Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Medicaid' is associated with 6 posts.

Oligarchs for Austerity and the CNP Have a Big New Scheme: Suing their Way to a New Constitution

Did you hear? Pres­i­dent Trump is going to be run­ning for a third term in office. And he’s not jok­ing. Who knows how seri­ous he is, but as we’re going to see, the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of third pres­i­den­tial term may not be as set in stone as many sus­pect. Along with the rest of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. A con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion could be just around the cor­ner. Just a law­suit away. And we can thank the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and their fel­low trav­el­ers at the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Com­mit­tee (ALEC) for this loom­ing threat. The same aus­ter­i­ty lob­by that has spent years try­ing to roll back Oba­macare, evis­cer­ate Medicare and Med­ic­aid through block-grants, and gen­er­al­ly erode what’s left of the US’s social safe­ty-nets as more and more Amer­i­cans are forced to take any work avail­able just to qual­i­fy for increas­ing­ly mea­ger gov­ern­ment assis­tance. That aus­ter­i­ty lob­by. It’s back with a big sneaky plan: a law­suit pur­port­ing to prove that the 34 state thresh­old for an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion has already been met. David M. Walk­er — the for­mer US Comp­trol­ler for both Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush — is lead­ing the legal effort, with legal sup­port from NRA lawyer (and CNP mem­ber) Charles “Chuck” Coop­er. If the law­suit suc­ceeds, get ready for a new con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten by and for the oli­garchy.

But this sto­ry isn’t just about this new law­suit. It’s also about how the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by has been work­ing with CNP to push these con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion ambi­tions since at least 2013, which is right around the same time it become clear that the last major round of DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing had failed in achiev­ing a “grand bar­gain” of slashed enti­tle­ments. A round of lob­by­ing that began in earnest as the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was still play­ing out with David Walk­er — then Pres­i­dent and CEO of the new­ly formed aus­ter­i­ty-cen­tric Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion — tak­ing on a lead role as pub­lic aus­ter­i­ty advo­cate. The Great Reces­sion was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for a “grand bar­gain”. And it almost worked. But did­n’t work, at least not entire­ly, and it was­n’t long after that fail­ure became clear that we saw the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and the CNP begin hatch­ing far more ambi­tious plans. Plans that just might be about come to fruition. Because as we’re also going to see, if a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion does hap­pen, the forces behind this plan are the ones who will be run­ning it. The DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by real­ly is just a law­suit away from win­ning every­thing.


Guess What? Grandma is Moving In. She’s Got Medical Bills. Maybe to Share. It’s Medicaid Brought to You by Kochcare.

Is kick­ing senior cit­i­zens out of nurs­ing homes good pol­i­tics? That’s a ques­tion GOP ask­ing itself these days. One of many ques­tions relat­ed to the pol­i­tics of health care. Although not many are ask­ing it since the pub­lic large­ly has no idea the ques­tion is being asked at all as recent polls show. With the Sen­ate’s ver­sion of ‘Trump­care’ final­ly released to the pub­lic, we’re now learn­ing that, yes, the GOP appears to think kick­ing seniors out their nurs­ing homes is good pol­i­tics. Because trans­fer­ring Med­ic­aid costs to states and indi­vid­u­als has been a key GOP goal of Trump­care’s con­gres­sion­al authors the entire time and nurs­ing homes are paid for by Med­ic­aid for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple. So in addi­tion to the many pro­found moral ques­tions raised by the GOP’s health care ‘reform’ plans, a grow­ing num­ber of pro­found polit­i­cal ques­tions are being raised the more we learn about Trump­care as it takes form. Includ­ing whether or not putting nurs­ing home cov­er­age on a fis­cal death spi­ral makes for good pol­i­tics. Granny would prob­a­bly say ‘no’, but she’s got com­pe­ti­tion.


