What is it that Republicans don’t understand about America’s needs for healthcare?
In the Washington Post this morning, there is an editorial addressing Virginia Republican Governor McDonnell, titled “Virginia ignores the neediest.” It is about the governor failing to participate in Federal Medicaid program with the consequence of hurting poor people and passing the expense buck to hospitals and everyone else.
In another story featuring Republican Congressman Paul Ryan with some charts, it talks about “deep cuts to health programs.”
Just a minute. We need those programs for our health and livelihood. You can’t cut that.
The answers we need to hear from Republicans and Democrats is how our system is going to support our universal needs for health services and social services that ensure a good life for all. However it comes about, it will be a public and private partnership. However it is engineered, it will be a product of sustainable economics.
When will political leadership begin to hear the call for sustainable economics and a system the delivers for all of us?
It is time for Americans to deliver a message to Republicans, “shut up.”
Update: After writing this article, I ended up in the ER with hypertension.
“Republican goal to balance budget could mean deep cuts to health programs
Gerald Martineau/The Washington Post - Congressman Paul Ryan uses his "Good, Bag, and Ugly" chart to point out shortcomings in President Obama's proposed budget in 2009. Ryan plans to unveil the GOP budget next week and put it to a vote in the House before the Easter break. (See picture post)
By Lori Montgomery, Published: March 4
Anxiety is rising among House Republicans about a strategy of appeasement toward fiscal hard-liners that could require them to embrace not only the sequester but also sharp new cuts to federal health and retirement programs.
Letting the sequester hit was just the first step in a pact forged in January between conservative leaders and Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to keep the government open and the nation out of default. Now comes step 2: adopting a budget plan that would wipe out deficits entirely by 2023.
As Republicans seek to wipe out deficits entirely by 2023, some fear they will be forced to abandon campaign pledges about Medicare.
The strategy runs counter to warnings from prominent Republicans such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal against becoming “the party of austerity.” Just as GOP lawmakers are tacitly endorsing sequester cuts to the Pentagon, long a sacred cow, they fear the balanced-budget goal will force them to abandon a campaign pledge not to reduce Medicare benefits for those who are now 55 and older.
“I know a number of people who have real concerns about where this is going,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), who said Medicare cuts targeting people as old as 58 are under discussion.
“One of the last presidents to balance the budget was Herbert Hoover,” King added darkly, referring to the penny-pinching Republican blamed for deepening the Great Depression."
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