Trump outlines massive cuts in Medicaid and Medicare in 2021 budget plan — Kevin Reed

A look at the plan to cut non-discretionary spending and increase the budgets of the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security.

WSWS
Trump outlines massive cuts in Medicaid and Medicare in 2021 budget plan

Kevin Reed

Newsday Editorial Board — First shots in war on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security

Poverty is not a scam. Neither is old age or infirmity or serious illness. But making poverty and the need for help look like a scam is a common political strategy, and it’s one President Donald Trump’s administration sought to rekindle last week when it allowed states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients in “test” programs.

Such a change, based on fiction about who the 70 million Medicaid recipients are and how almost $550 billion in state and federal Medicaid funding is spent each year, won’t save any taxpayer dollars. Nor is it intended to. What it does is spawn news stories that reinforce a message Republicans have promoted since President Ronald Reagan: The GOP brings down mostly minority “welfare queens” riding high on government largesse in their Cadillacs...

Conservative policy rationale is to make it more painful to be poor by punishing poverty in order to incentivize those in poverty to be more "productive." Basic stimulus-response Pavlovian-Skinnerian behavioral psychology.

But this strategy also has a darker side in creating social divisions that can be exploited politically. The GOP sees "the poor" as a major Democratic constituency that Democrats shower with largesse when in power in order to curry favor to get votes and energize the base. The GOP sees that as a strategic opportunity to attack by creating scapegoats.

Democrats under Bill Clinton realized that the GOP base was really the moneyed class that provides the bribes contributions and so, attacking the rich is self-defeating. Clinton took GOP adviser Dick Morris advice to "triangulate" and attack the poor to please the donor-base. Robert Rueben had already suggested that the Democrats cozy up to Wall Street, since that is where the big money is.

So, now the proles and precariat are left out in the cold with the prospect of a colder season coming.

The new job requirements for Medicaid might not be legal and likely will be challenged in court. Either way, the rules won’t save much even if they do take effect. Since only 70 million Americans get Medicaid and 255 million don’t, the proposals might not cause much uproar. But be warned: As a statement of intent and a first shot across the bow, they should.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have been clear about wanting huge across-the-board cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. The cuts have been included in budget proposals they have introduced, and in their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Ryan has said cuts to those programs, along with restructuring Social Security to save money, are his primary legislative objectives, although he concedes they probably won’t happen in 2018....

Newsday
First shots in war on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security

The Editorial Board

Ed Dolan — Universal Healthcare Access is Coming. Stop Fighting It and Start Figuring Out How to Make It Work.

Fairly detailed analysis of the issues involved in a transition to universal access to health care in the US.

Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
Universal Healthcare Access is Coming. Stop Fighting It and Start Figuring Out How to Make It Work.
Ed Dolan

Here's why bull market in stocks and economic expansion guaranteed for next 20 years

There's only one statistic that you need to know to in order to understand what the outlook is for the economy and the stock market for the next 20 years and it's not how big the deficit is,

It's the fact that for the next 20 years 10,000 baby-boomers PER DAY will be retiring and becoming eligible to receive Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Those problems are already 42% of annual Federal spending. ($1.8 trillion out of $4.3 trillion.) However, they're just going to continue to grow and grow and grow for the next 20 years.

You know what that is? It's government guaranteed income support. Just like what they're proposing in Switzerland only maybe half. Still, it's something and in the aggregate, when you consider the numbers--tens of millions of people--it's a massive and ongoing fiscal transfer to the economy.

This is why this recovery has lasted longer without a recession than anyone predicted (other than us, here). And it's why stocks keep going up.

With those kind of guaranteed flows the companies in the S&P 500 can ALWAYS squeeze out their trillion and a half or trillion eight of earnings.

Bull market...next 20 years.

Said Milani — Donald Trump’s Pledge to Defend Spending for Old and Poor Belied by Staff Picks

The odor of bullshit is in the air. Trump is sending contradictory signals, and actions speak louder than words.

Trump’s hiring of two staunch retirement hawks into top policy jobs is not something to take lightly. “Personnel is policy. A candidate’s campaign staff is a useful clue to how that candidate will govern,” political scientist and Bloomberg View columnist Jonathan Bernstein wrote last year. “Including which party groups he or she is close to, which policies the administration would likely embrace, and which party factions may be frozen out.”

The Intercept

Donald Trump’s Pledge to Defend Spending for Old and Poor Belied by Staff Picks
Zaid Jilani

Mark Hensch — Trump defines his brand of conservatism

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump offered his personal definition of conservatism on Sunday amid criticism he is not a true Republican.

“Well, for me, conservatism as it pertains to our country is fiscal,” Trump told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“We have to be strong and secure and get rid of our debt,” he said. “The military has to be powerful and not necessarily used, but very powerful.”

