Dismantling Medicaid in 10 Easy Steps
Aug 22, 2011
I’d planned to draw something about the “debt ceiling” “debate,” and the ghastly, cynical, unconscionable, utterly needless cuts that came from it, but I really just didn’t want to get any closer to that. Sure, it’s defeatist, but I try to limit my heavy nausea just to New Year’s Day.
But then I read this little below-the-fold gem about California. Just admire the compactness of it — so much exposed policy cynicism in so few paragraphs! Figure by this point, we’ve atrophied more of the Great Society than we’ve preserved of it, and what little remains is easy target practice for the VSP crowd. Many of whom, inevitably, are Democrats.
It’s health. For Americans. This is no different and no less compulsory than fire protection or national defense or free elementary schools. You don’t get to trumpet your love for America and then, in the next breath, vilify Americans who’d dare expect twentieth-century Western standards. (Or, if you’re Mark Warner [“D”-VA], just say to hell with it and start extorting cash from sick veterans.)
So: Either what Roosevelt and Truman and Johnson tried to build were inherently misguided flukes, or the modern Democratic Party is dead. (Well, just as soon as it finishes paying back Pfeizer.)
Notes
- Robert Pear’s original New York Times piece on the California suit.
- NYT: Medicaid pays less than Medicare for prescription drugs.
- USCB, via Wiki: Real Income, 1967-2009.
- ThinkProgress: Santorum on Health Care.
- Salon: Warren’s tweet.
- Wonkette on GE’s taxes. Everyone covered this, but Ken Layne’s take is the best.
- NYT: Obama’s pressure on Dems to cut entitlement spending.
- Salon: Greenwald on Panetta, administration priorities.
- TPM: Obama backing Panetta.
- Digby: On Pelosi’s quote (in the larger context of RNC & Medicare).
- Row 12, Clinton panel: Still, it’s not the like the guy’s hands are clean. If your home is presently underwater, or you’re paying 30% on a credit card whose parent company got bailed out for free, or your life is generally miserable, thank his CFMA.