OP-ED

Medicare and Medicaid might still be around in the future because I am sure Republicans and other right wing types probably have their eyes set on them to see how they might be converted from government-run programs to privatized profit makers for the millionaire/billionaire class.

Needless to say, if the Righties aren’t successful in grabbing these “Entitlements” for their own profit then there is probably a good reason to believe the programs might be eliminated altogether  in some future budget whacking scam designed to “save” the Future for our Grand Children – - –  or some other cockamamie excuse like they seen to me to always be  concocting for the naieve and the gullible in order to advance what I have always seen as  their “Grab-it-all- at any cost”  agenda.

I have yet to understand what all this talk from the right about “Saving the Future for the Grand Children.” is supposed to mean?  I was someone’s grand child once and nobody seemed to bother themselves about the fact that I would inherit the financial mess they were creating.  Where did all this moral concern for future generations come from all of a sudden anyway?  I am sure that future generations will find a way to take the legacy that we leave them and squander it in their own fashion – - just the same as we did with the legacy that was left to us.

In case some of the wall-eyed pikes in obtuse rightie land aren’t looking, Medicare and Medicaid patients need help now – - right now – - right here in the day and age in which we live so as far as I am concerned.  All their blow and bluster about “future generations” is little more than a hollow excuse to keep from helping people who need help right now as far as I am concerned. I think they do these things  so more and bigger tax breaks can be given to those who live at the top of the social heap and who don’t need anything at all except, perhaps, for some kind of hard lesson in stewardship.

Sometimes when I hear right wingers blowing off at the mouth about stuff they have more than proven they have absolutely no hope of ever understanding, I am also reminded that there are a lot of them in unemployment lines. Some of them seem to me to be  more than glad to get that “Free Gubmint Handout” that comes in the form of an unemployment benefit check every week.  The point being that Liberals are not the only ones standing in line for the “Free Stuff.” Righties love free stuff too even if they don’t like to admit it. (Pride goeth before a fall.)

In fact, statistically speaking, I understand  it is the conservative Red States who get more bang for the buck from the Federal Dollars that flow in to assist them through various government programs because the Red States usually do not return nearly as much to the Fed through taxes ( or anything else) as they receive.  So, in essence, I think the Reds  are more or less getting kind of a “Free Ride” on the backs of the Blue States. (You can look all this stuff up if you want to… it is out there.)

Righties are always and forever talking about “Saving” Medicare by “Modernizing” it.

Whenever I hear about the right wing wanting to “Modernize” some government program,  I get visions of a bunch of privately owned for-profit corporations taking the system over and adding all kinds of service fees, membership fees, various program packages at various prices from reasonable to the ridiculous – - and anything and everything they can get away with and that the market might bear – - –  and I start thinking that if Rightie gets away with this scam, there will still be millions of people ( not dollars)  who get left out in the cold on health care  because there will be less government control and oversight and the “entrepreneurs” can do more or less whatever they please as long as they can do it within some reasonable appearance of legality. (Not necessarily morality.)

When I hear righties talking about “Empowering” those who will participate in the privatized Medicare they seem so be so intent on bringing to pass,  what I am really hearing is that millions of potential Medicare “participants” will have a choice as to whether to pay through the nose ( pawn any hopes for a future)  for quality health care or to settle for some bare-bones program that covers little or nothing of their needs . . . still at war prices.

Will faith healers someday be legitimately licensed?

Somehow whenever Righties talk about “Insuring the future” for our seniors and our poor, I am reminded of how my own Grand Father laid in his little shack with a life-threatening disease because he couldn’t afford to see the local saw bones and if it weren’t for the generosity of my Dad who also worked for slave wages for right wing bosses, my “Pap” would have died.  I am fairly certain this is the kind of “Future” for the “Seniors and the Poor” that a lot of greedy Rightie profit-mongers are envisioning when they talk about “Insuring the future for Seniors and The Poor.”  I don’t think they can be trusted as far as they can be thrown and, if the last presidential election was any indicator, neither do most of those who call themselves “American.”

There is no doubt in my mind that a whole herd (horde) (whored) of right wingers has their  plan to get their hands on all our “Entitlement” programs and are determined to meet their goals for looting, plundering and pillaging them all with the pretense of “Saving The Future.”

They sometimes seem to me to be as tenacious as roaches on a sugar cube in this respect.

But I am not so sure that this kind of “Future” is all that desirable – - especially for the Poor and the working poor of this country.

How can I sum all this up?

I think if Republicans are allowed to re-design Medicare and Medicaid to fit their world view, anyone who needs to use these programs had better have one helluva lot of extra cash stashed somewhere because I think Medicare under control of the right wing will be a far worse nightmare than outrageously expensive private medical care can be right now – - because as I see it, much of the right wing tends to favor and to play into the hands and agendas of those who delight in sticking it to ordinary folks for their own greed-mongering ends.

I still have this nightmare vision of American Medical Care going back to the good old days when one could go visit a dying relative being kept in a darkened room at the rear of somebody’s house and being cared for by people without the slightest modicum of medical training.  (Just because somebody can’t afford the high cost of some outrageously inflated premium on some future right-wing privatized Medicare Insurance option.)

Posted by John Liming at 5:49 AM