are a scam
Medicaid has to be eliminated,we can no longer afford it.
The problems are systemic, whack-a-mole (is it this or is it that?) has led us to where we are.
The core issue is that Congress cannot decide if medical and surgical care, with the inevitable cooperation of facilities including hospitals, is a public good like fire departments and municipal water, or if it's a personal responsibility with the implication that if you can't pay for it you can't have it.
Since freed from the Old Yellow Fellow in 1971, Congress has done what it always does, which is to give the Democrats something (public good) and the Republicans something (private enterprise), making up the difference with debt and regulations.
It takes a long time to break something. Medicare passed in 1965 based on total expenditures for over-65s 1955-1964, so they projected total 1990 spending at $8 billion, a figure both sides could accept.
Of course, in fact it was $800 billion in 1990 and is trillions now.
I have worked in this system every single day since 1974. There's no doubt that a major crisis is upon us. The obvious ER problems are the tip of a much larger iceberg.
And, with trillions on the table and no consensus about the fundamental issue (public good vs private responsibility), parallel industries like Medicare Advantage plans, Prescription Benefit managers, Electronic Medical Record purveyors, and now (God help us) AI entrepreneurs all have straws, or firehoses, in the finite pool of money paid by employers and the government intended for the care of the sick.
For a variety of reasons, mostly bribes to lawmakers, both Blue and Red governments have increasingly disfavored doctors and nurses and favored industries with big big money to spend on lobbying.
There is no national hospital policy, which would start with what hospitals are for, how they should be distributed, and who gets to use them.
In the absence of such a policy, things are just deteriorating relentlessly and the result is going to be more shortages and more bad policy.
Nonsense.
3 days in an ICU will exceed your lifetime Medicare taxes paid. Everything else is debt to China.
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