{"id":35938,"date":"2019-03-12T10:06:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T17:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=35938"},"modified":"2019-03-12T10:06:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T17:06:58","slug":"medicare-or-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/03\/12\/medicare-or-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Medicare or Wall?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If ever there was an absolutely ridiculous question, here it is.  Do you want Medicare to help pay for health care for people, who paid into the system all their working lives, or do you want Trump’s Wall that he promised Mexico would pay for?  In his new budget, the Tangerine Terrorist plans record deficits.  He intends to cut $845 billion from Medicare.  He wants over $8 billion for his wall.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0312budget\" <\/p>\n

The budget released by<\/a> the White House on Monday also calls for a sizable reduction for Medicare, the federal insurance for older Americans that President Trump has consistently promised to protect. Most of the trims relate to changing payments to doctors and hospitals and renewing efforts to ferret out fraud and wasteful billing \u2014 oft-cited targets by presidents of both parties\u2026. <\/p>\n

\u2026The spending plan calls for a cut of nearly $1.5\u2009trillion in Medicaid over 10 years and for $1.2\u2009trillion to be added for the block grants or per-person caps that would start in 2021. Under the new arrangement, states would gain far more freedom to set their own rules about how to cover the poor…. <\/p>\n

\u2026The Trump budget also proposes to slow spending on Medicare, the federal program that gives health insurance to older Americans, by $845\u2009billion over the next 10 years, in part by limiting fraud and abuse and payments to hospitals. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said he would not cut Medicare or Social Security, the retirement program for the elderly, but his budget last year also included a proposed cut of more than $550 billion to the program. <\/p>\n

This year\u2019s proposed budget would reduce the growth of various Medicare provider payments, including for care after hospitalizations, graduate medical education and hospital-owned physician clinics, according to Marc Goldwein, budget expert at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He said that with some of the Medicare \u201creductions\u201d simply being moved to other parts of the budget, the cuts could be construed as between $500\u2009billion and $600\u2009billion. <\/p>\n

The increasingly ambitious cuts to Medicare come at a time when many Democrats have embraced plans for expansions of Medicare, including a Medicare-for-all system that would increase federal spending<\/a> on the program by as much as $30\u2009trillion but that backers say would insure more people and reduce overall health costs\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Washington Post<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

The major news sources are just starting to cover this, so no video from my usual sources is available yet, but I found an individual YouTube broadcaster that made a video<\/a> worth watching.<\/font><\/p>\n