“I want people to be taken care of from a healthcare standpoint,” Trump added. “I want Social Security without cuts. And to me, conservative means a strong county with very little debt.”

Looks like The Donald can't add, or else he has a plan for the US to become a permanent net exporter.

The Hill
Trump defines his brand of conservatism

Mark Hensch

Matthew Yglesias — Jeb Bush says we should "phase out" Medicare

Glad we got that cleared up. Gotta get rid of that "socialized medicine".

Vox
Jeb Bush says we should "phase out" Medicare
Matthew Yglesias

Dylan Scott — Groups Fume That Medicare Cuts May Pay For Trade Bill

Senior and provider groups are angry that Medicare cuts will help pay for one of the trade bills that Congress will soon consider and are waging a last-ditch effort to nix the cuts.

The Trade Adjustment Assistance reauthorization bill hasn't received as much attention as the fast-track trade authority bill, but Democrats see it as a priority: The program helps workers who have been put out of a job because of foreign trade with job training and placement as well as health insurance costs. The House and Senate are expected to move the bill in tandem with the fast-track trade measure, an aide to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has hashed out the trade deal with Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Paul Ryan, said.

But on Tuesday, senior and provider groups started criticizing the proposal. They're unhappy because about $700 million of the $2.9 billion cost would be offset by increasing the cuts to Medicare authorized by the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration in fiscal year 2024 by 0.25 percent, according to a Congressional Budget Office score of the House bill.

"Apparently using Medicare as a piggy bank to pay for everything under the sun has become the new legislative norm for Congress," Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement to National Journal. "Rather than balancing priorities or considering a penny of new revenue, congressional leaders are proposing to once again funnel Medicare resources into unrelated programs and fixes – this time it's the trade adjustment assistance program."

A coalition of provider groups, including the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association, sent a letter to senators Tuesday opposing the bill.….

National Journal
Groups Fume That Medicare Cuts May Pay For Trade Bill

Dylan Scott

Paul Ryan ascendant, proposes additional $5 trillion in cuts

Nothing left to say about this guy other than he's a very dangerous quack.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday unveiled a budget that proposes to cut $5.1 trillion over a decade in a bid to erase the federal deficit, while calling once again for dramatic changes to Medicare, Medicaid and the tax code. Read more. 

Now he's about to become even more powerful as he ascends to the role of Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee as Dave Camp (R-Mich) just announced his retirement.

And throw in the fact that the Balanced Budget Convention is gaining steam. Europe, here we come!

Steven Rosenfeld — How Deficit Hawks Are Pitting Millennials Against Seniors to Attack Social Security and Medicare

Pete Peterson and cronies at work. Disgusting.

AlterNet
How Deficit Hawks Are Pitting Millennials Against Seniors to Attack Social Security and Medicare
Steven Rosenfeld

Andrew Kaczynski — Republicans Now Attacking Florida Democrat For Supporting Simpson-Bowles

You knew this was coming.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has taken an odd course in the Florida special election to replace Republican Rep. Bill Young after his death in October of last year: The NRCC is bashing Democratic candidate Alex Sink for supporting Simpson-Bowles, a deficit reduction plan Republicans most often attack President Obama for abandoning or ignoring.

"Alex Sink supports a plan that raises the retirement age for Social Security recipients, raises Social Security taxes and cuts Medicare, all while making it harder for Pinellas seniors to keep their doctors that they know and love," Katie Prill, a spokeswoman for the NRCC said, according to the Sunshine State News. "Sending Alex Sink to Washington guarantees that seniors right here in Pinellas County are in jeopardy of losing the Social Security and Medicare benefits that they have earned and deserve."

BuzzFeed - Politics
Republicans Now Attacking Florida Democrat For Supporting Simpson-Bowles
Andrew Kaczynski

Ralph Nader — 21 Ways Canada's Single-Payer System Beats Obamacare

Canadian style single-payer healthcare is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal—unlike the US's labyrinthine ACA

AlterNet
21 Ways Canada's Single-Payer System Beats Obamacare
Ralph Nader

Kevin Drum — Raising the Medicare Age to 67 Is a Lousy Idea

The CBO has a new estimate of the budget savings from raising the Medicare age to 67....Over the next ten years, raising the Medicare age would save the government a whopping $2 billion per year on average.

Turns out to be a net negative when other costs are figured. And states, which are revenue dependent, take the hit.

Mother Jones
Raising the Medicare Age to 67 Is a Lousy Idea
Kevin Drum

See also Matthew O'Brien, Raising the Medicare Age: A Popular Idea With Shockingly Few Benefits, at The Atlantic.

Bill Black — The Tea Party’s Tactical Brilliance and Strategic Incompetence

Bill sums it up brilliantly for your reading pleasure.

New Economic Perspectives
The Tea Party’s Tactical Brilliance and Strategic Incompetence
William K Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City

I would simply add that it may be getting more difficult to put across a Grand Bargain that cuts the welfare state now that so many people are waking up and watching the news with their own interests in mind. It could have been snuck in under the radar and would have if the Tea Party had not vetoed it previously. Now it may be getting to be too late. Progressives are now in high alert and the Democratic politicians are not notice that they are being carefully monitored by the base.

karoli — Obamacare Is Right-Wing Proxy For Social Security and Medicare

Despite all the sound and fury about Obamacare, here's the truth: It's not the prime target of the right. The real targets are Medicare and Social Security, as Rep. Barton admits in the video above when he says he wants "real reforms in entitlements".

Over the past couple of weeks, it's become apparent to me and many others that this entire showdown is not over Obamacare. The ACA is a convenient patsy because it is new, untested, and they've managed to poison public opinion around it over the past three years.
The real target is Social Security and Medicare. From a political standpoint, waging a war using those programs as hostage would be so wildly unpopular no sane or insane politician would dare choose that route. And so Obamacare has become the convenient stand-in, a cardboard stand-in for their real goals.

As Diane noted in her post here, the New York Times published an exposé showing how this strategy formed over the months since Barack Obama's re-election. As usual, it was financed and formed by the Kochs and their right-wing partners. But the Kochs are hardly the only players in this particular round of attacks.

Attacking the safety net from the 'left'

Billionaire Pete Peterson has been instrumental in creating a campaign to kill Social Security and Medicare that gives the appearance of coming from the left. His "FixTheDebt" campaign launched in 2011 was crafted to fool centrists and even those calling themselves liberals into believing there was a crisis afoot that must be fixed.

In many ways, Peterson's astroturf campaign has been far more insidious than the Koch effort, if for no other reason than the way they try to disguise themselves as "independent" and "centrist" with left-leaning roots.

Read the rest. The real rightist agenda and strategy exposed. "Disaster capitalism" as articulated in her eponymous book is the favored tactic of neoliberalism in attacking popular programs. Now they are going for the throat of the welfare state all out in order to replace it with the neoliberal "market state" run by crony capitalism to complete the process of enclosure through privatization in the name of "freedom" (theirs) and "efficiency" (in looting).

Crooks & Liars
Obamacare Is Right-Wing Proxy For Social Security and Medicare
karoli

See also

The Wichita Eagle

Rep. Pompeo: Shutdown is about substantial entitlement reform
Bill Wilson

In a wide-ranging interview, the Republican congressman from Wichita voiced his discomfort with the ongoing shutdown, while dismissing the Oct. 17 debt ceiling deadline set by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew as “not a magical date” and proclaiming that Republicans will agree to raise the debt ceiling when Democrats agree to reform Social Security, Medicare and the president’s signature health care law.

Michael Stephens — One More Reason to Stop Panicking About the Long-term Deficit

Evidence that long term health care cost curve is bending downward.

Multiplier Effect
One More Reason to Stop Panicking About the Long-term Deficit

Michael Stephens

PNHP — ‘Medicare for All’ Would Cover Everyone, Save Billions in First Year: New Study

Physicians for a National Health Program

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

‘Medicare for All’ Would Cover Everyone, Save Billions in First Year: New Study

Economist says Canadian-style, single-payer health plan would reap huge savings from reduced paperwork and from negotiated drug prices, enough to pay for quality coverage for all – at less cost to families and businesses

WASHINGTON - July 31 - Upgrading the nation’s Medicare program and expanding it to cover people of all ages would yield more than a half-trillion dollars in efficiency savings in its first year of operation, enough to pay for high-quality, comprehensive health benefits for all residents of the United States at a lower cost to most individuals, families and businesses.

That’s the chief finding of a new fiscal study by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There would even be money left over to help pay down the national debt, he said.

Friedman says his analysis shows that a nonprofit single-payer system based on the principles of the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, H.R. 676, introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and co-sponsored by 45 other lawmakers, would save an estimated $592 billion in 2014. That would be more than enough to cover all 44 million people the government estimates will be uninsured in that year and to upgrade benefits for everyone else.

“No other plan can achieve this magnitude of savings on health care,” Friedman said.

His findings were released this morning at a congressional briefing in the Cannon House Office Building hosted by Public Citizen and Physicians for a National Health Program, to be followed by a 1 p.m. news conference with Rep. Conyers. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and others in observance of Medicare’s 48th anniversary at the House Triangle near the Capitol steps. A copy of Friedman’s full report, with tables and charts, is available here.

Friedman said the savings would come from slashing the administrative waste associated with today’s private health insurance industry ($476 billion) and using the new, public system’s bargaining muscle to negotiate pharmaceutical drug prices down to European levels ($116 billion).

“These savings would be more than enough to fund $343 billion in improvements to our health system, including the achievement of truly universal coverage, improved benefits, and the elimination of premiums, co-payments and deductibles, which are major barriers to people seeking care,” he said.

Friedman said the savings would also fund $51 billion in transition costs such as retraining displaced workers from the insurance industry and phasing out investor-owned, for-profit delivery systems.

Over the next decade, the system’s savings from reduced health inflation (“bending the cost curve”), thanks to cost-control methods such as negotiated fees, lump-sum payments to hospitals, and capital planning, would amount to an estimated $1.8 trillion.

“Paradoxically, by expanding Medicare to everyone we’d end up saving billions of dollars annually,” he said. “We’d be safeguarding Medicare’s fiscal integrity while enhancing the nation’s health for the long term.”

Friedman said the plan would be funded by maintaining current federal revenues for health care and imposing new, modest tax increases on very high income earners. It would also be funded by a small increase in payroll taxes on employers, who would no longer pay health insurance premiums, and a new, very small tax on stock and bond transactions.

“Such a financing scheme would vastly simplify how the nation pays for care, restore free choice of physician, guarantee all necessary medical care, improve patient health and, because it would be financed by a program of progressive taxation, result in 95 percent of all U.S. households saving money,” Friedman said.

Friedman’s findings are consistent with other research showing large savings from a single-payer plan. Single-payer fiscal studies by other economists, such as Kenneth E. Thorpe (2005), have arrived at similar conclusions, as have studiesconducted by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accountability Office in the early 1990s. Other studies have documented the administrative efficiency and other benefits of Canada’s single-payer system in comparison with the current U.S. system.

Friedman’s research was commissioned by Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit research and educational organization of more than 18,000 doctors nationwide, which wanted to find out how much a single-payer system would cost today and how it could be financed.

“Funding H.R. 676:  The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act – How we can afford a national single-payer health plan in 2014,” by Gerald Friedman, Ph.D., Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

###

Physicians for a National Health Program is a single issue organization advocating a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health program. PNHP has more than 15,000 members and chapters across the United States.

Bozo Watch — Bowles-Simpson go on the attack in spite of Reinhart-Rogoff debacle

On April 19, just after I had written about how the key academic research used to bolster austerity policies was exposed by a 28-year-old grad student at U Mass, Amherst, I got a surprise in my email box.

In the email, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson giddily announced their new deficit-reduction plan, which includes, among other things, a recommendation to increase the eligibility age for Medicare. Their plan would reduce debt as a share of GDP below 70 percent by 2023 and, as the Washington Postreports, “seeks far less in new taxes than the original, and it seeks far more in savings from federal health programs for the elderly.”

What’s incredible is that over the last week, the study by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff that famously warned of the dangers of government debt has been proven to be riddled with errors and questionable methodology. To recap: R&R’s paper purported to show that countries with public debt in excess of 90 percent of gross domestic product suffered negative economic growth. Austerity hawks everywhere used it to justify cuts that have cost people jobs and vital services. The original spreadsheet used by R&R was obtained by a U Mass grad student, who found that in addition to the mistakes already noted by several economists, there was a coding error in their Excel spreadsheet that significantly changed the results of their study.

As New York Magazine’s Jon Chait has pointed out, that same discredited research has been used by Bowles and Simpson to formulate their deficit-reducing austerity plans.

Let’s take a look at some ugly chronology.....

AlterNet
Unbelievable! Bowles and Simpson Release New Deficit-Reduction Plan Based on Discredited Austerity Research by Rogoff and Reinhart
Lynn Stuart Parramore

Kevin Drum — Some Miscellaneous Monday Morning Poll Results

The most interesting result: "Democracy Corps pollsters asked people to name their two most important political concerns. Answer: (a) protect entitlements, and (b) cut the deficit."  Cognitive dissonance.

Mother Jones

Some Miscellaneous Monday Morning Poll Results
Kevin Drum

Galbraith on the Great Depression and the 'Great Recession'

A new interview with Jamie Galbraith (and also Leo Panitch), on the possibilities of a New 'New Deal' (part II here). Not much of chance, by the way. Part of the story is that the New Deal was fundamental in institution building, and these very institutions saved us from a crisis similar to the Depression, creating less of a perceived need for continuous reform.

Naked Keynesianism
Galbraith on the Great Depression and the 'Great Recession'
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, University of Utah