REPORT: The 46 Year-Long Republican War On Medicare

[cal04]

The 46 Year-Long Republican War On Medicare
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/23/flashback-republicans-medicare-never/


Last week, in a dramatic vote, the House of Representatives voted to effectively end Medicare by voting for Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal. Under Ryan’s plan, the public health insurance system known as Medicare would be replaced with a system of inadequate subsidies seniors would use to purchase private insurance.

All but four House Republicans voted for Ryan’s plan. Since the vote, Republicans have been engaged in a major public relations effort where they are claiming they actually are “saving Medicare” by ending its status as public health insurance program and handing seniors over to insurance companies. Yet Main Street Americans don’t appear to be buying the GOP rhetoric, as they are angrily confronting Republican Members of Congress at their town hall events, demanding to know why they want to end Medicare.

But if Americans want to know why Republicans are so eager to kill Medicare, they should look to the party’s history with the popular program. Leading Republicans actually denounced the program as it was being designed, warning that it would take us down the road to totalitarianism or worse, and other leading Republicans were caught on record plotting to eliminate it after it was created:

- Ronald Reagan
- Barry Goldwater
- George H.W. Bush
- Bob Dole
- Sen. Carl Curtis (NE)
- Dick Armey
- Newt Gingrich
- Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX)

In his 2008 film SiCKO, filmmaker Michael Moore featured Ronald Reagan’s campaign against Medicare. Watch it:

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/23/flashback-republicans-medicare-never/

[WinkyDink]

1. I hope all old people who voted Republican are properly stunned.

[RKP5637]

2. Let them go off Medicare first and call it a cost savings. If they don't want it, fine, yank

them off it in my book. All old republicans, please go to the end of the line! A lot of teabaggers look like they use more Medicare funding than others.

:mad:

[BlueCaliDem]

3. In the last election, the majority of voters were 60 and over, giving the House back to the Repubes

but I'm pretty sure they've got buyer's remorse now.

When will these people learn Republicans don't care about them? When will they learn, that in order for them to vote for Republicans, they have to loathe Social Security, Medicare, government assistance in any way? I.O.W., don't vote Republican unless you earn $500k per year. That's when you benefit from their policies.

[sasha031]

5. the 60 Plus Ass spent millions running adds against Dem's

[jaysunb]

7. They'll learn when we do a better job

of educating them. The majority of us "over 60" folks know what's going on,it's the over 70 crowd and the racist/fundies that are the problem.

Elections matter.

[sasha031]

4. I will never understand how a generation that grew up with Roosevelt can vote repug

that's a great clip from sicko.
thanks Cali:hi:

[jwirr]

9. Because they did not grow up with FDR - just benefited from his

programs. I am 69 years old and the only thing I remember from FDR is setting on my mother's lap while she cried listening to his funeral. Most of the elderly who could actually remember FDR would probably be in nursing homes and no longer voting. It is their children and grand children who have forgotten. They benefited from everything he did but they thought that they were pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

[jillan]

6. I wish that people who are against Medicare could opt out. Give them the option and then see what

happens.

I bet just a handful would opt out.

[Motown_Johnny]

8. Reagan was fighting it in 1961, by my count that makes an even 50

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bejdhs3jGyw

[WillyT]

10. K & R !!!

:kick: