It Always Comes Down to Healthcare

It Always Comes Down to Healthcare

We spend an annual average of $17 thousand per American on healthcare, far and away the most expensive medical costs on Earth. We still charge more on average than other developed nations on prescription drugs, and we have an archaic patent program that effectively allows relatively minor, and often merely cosmetic, changes to extend the 20-year patent on way too many drugs. And the reason our costs are so high? We have institutionalized the highest healthcare profits, at every level, in the developed world. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance carriers, medical mediators and medical malpractice costs have profits built into the program with software that monitors doctors and time spent on patients, especially those associated with any government program or subject to “we deny coverage” standard responses from so many private carriers.

In the name of profits, and under the “obliterating” false moniker of “creeping socialism,” making damn sure that we never get universal healthcare, the issue that teases justifiable populist ire (along with the rest of this nation) is complete and affordable healthcare. For those at the top of the economic food chain, in line to slorp at Trump’s Big Beautiful tax cut for them, healthcare is easily purchased. And I mean a Rolls Royce level of healthcare. Look at the above map of the UCLA Medical Center, one of the best in the nation. Check out the names on the buildings… donations from mega-rich who live in Los Angeles. You will find the same smattering of mega-donors and their programs and buildings, often the same names as above, in major hospitals across the land, but, in addition to Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Silicon Valley, Boston, Cleveland, DC, New York, Seattle, Houston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Raleigh-Durham, etc., etc. also have their main donors on buildings everywhere. Guess what kind of medical care those donors receive when they are in need of that expertise. I can promise you that if you are not one of them, well you don’t get a donor-floor room or chef or the immediate, “whatever it takes” medical care.

Apparently, the GOP no longer cares about the absurd deficit that their tax cut would impose on this nation, further eroding this country’s creditworthiness internationally. And we pay through the nose for that in the form of much higher interest rates we have to pay foreigners to buy the bonds that support that debt. But those spoiled mega-rich folks want that tax cut… and they don’t really want to appear irresponsible when it comes to the national debt. So, the answer has focused on offsetting cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and SNAP (food program). The cosmetic “work for benefits” is a misdirection since most of the Medicaid recipients who can work do work… and still need that program.

So, these MAGA-GOPs fall back on the tried and true, except it’s always false, “fraud and waste” rubric. Yes, we know that most of that fraud and waste is at the top of this administration, but the need to try and shift blame and claim the efficiency high ground is almost atavistic with this consortium of congressional Trump sycophants. As June came to a close, at her weekly press conference and given the GOP’s desire to cut over $800 billion from Medicaid while telling us that there will be no reduction in the program, White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, answered this question from a reporter on the President’s position: "There is a conversation on the hill right now about the Medicaid cuts… I'm curious, if the final bill the president's been talking about comes to him and has Medicaid cuts to it, would he sign it, or would he rather Congress do away with those cuts?"

Without any appearance of her tongue in her cheek, Leavitt responded: “I think our friends in both the Senate and the House know exactly where the president stands on Medicare… He wants to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse and they are working to do that in the Senate right now." But there is no amount of fraud or waste even under the most corrupt nation on the planet that could make even a slight dent in the $800 billion that they want to cut… so the obvious result is that millions of people are going to lose coverage, and lots of children will go hungry when the SNAP food supplement program is slashed.

But Republicans are having more issues dealing with staying within the bounds of a budget reconciliation process, where a simple majority of the Senate is sufficient to pass a qualified bill. Topics outside of that reconciliation effort are subject to a Senate rule that requires a 60-vote majority to bring legislation to a floor vote… and the GOP will never muster that 60-vote requirement, because Democrats hate this entire process. The individual who determines what is or is not part of that reconciliation process is the Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough. On June 26th, she denied the GOP plan to cap states' ability to collect more federal Medicaid funding through health care provider taxes – a controversial provision that would have funded much of the bill's tax cuts. Most of the savings in the bill came from the changes in Medicaid.

With Donald Trump’s dragon breath down GOP congresspeople’s necks getting hotter, these legislators have to face a horrible choice: vote for Trump’s Big Beautiful bill, accepting the unpopular billionaires’ tax cut, and watch vast swaths of their constituents lose healthcare coverage or vote against the bill and incur Trump’s wrath as the midterms approach. Trump 2.0 has inflicted the greatest damage on this nation since our Civil War… but even that war did not erode our Constitution to the degraded concept is has become. Universal healthcare would have been cheaper by far and solved so many of our coverage issues.

I’m Peter Dekom, and who knew that the crack in the Liberty Bell would ultimately be that prescient?!