Paul Ryan isn’t a budget hawk, he’s just saving spending on Corporate America and cutting programs for the rest of us. (Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)
Among Beltway media, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s budget plan — which privatizes Medicare, slashes Medicaid, and guts the safety net — was viewed as “courageous.” Ryan himself has been praised as being “well-known for his fiscal conservatism” and as a “budget hawk.”
But all of this presupposes that Paul Ryan and the national Republican Party he has come to represent is most concerned with reining in the budget deficit. A closer look at Ryan’s budget proposal finds that while attacking Medicare and other social insurance programs, it actually preserves spending and other deficit-busting measures for some of Ryan and the GOP’s biggest corporate donors. Here’s are some examples:
– Big Insurers: Privatizing Medicare means handing it over to the insurance industry, which would create a windfall of billions of dollars previously used to finance an American-owned public program to instead line the pockets of executives at companies like Aetna and UnitedHealth Group. The insurance industry is Ryan’s second-largest career donor, having given him $815,328, slightly edging out the banking industry. Positioning themselves against health reform, health insurers like Blue Cross/Blue Shield haveAi??funneled aAi??larger portion of their dollars to Republicans over the past two cycles.
– The Drug Industry:Ai??One very easy way to quickly cut the deficit without spending a dime would actually be to cut government — that is, a massive government embargo on cheap Canadian drugs. The U.S. government, at the behest of American pharmaceutical companies, currently bars Americans from freely purchasing re-imported Canadian drugs. These drugs range from 20-80 percent cheaper. Re-importing drugs would save Americans money, and it would save the government — which purchases drugs through the Medicare program — money, too, up to $20 billion over ten years. In opposition to free-market conservatives like the Cato Institute and certain Republican senators like Louisiana’s David Vitter, the Ryan budget does nothing to remove this ban on Canadian drugs. It also does not authorize Medicare to negotiate for better rates from the industry, which could shave up to $14 billion every year from the deficit. Big Pharma and the health products industry are Ryan’s 8th-largest career donors, giving $323,892. The industry has worked hard to keep a section of Republicans and influential right-wingers in its pocket. A few months ago I confronted right-wing lobbyist Grover Norquist over his organization’s support for the ban on Canadian drugs. He took $140,000 from the industry between 2009 and 2010.
– The Arms Dealers:Ai??If there’s one group that ripe for budget-cutting, it’s the defense contractors. The military budget in the U.S. eats up the largest share of discretionary spending, and bipartisan commissions estimate that we could cut up to $100 billion from this amount every year without threatening national security or foreign policy priorities. Ryan leaves the Pentagon untouched and his running mate Mitt Romney actually wants to increase defense spending. In the 2011-2012 cycle, Lockheed Martin’s PAC gave $5,000 to Ryan, and Boeing donated $6,000. Following the takeover of the House of Representatives by the Republicans, both Boeing and Lockheed’s political spending began trending towards Republicans over Democrats. Ryan and Romney apparently aim to keep that spigot of dollars flowing.
Paul Ryan and the Republicans are no doubt loving their media portrayal as serious deficit hawks. But what their budget plan really does is attack programs and investments in America’s great middle class while protecting wasteful spending on their corporate donors. It’s another giveaway to Corporate America, courtesy of the GOP.
Romney, Ryan and the Republicans are huge hypocrites. They really have no desire to rein in the deficit; they only wish to make their supporters (corporations and individuals) richer by helping them steal resources from the majority. In actuality the Democrats are not much better but they are currently the better choice. I have recently toyed with the idea of voting for Jill Stein of the Green Party because her agenda more closely matches mine. However, it has been pointed out that the Green Party keeps insisting that “thinking will make things happen.” Thinking is only a first step; it must be followed up by actions … would the Green Party in the current political climate be able to act?
