The GOP's war against the poor and sick

[azurnoir]

The Republican Study Committee, aka "the caucus of House conservatives," has released a list of proposed spending cuts that it says will add up to $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Dave Weigel has a tidy summary here. Although for the most part the line items add up to a list of cherished liberal priorities (no defense spending or homeland security cuts here, no indeed!), I'm guessing that the average person will glance at it and see some things that they don't think the government should be funding. Mohair subsidies?

But it's worth drilling down on the third biggest item on the list -- weighing in at $16.1 billion -- the "Repealing Medicaid FMAP increase," because I can't think of anything that better demonstrates the priorities of the current Republican Party.

Medicaid is the government's primary social insurance program targeted at poor and disabled Americans. Medicaid is responsible, for example, for such things as nursing home care for the indigent. It is jointly funded by the states and the federal government --it is, in fact, one of the biggest items in most state budgets.

When the recession hit, two things happened almost immediately at the state level: tax revenue plummeted, and applications for Medicaid coverage boomed. The two phenomena were intimately related, of course. People who lost their jobs and homes as a result of a cratering economy also lost their healthcare.

<snip>

I'm sure there are plenty of conservatives who want to get rid of Medicaid altogether. If poor old people can't pay for nursing home care then let them die in the street, like they used to. The Tea Party version of government apparently just doesn't believe in helping people who can't help themselves. For the modern Republican Party, it's far far more important to ensure that those who will never need Medicaid -- the richest 1 percent of Americans, the people who are already doing quite fine as their market portfolios swell -- get their big fat tax cuts, adding up to $700 billion over the next 10 years, than that the poorest Americans get another $15 billion a year so that they can die in a manner that befits a nation that dares considers itself civilized.

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/01/20/the_gop_war_against_poor_sick_americans/index.html

[Amonester]

1. Sigmunds' Projection ('death panels')

caucus of House conservatives = 'undercover' death panel

[old mark]

2. K&R- another part of the problem-States are looking for ways to end

pension payments for retired state employees...So with no pension and less SS, many people will be in the shit.
But the rich will be doing much better...
The New Guilded Age!

mark