Kevin Drum provides an interesting analysis over at Mother Jones, one which appears statistically accurate, and a pretty fair presentation of what is actually being proposed.
Romney and Ryan want to screw over poor people, and want to give more advantages, in other words MORE MONEY to rich people.
They say otherwise, because of course they HAVE to do that; what they want to do is morally reprehensible, socially devastating to our country, and economic disaster as well. It worsens - badly - the already extreme gap between the 1% and the rest of the nation which has become a Grand Canyon-esque chasm.
While the right wing runs around screaming with their hair on fire, invoking the worst of the Stalin era abuses in the Soviet Union, the reality is that the most successful countries, as measured by stable economies, healthier people, longer lived people, better standards of living, better educated people, and by most every other metric of measurable success, are socialist/capitalist blended economies.
More successful countries strictly regulated their banks ----- which is necessary to prevent the kind of blow up of economies that occurred under the more laissez-faire Dubya non-regulation/non-enforcement model that has been such a consistently massive failure.
An example of trying to push roles which are best served by government participation into the private sector, where the focus becomes on profit, not providing goods or services to citizen consumers, quality declines, and fewer people benefit, while more money goes into the coffers of the wealthy.
We tried that, we didn't like it -- and no one else did either. No more Dubya, no Romney, no more Rightwing failed ideologues.
From Mother Jones:
Barrels
of ink have been spilled over Medicare during this year's campaign.
There's nothing wrong with that: Obama and Romney have fundamentally
different approaches to Medicare and they deserve attention. Romney, for
example, wants to increase the eligibility age to 67 and convert
Medicare into a voucher system that relies primarily on competition
between private firms to rein in costs. That's a big change. At the same
time, the actual differences in what the two candidates would spend on Medicare is fairly modest. This is more a fight over means than ends.
The same can't be said for Medicaid. Romney wants radical changes here too, promising to "block grant" Medicaid if he's elected. This means the program would be turned over entirely to the states. The federal government would continue to provide a share of funding, but that funding would go straight into state coffers, and states could decide how to spend it. So the question is: Once released from federal regulations, what would states do with their Medicaid money?
But that's not all. In this case, there's more than ideology at work: Romney doesn't want to spend as much on Medicaid as Obama does. In fact, he wants to take a chainsaw to it. Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt took a look at the Romney and Obama plans in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week, and the chart above shows their conclusions. On Medicare, the two candidates want to spend roughly similar amounts of money. On Medicaid, Romney wants to spend way, way less. And not just on poor people. As Jon Cohn points out, cuts of this size will have a huge impact on "dual eligibles," elderly patients who rely on Medicaid to pay their nursing home bills. This is not a minor point of technocratic disagreement. It represents a massive change in our commitment to providing decent medical care for those who can least afford it. Medicaid, much more than Medicare, demonstrates what's really at stake in November's election.
Romney and Ryan want to screw over poor people, and want to give more advantages, in other words MORE MONEY to rich people.
They say otherwise, because of course they HAVE to do that; what they want to do is morally reprehensible, socially devastating to our country, and economic disaster as well. It worsens - badly - the already extreme gap between the 1% and the rest of the nation which has become a Grand Canyon-esque chasm.
While the right wing runs around screaming with their hair on fire, invoking the worst of the Stalin era abuses in the Soviet Union, the reality is that the most successful countries, as measured by stable economies, healthier people, longer lived people, better standards of living, better educated people, and by most every other metric of measurable success, are socialist/capitalist blended economies.
More successful countries strictly regulated their banks ----- which is necessary to prevent the kind of blow up of economies that occurred under the more laissez-faire Dubya non-regulation/non-enforcement model that has been such a consistently massive failure.
An example of trying to push roles which are best served by government participation into the private sector, where the focus becomes on profit, not providing goods or services to citizen consumers, quality declines, and fewer people benefit, while more money goes into the coffers of the wealthy.
We tried that, we didn't like it -- and no one else did either. No more Dubya, no Romney, no more Rightwing failed ideologues.
From Mother Jones:
The Romney-Ryan Plan to Obliterate Medicaid
| Fri Oct. 12, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
The same can't be said for Medicaid. Romney wants radical changes here too, promising to "block grant" Medicaid if he's elected. This means the program would be turned over entirely to the states. The federal government would continue to provide a share of funding, but that funding would go straight into state coffers, and states could decide how to spend it. So the question is: Once released from federal regulations, what would states do with their Medicaid money?
Romney's plan represents a massive change in our commitment to providing decent medical care for those who can least afford it.
Some states would probably try some genuinely interesting
experiments, though it's unlikely we'll ever discover any magic bullets
for reining in health care costs on a state level. But lots of states,
especially poor states in the South, don't have much interest in
experimenting. They just want to slash eligibility for Medicaid. Given
the freedom to do it, they'd adopt what Ed Kilgore calls the "Mississippi model,"
cutting off coverage for a family of three earning anything over
$8,200. For all the talk of fresh thinking and new solutions, what they
really want to do is simple: They want to stop spending money on poor
people.But that's not all. In this case, there's more than ideology at work: Romney doesn't want to spend as much on Medicaid as Obama does. In fact, he wants to take a chainsaw to it. Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt took a look at the Romney and Obama plans in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week, and the chart above shows their conclusions. On Medicare, the two candidates want to spend roughly similar amounts of money. On Medicaid, Romney wants to spend way, way less. And not just on poor people. As Jon Cohn points out, cuts of this size will have a huge impact on "dual eligibles," elderly patients who rely on Medicaid to pay their nursing home bills. This is not a minor point of technocratic disagreement. It represents a massive change in our commitment to providing decent medical care for those who can least afford it. Medicaid, much more than Medicare, demonstrates what's really at stake in November's election.