Trumplandian Feudalism: Employ the Unemployed While Still Starving Them

Did Trump sud­den­ly drop his oft-repeat­ed crit­i­cism of tra­di­tion unem­ploy­ment report­ing and asser­tions that in real­i­ty its 42 per­cent and 94 mil­lion Amer­i­can adults are out of work? Well, as we’re going to see, prob­a­bly not because his admin­is­tra­tion is still plan­ning on redefin­ing the “offi­cial” unem­ploy­ment rate to be much “loos­er” and his claims that 42 per­cent if Amer­i­can adults are out of work are nec­es­sary to achieve a long-held GOP goal cham­pi­oned by House Speak­er Paul Ryan: con­vert­ing the US safe­ty-net — includ­ing Medicare, Med­ic­aid, and Social Secu­ri­ty — into a “work for a pit­tance to get a pit­tance of gov­ern­ment support”-net that traps the poor in sys­tem where if you have to find full time work to get any help at all. Maybe even for the elder­ly. And the help you get in return for that work-require­ment will keep shrink­ing year after year. It’s a plan that can’t hap­pen unless almost all non-work­ing adults are defined as “unem­ployed”. So, no, Trump did­n’t change his mind. He just still thinks we’re all stu­pid (maybe).


Killing Granny: The GOP’s “One Size Fits All” Death Panel for Health Care

Change is com­ing to Wash­ing­ton DC. Most­ly hor­ri­ble changes. But as we’ll see in this post, there is one very sig­nif­i­cant and pos­i­tive change com­ing as a con­se­quence of the uni­fied GOP con­trol of the White House and Con­gress: GOP is actu­al­ly going to start get­ting the blame it deserves for all the dam­age its pro-oli­garch/an­ti-every­one-else agen­da rou­tine­ly inflicts upon the Amer­i­can peo­ple. Pol­i­tics can be frus­trat­ing for a myr­i­ad of rea­sons, but one of the biggest sources of frus­tra­tion is the cloud of per­pet­u­al obfus­ca­tion and con­fu­sion that tends to per­me­ate the polit­i­cal dis­course and col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of what’s actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing, why it’s hap­pen­ing, and who should be reward­ed or blamed for it. But for the next cou­ple of years, at a min­i­mum, it’s going to be very clear who to blame for the dam­age DC is about to unleash, and it’s not just going to be Don­ald Trump. And when it comes to health care “reform” (pri­va­ti­za­tion) that the GOP is about to impose upon the pop­u­lace, that blame is about to get dan­ger­ous­ly dif­fu­sive for state leg­is­la­tures and gov­er­nor­ships because the Health Care Aus­ter­i­ty Hot Pota­to is about to get tossed in their laps over and over. Indef­i­nite­ly. And since the GOP con­trols almost all state leg­is­la­tures and gov­er­nor­ships at the moment they won’t be able to pre­vent them­selves from slash­ing these pro­grams. So with the com­ing block grant­i­ng of first Med­ic­aid and then Medicare (or maybe both togeth­er), the pol­i­tics of health care is about to get weird. And trag­ic because the GOP won’t be able to help itself with all the aus­ter­i­ty


The GOP Pulled Off the Medicaid Bandaid. Next Up? Medicare Amputations.

When “God’s Sen­a­tor”, Sam Brown­back, became “God’s Gov­er­nor” of Kansas back in 2010 it was clear some pret­ty big changes were on the way for Kansas. After all, when a GOP mem­ber of Opus Dei is your new gov­er­nor, some form of aus­ter­i­ty for the mass­es is prob­a­bly in the cards. And fol­low­ing the 2012 intra-GOP “mod­er­ate” purge, aus­ter­i­ty for Kansas has arrived in full force. As once might expect, this includes the aus­ter­i­ty that comes with refus­ing to accept the Oba­macare Med­ic­aid expan­sion. Utter­ly point­less, yet still painful, self-fla­gel­la­tion. And that’s just the begin­ning...


The GOP Pulls Off the Medicaid Band-Aid. Ouch.

A con­se­quence of last years Supreme Court rul­ing that upheld Oba­macare — but allowed states to opt out of the Med­ic­aid expan­sion — is that we would see GOP state gov­er­nors placed in a real dilem­ma: They could either accept the Med­ic­aid expan­sion and receive bil­lions of dol­lars for their state health care sys­tems from the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment at the risk of enrag­ing their far-right base of sup­port­ers. OR the gov­er­nors could reject the Med­ic­aid expan­sion, leav­ing mil­lions with­out cov­er­age but still being able to say they stood up to that evil social­ist plot to destroy Amer­i­ca. Deci­sions, deci­sions...


Books for Download

The New Germany and The Old Nazis Book written in 1961 asks: Has Germany really changed? If so, where are the hundreds of thousands who once faithfully and eagerly served Hitler's reign of terror? And what is life like today for the Jews who are still in Germany? Read more »