While we await the outcome of the vote in the Supreme Court deciding the fate of the Affordable Care Act (which dictates your healthcare options), the House of Representatives, (controlled by Republicans) approved a new budget repealing healthcare reform. In addition it would semi-privatize Medicare. While the vote was 228-191, it is unlikely to pass the Senate which is controlled by Democrats.
The White House released a statement regarding Medicare saying “House Republicans today banded together to shower millionaires and billionaires with a massive tax cut paid for by ending Medicare as we know it and making extremely deep cuts to critical programs needed to create jobs and strengthen the middle class”
Yet over the course of the very recent past, millions have been taken from Medicare by government to fund the new Healthcare programs!
Baucus, the Senate finance committee chair stated “I won’t let us break our promise to American’s seniors. The Ryan plan would dismantle Medicare and would end our fundamental promise to America’s seniors to provide reliable, guaranteed, affordable health care”
The proposed bill would provide new Medicare beneficiaries the option between approved private health plans or the conventional fee-for-service Medicare program that is in current operation, starting in 2023.
However, the Democrats and Republicans paint completely different pictures of what the proposed changes would mean.
Democrats insist that the change would “end Medicare as we know it” while the Republican viewpoint is that the alteration would save Medicare from going broke.
It seems to me that both parties NEED to band together and realistically devise a Medicare and Medicaid plan that is feasible to our budget and to us. This probably won’t happen as long as our Congressmen receive healthcare benefits that are different from the citizens of this country.
It is time to remove the “privilege” of our legislators being “above the law”. How about NOT being primarily a Republican or a Democrat but being an American citizen!
