Blogs: Health Care for All

Budget-cutting can be a bloody business, depending upon where and how deeply one cuts. It can be a deadly business too. Not for the budget-cutters, though. That's especially true for Medicaid. To understand that, you need look no further than Arizona.

It was just earlier this year that Arizona was grabbed the spotlight as an example of just how deep GOP lawmakers were willing to cut. Rania Khalek recounts Arizona's recent history in an Alternet post that reads like a budget cutting body count.

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Every once in a while, something extraordinary happens in Washington, D.C.: Lawmakers actually pay attention to what Americans really want, and then stand up for policies that reflect what most Americans want. It looks like that's what happening with Medicaid and the Republican proposal that would eviscerate a program that's vital to millions of low-income, middle- and working-class Americans.

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Two years ago I blogged about being one of millions of Americans who has to swallow one of Big Pharma's bitter pills every morning.

While Republicans are touting Medicare/Medicaid cuts that don't cut health care costs, Sen. Bernie Sander's has a prescription for Big Pharma that could help everyone's medicine go — not to mention prescription drug prices — go down.

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In my previous post, I covered what Republicans want to do to Medicaid. In this post, I intend to delve into why Republicans want to gut Medicaid.

Republicans present their budget proposal as a solution to the "problems" of Medicaid and Medicare, which their budget cites as two of the biggest drivers of national debt. But, as I demonstrated in my previous post, Medicaid and Medicare aren't the problem. They're part of the much larger problem of rising health care costs — a problem the GOP budget doesn't solve. (More on that in an upcoming post.)

If Republicans are intent on ignoring the white-coated elephant in the room, and solving "problems" that exist in their minds only, that raises an important question about their plans for Medicaid.

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Originally published at Beat The Press more »

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Stan Collender is right. The NY-26 election special election will change the budget debate. In fact, it already has. Democrat Kath Hochul's victory over Republican Jane Corwin, in a solidly Republican district, in special election that became a referendum on Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal — which Corwin endorsed — turned up the volume on the debate over the Republican plan to "destroy Medicare as we know it." The Medicare rhetoric will only get louder.

Though we'll all hear more about the GOP's dastardly plans for Medicare, we'll probably hear less about their equally destructive plans for Medicaid. That's dangerous, because Medicaid is just as important as Medicare, and the GOP's plans for it could have devastating consequences for millions of Americans.

Forewarned is forearmed. Here's what you need to know about Medicare and the Ryan/GOP Budget.

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I have long felt that it was unlikely that the President would allow substantial cuts to health care programs, since it is his signature issue. But since everyone in DC has come down with Deficit Fever, I've become a little bit worried that he might be coerced into cutting Medicaid since it's seen by many people as a "welfare" program and who likes that? (This was why I was always more worried about Social Security --- it's not a health care program and so less likely to be protected by the president in a Grand Bargain.)

If Gene Sperling's words are any indication, the White House is not going to use health care as a bargaining chip.

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Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games. more »

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Remember back in 2004, when Dubya won re-election and liberals started threatening to move to Canada? Well, maybe I should have considered it. Because according to OECD's Better Life Index, Canada is where I belong.

But, I'm still not moving to Canada.

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Any political observer with even a modicum of sense could see that the Ryan Plan was going to be a complete disaster. And most of us have been wondering ever since what the hell made them go for it. Politico has a fascinating inside story today which says that they were warned --- but they went ahead anyway: more »

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