Posted on 06/11/2025 1:21:34 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The left is on the warpath over the GOP’s ‘heartless’ welfare reform.
Read it and weep: The US national debt now sits at an almost unfathomable $37 trillion. If you run the numbers, it is easy to understand how impossible – or at best improbable – it will be to extricate ourselves from the colossal hole the central state has dug over decades. No less than 75% of the massive federal budget is devoted to so-called mandatory spending on entitlement programs, such as Medicaid and interest payments, while another 13% is dedicated to national defense and is virtually mandatory. This means that only 12% – less than $900 million out of the current $6.8 trillion annual budget – is subject to congressional discretion.
Even if all of that $900 million is sliced off, which, of course, will never happen, we would still be nowhere near reaching a balanced budget or reversing the ominously ticking debt clock. This means one thing above all else: Reforming Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or all three programs represents the only pathway back to fiscal sanity.
But as President George W. Bush discovered when he tried and failed to reform Social Security in 2005, entitlements are rightly called the “third rail of politics.” Touch them, and you will die. And now, Republican attempts to remove millions of ineligible recipients from the Medicaid rolls and to add work requirements for able-bodied beneficiaries in their Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) have provided the Democratic Party with its ripest issue since Donald Trump arrived back in the White House.
After passing the House by a single vote, the Trump-inspired BBB has now become a political football in the Senate. At least six Republicans are threatening to vote it down, absent consequential changes, even after...
(Excerpt) Read more at libertynation.com ...
“CBO also works off the assumption that there are 4.8 million able-bodied adults without dependents who would rather lose Medicaid coverage than choose to work.”
Because they are working under the table for cash.
Here in Texas, at least, you had to qualify for Medicaid by being unable to work. It seems they’ve turned it into a regular welfare program.
Medicare and Medicaid account for 26% of federal spending, and only pays out to 37% of the population. By extension, to cover 100% of the population would consume 70% of our current budget.
Health care insurance is the largest industry in the USA (by revenue).
Healthcare & Medical Practices are the 2nd largest industry in the USA.
Pharmaceutical is the 4th largest industry in the USA.
For all of our insane spending, Americans are NOT healthy. We spend almost twice as much per person on health care as similar GDP per capita countries and we are in worse health. Sure, it’s a complex problem that includes diet and lifestyle in addition to a corrupt industry, corporate bureaucracy, government bureaucracy and over regulation. But as a whole, it’s bankrupting us.
We either reform it or it destroys us. MAHA.
Anyone remember the roasting of Representative Joe Wilson when he yelled “you lied” as Obama promised that illegal aliens would never get Obamacare?
And now Medicaid from States that have expanded it to include services to illegal aliens is now considered sacred.
How about asking Democrats to apologize to Joe Wilson, if they feel that illegal aliens should be covered by Medicaid?
The sad part about this article is that it assumes that Republicans are proposing meaningful spending cuts. The bill proposes miniscule cuts and some Republicans still are opposing them. We are on the road to fiscal ruin and the politicians who voted for it out of “compassion” will either be dead or won’t be held accountable.
“We either reform it or it destroys us. MAHA.”
Agreed-
step one- Throw the phoookin Illegals out, and take care of our fellow Citizens. Their country should care for them, not us.
Basic care should be cheap and plentiful.
No reason why each town can’t have a clinic, for all comers.
Free service means you can’t sue anybody.
Medical Students, Retired Doctors, First Year Nurses. All kinds of folks can provide basic care cheaply to their friends, neighbors, family and community.
And stop with the labor/materials/equipment union messaging crap. We spend 10 times that amount now.
Living healthy, eating healthy, and staying healthy are educational/social targets. This is where the “Nudge” can help. That’s how Tobacco was ostracized.
Its not OK, not your “truth”, to be morbidly obese.
Its not OK to put crap chemicals in our food.
Its not OK to glorify Ozempic and body dysmorphia.
Its not OK to leave our fellow Citizens trapped in crappy schools, with crappy neigborhoods, and no jobs.
It’s not OK to have starter homes at 6 times a local income level.
Some old guy said a while back, There’s a whole bunch we can do, if we don’t care who gets credit for it.
Another guy said something like, “Treat your neighbor like you would want to be treated”, or something like that.
I think somebody wrote a book about him?
Trump needs to ignore every Democrat everything… They would do the same so…
No tweets, no replies, just go dark
No. Republicans can’t resist the when Dems lie.
They cave.
Here is the problem.
Articles about these issue are always loaded with “we are on the road to ruin”. “We can’t continue to do this!” “If this keeps up we will pay a stiff penalty.”
These are all the phrasings of optimists. Make no mistake in this, optimism is far, far more dangerous then pessimism.
How about instead . . . it’s already gone too far. There is no fix for this. Society must be disrupted and destroyed to lessen the effect when that very thing happens involuntarily.
It is a pure welfare program. And when they lump everything in together it peeves me off. Get rid of the welfare before you start messing with programs people hace paid into...and are still paying.
Reforming Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or all three programs represents the only pathway back to fiscal sanity.
Well the ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid to the working poor which was doubled down on during the pandemic presents a quandary to the Chamber of Commerce Republicans. Medicaid allows for privatization of profits while shifting some of the costs associated with labor to the taxpayer. The CofC Republicans know where there gravy train is.
Instead of measuring hours worked over a short period, what could be done is to require previous year income to exceed say:
1. 200 times the federal minimum wage as of January 1, 2025 in 2025 to get coverage after April 2026
2. 400 times the federal minimum wage as of January 1, 2026 in 2026 to get coverage after April 2027
3. 600 times the federal minimum wage as of each January 1 thereafter to get coverage after April of the following year.
Remember bosses determine how much people work to a large extent. The purpose is to move people into the workforce.
The income requirements might be cut by up 50% for education if a state chooses and pays 2% more of Medicaid costs.
The states might allow people to pay say 10 cents monthly for each hourly minimum wage amount shortfall - i.e. a $60 monthly premium at most.
Split the hospitals up to cut Part A costs. Mercy Hospital would become say Mercy Hospital West and Mercy Hospital East, each with different owners.
Split off PPACA drug coverage from PPACA service coverage.
Control drug costs by introducing interstate PPACA drug plans that seek to cover 80% of biologic, breakthrough and patented drugs (and issue plan purchase orders for plan set amounts for drugs not under contract). As they work better[nearly complete coverage], allow them to be Part D plans too.
Market force competition must be brought to government health care programs.
Federal medical costs have to be cut big time.
EMTALA should only be available by handing over a functional cellphone, SNAP card balance or paying $200.
Adult Medicaid might have premiums starting at $2/month and rising by $2/month and by $2 for each ER use. The Adult Medicaid monthly base premium amount might be capped at the Medicare premium amount.
Another possibility is to require Medicaid recipients over 18 years of age to sign over their future lawsuit rights and other party insurance settlements to the federal government unless they timely pay a monthly premium equal to the Medicare Part B premium.
The system is being destroyed because of the inability of Congress to say “no” to anything.
Congress, and the government in general as constituted is incapable of any action that has the slightest chance of solving our problems.
It’s time for something new.
Get all illegals off this round. We can then go from there in the future.
“only 12% – less than $900 million out of the current $6.8 trillion annual budget”
I’d check that math again.
To answer the headline…”No!”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.