Republicans today: “Grand Old Party” or more apropos “Goofy Old Privatizers”

GOP's Medicare Privatization Scheme: A Hard Pill to Swallow 

(They have hated Medicare since 1965)

GOP Replacement Plan for Repealing ACA (Obama-care)

(Hint: Nil, Nada, None, Zero, Goose Egg, Zilch)

Hot Topic: GOP fast-track privatization scheme for Medicare: 1^st on their 2017 chopping block.

We know for a fact that most Republicans have been looking at Medicare with bad intent for many years, dating all the way back to Ronald Reagan’s barnstorming against the program before it was enacted. 

Changing Medicare from a guaranteed health-care-benefit program into one that offers “premium support” for private insurance (though grandfathering current seniors and near-seniors, and in the latest iteration letting people opt to stay in the current system for a while) has been a regular feature of all those Paul Ryan budgets passed by the House since 2011.

Moreover, as reported earlier, House Budget Committee chairman and long-time health-policy opinion-leader Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) and Trump nominee for Secretary of HHS, has blandly asserted that Republicans might toss Medicare vouchers into the fast-tracked, filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill they are putting together to enact their post-Obama agenda.

Talking Points Memo is ginning up another campaign to force individual members of Congress to take a position on Medicare vouchers (or, as TPM calls it “a Medicare phase-out”), in hopes of making them run for cover as they did during a similar campaign in 2005 against George W. Bush’s Social Security partial-privatization scheme.

Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman, also sounded the alarm. He is predicting that Donald Trump and his party will betray their white working-class supporters by going after the very program Trump promised to protect.

Why is important for sure, and so is the “how” part – so, how will the GOP pull off this stunt and look Americans in the face and say: Oh all this is to “Make America Great Again” and say it with a straight face, too?

Pretty simple, actually. They will probably use the decades-old procedural maneuver known as reconciliation. That way they can bypass any Democratic opposition and accelerate Trump’s legislative initiatives, which this is one of many that will deal with the budget and that aspect.

Other stuff on the proverbial table could include: (1) cutting taxes, (2) repealing parts of the ACA (Obama-care), and (3) privatizing Medicare as addressed above, (4) and the VA (which Trump recently mentioned and I posted about see next post).

Also, they could try and turn Medicaid into a block grant down to the states. All they would need is a simple majority vote in the Senate (50 votes) and in a few days with the 115^th Congress coming into session, they might pull it off.

My input: Every senior and those close to be being a senior and looking forward to a decent, well-earned retirement with Social Security and Medicare, which all working Americans pay into and are entitled to, to now see those two excellent programs get ready to be flushed down the toilet, well... I say: raise up in holy hell.

How would the GOP react to that, um? Of course, that is the billion dollar question, isn’t it?

I wonder, though if Seniors and near-Seniors are ready or could even get ready? Are they tuned into this yet – 'cause you see, tomorrow could be too late. 

I conclude that at the end of the day, any and all GOP privatization schemes could result in this outcome across the nation – what you think?

Thanks for stopping by and for goodness sake, join in to fight these schemes.