Trump's War on Medicaid

America is one of the few advanced nations in the world where the ruling class now in office view the poor, the low income elderly and the sick as little better than disposable garbage. Now, programs that were already inadequate will likely be slashed further and people will literally dies, yet this is what "family values" Republicans and their evangelical Christian supporters want. This mindset is one of the principal reasons I have walked away for Christianity - its loudest adherents are simply foul and horrible human beings.  A piece in Salon looks at the coming slash and burn approach that Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer is poised to unleash on Medicaid.  Having been through a hellish experience seeking placement of the husband's intellectually disabled adopted brother, one has to wonder how people like him will fare under the Trump/GOP agenda.  Will they ultimately simply euthanize such people?  That was the Nazi solution after all and Trump certainly seems to want to go down the road to fascism.  Here are article excerpts:

For all his posturing on populism and sticking up for the “forgotten men and women” of the United States, President Trump is no friend to low-income Americans. In the first days of his administration, he has lined up some policies that, if implemented, are likely to measurably worsen the lives of poor people in this country. Chief among them thus far is his plan for Medicaid, which will be hacked up, shriveled, and left to rot if the new president has his way.

Trump campaigned, somewhat perversely, as a champion of social programs — largely meaning Social Security and Medicare — but Medicaid has long been a target of his. Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to the president, confirmed over the weekend that Trump’s plan for the health care system after he tears apart the Affordable Care Act (and its expansion of Medicaid coverage) is to change the Medicaid funding structure.

Specifically, the program will be block-granted, meaning that federal funding for the program will be distributed to the states in one big annual chunk, leaving the states to manage that money as they see fit.

There is a rationale for this, of sorts. As Conway put it, switching to block grants instead of direct federal management will make sure that “those who are closest to the people in need” will run the program.

This need for “flexibility” and “efficiency” has long been the core argument for block grants. But states already have a good deal of flexibility when it comes to Medicaid — what populations and procedures to cover and what eligibility thresholds to observe are all determined (to varying degrees) by state governments. The added “flexibility” that would come with block-granting the program can mean a lot of things, but it’s generally presumed to mean more stringent means-testing, forcing recipients to pay premiums for their care, reducing benefits, and other barriers to eligibility.

Changing the funding structure to block grants means that Medicaid will become less about providing access to health care and more about finding ways to manage costs. “Because a Medicaid block grant is explicitly intended to produce significant federal budgetary savings,” the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes, “block grants are designed in ways that give states considerably less federal funding each year than they would receive under the current financing system.”

Block grants would reduce the number of people enrolled in Medicaid, but it would do so without servicing the ongoing health care needs of those people who are kicked off the rolls.

The inevitable end result of this will be that more low-income people are unable to gain access to health care. And when we’re talking about Medicaid beneficiaries, we’re talking mainly about kids, the disabled and the elderly, who together make up 64 percent of total Medicaid enrollees and account for 77 percent of Medicaid spending. Those are the people who will suffer the most from Trump’s plan to save money under Medicaid by giving state governments both means and incentive to kick needy people off the program.

The irony is that many aging working class whites who voted for Trump may in the near future find themselves unable to secure needed assisted living or nursing home accommodations since the Medicaid funding that would have assisted them will have been cut.  Perhaps I am callous, but a part of me says it will serve them right. 

A Wake Up Call - Is America a Failed State?

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman touches on one of my feelings this sad morning: we have found out that a majority of Americans hold supposed American values in contempt and hold many of their fellow citizens in contempt, if not open hatred.  The husband says I need to stay calm, but I feel that we have begun the journey down a path that parallel's that of Germany in the early 1930's. The full horrors to come are still unclear and off in the distance.  It is definitely time to reconsider who is one's friend and who is either an enemy or a facilitator for hate and bigotry.  Here are column highlights:

What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous.

We thought that the nation, while far from having transcended racial prejudice and misogyny, had become vastly more open and tolerant over time.

We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.

It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy. And there were many other people who might not share those anti-democratic values, but who nonetheless were willing to vote for anyone bearing the Republican label.

I don’t know how we go forward from here. Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly possible.  . . . this has been a night of terrible revelations, and I don’t think it’s self-indulgent to feel quite a lot of despair.

I feel that the America that I thought I knew died yesterday.  Today has a funeral-like feel.  I think I will dress all in black today and mourn the death of American decency.  No longer can we pretend that a majority of Americans are kind and decent people.  Yesterday's election results proved that.  So much for the myth of American exceptionalism.

Ann "Marie Antoinette" Romney: Throw Out Public Education

Proving herself again to be an out of touch bitch Ann "Marie Antoinette" Romney proposes that the solution to America's education system is to discard it and go with charter schools.  I'm surprised she didn't outright say school vouchers are the solution since a pet project of the Christianists is to send their children to church affiliated, science denying schools - the Christianist equivalent of a madrassa, if you will - and have the government pick up the cost.  As for everyone else's children, being the "godly Christians" that they are, they'd happily kick those children to the curb.   The irony, of course, as noted in Daily Kos is that neither Ann Romney, her husband, or any of her children has ever attended public school:

Among her talking points, this:

I've been a First Lady of the State. I have seen what happens to people's lives if they don't get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers' unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system.

 Mrs. Romney, of course, is not an educator and has no experience as a teacher. Other than as a candidate's wife (if then), she's probably never even set a well-shod dainty foot inside a public school. She went to private school; so did her husband and children. And the "answers" the charter schools are providing? As mysterious as her tax returns. I guess we'll just have to take her word for it.

Equally disturbing is her mindset that serving as a Mormon missionary is equivalent with serving in the nation's armed forces.  Unlike one of my sons-in-law, the Romney sons are too good to risk their lives for their country - they are "too important" just like their draft dodging father:

As Mrs. Romney said on The View last week, Mormon missions are the equivalent of military service:

My five sons have also served their mission. None served in the military. None served in the military, but I do have one son that feels that he’s giving back to his country in a significant way where he is now a doctor, and he is taking care of veterans. So we find different ways of serving, and my five boys and my husband did serve missions, and did not serve in the military.   "I sent them away boys, and they came back men," she added.

So many real "gold star" Moms would have been so very grateful to have had their sons "come back men" -- or to have had them come back at all.

Can someone please tell this woman to get her head out of her self-centered, self-absorbed ass?   The woman is despicable.