In identical letters I wrote over a year ago to Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich and John Yarmuth, I addressed the problems of healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and military budgets. I quote as follows:
“Also under attack (for the “sake of the budget”) are social programs for healthcare such as Medicaid and Medicare and Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Plan. Sigh! The enemies of us common working people, who are the wealthy elite, must really want to suck out our lives. The healthcare issue, while complex, has basically two fundamental components which must be solved: costs and access. A large part of the reason that medical care is so very expensive now is because the cost of a medical education is so very high. That education cost is figured into every billing sent by physicians, clinics, hospitals, to insurance and patients. Most patients are unaware of this factor. The majority of healthcare providers graduate with enormous loads of debt hanging over them like swords of Damocles; the only way they can pay off these immense debts is to figure them into what they charge insurances and patients. If, instead of prospective healers paying for their healthcare training, the government would pay medical schools, nursing programs, residencies, and fellowships, based on each program’s number of enrollment, just like the other schools mentioned earlier in this letter, not only would such educational endowment attract more altruistic people into healthcare professions but it would also lower the costs of medical services by eliminating individuals’ debt loads. I do not advocate that beneficiaries of medical education never pay anything back to the government. I suggest they pay in services rendered after attaining their degrees. Say, an individual wanted to become an X-ray technician and his/her training consisted of three years — after graduation that person would work for six years in whatever location the government designated. At the conclusion of those six years, she/he would be free to practice wherever he/she desired. In the case of physicians, training might be four years of undergraduate pre-medicine, four years of medical school, five years of residency, two years of fellowships and/or other specialty training; so, physicians might owe thirty or more years of service in a community designated by the government before being allowed to choose their practice sites. This system could possibly solve the underserved areas problem in America. Once an M.D. begins residency training, she/he would be paid like any other doctor for services rendered. Another feature of such a system would be the encouragement of more persons who are poor and/or from minority backgrounds to strive to enter healthcare professions. Many individuals who want to be healers cannot because they simply do not have the funding to pay for their education.
Oh, I realize the A.M.A. and other groups will object that such a system makes healthcare professionals “employees” of the government. From a certain perspective it does, even if they are not “salaried,” but compensated for services rendered. But healers should be most interested in serving their communities, not in their personal profit. I believe it would help weed out those people who practice healing arts just for money, as well as quacks. In the event that any individual quit the training before attaining the requisite degree, she/he would then owe the government the cost of the training already received.
The other side for those who are already physicians, nurses, radiologists, anesthetists, etc. and currently practicing, not just those in “critical areas,” is that they ought to have their debt loads forgiven to lower medical costs.
But other factors also impinge on medical costs. Healthcare industries such as pharmaceutical firms and medical appliance/equipment companies are for-profit businesses which have no ceiling on the per cent of markup they can charge hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices, etc. Many hospitals operate for profit as well. All the component costs and any inflation these contain are ultimately figured into the billings that insurance and patients receive. Insurance, of course, reflects all this plus their own ever-increasing margins of profit back to patients and/or employers of patients as premiums, creating a spiralling cycle with no termination in view. Competition among insurance companies will never LOWER healthcare costs but it could RAISE them further. Government mandate that every citizen must become insured through selection of a private insurer will ultimately only impoverish most patients further, thus making the recession even worse. Already physicians are planning to “recoup” perceived losses under the Obama plan by soliciting just those patients who choose to go with “high deductible insurance plans” with therapeutic SPECIALS that will fall within the deductible range which the insurance will not have to pay anything on. Medical debt is the number one cause of individual bankruptcies in America right now.
Only through discharge of medical training debt through forgiveness coupled with future medical education funding AND through elimination of private insurance by instituting a one payer plan with standardized payments for therapeutic procedures/treatments AND freezing prices on medical technology/drugs can medical costs be contained. For a one payer plan, first the government would need to establish and maintain in an ongoing fashion a database of all conditions detrimental to health and all the appropriate therapies for each with a correlated payment amount. This seems like an immense task (and it is) but some of this has already been done by C.M.S., hospitals, university schools of medicine and health consortiums. All their efforts would need to be combined into one cohesive database. Payments to healthcare providers should reflect the seriousness of the condition, the risk/benefit ratio of the therapy, and the efficacy of the outcome to the patient. In other words, a physician prescribing an antibiotic for a respiratory infection would receive less compensation than a physician performing a laparoscopic cholecystectomy who would receive less than one doing a heart transplant. An office visit for a wellness checkup would be compensated less than hospitalization.
ALL healthcare professionals and ALL healthcare institutions would need to be compensated through this government program, not just the physicians, and payments would need to be both standardized and yet reflect the quality of the care given the patient. For instance, better nursing services, more accurate lab tests, better hospital care would need some system of improved rewards tied into better outcomes for patients. Here is a possible example: for a standardized four-day hospitalization of a person with pneumonia, there would be a base amount relative to the condition (pneumonia) and methods of treatment — to that amount could be added extra for the nurses if their care were extremely solicitous and resulted in the patient recovering faster or more completely than predicted. The scale of these payments for healthcare services for providers should be adequate to provide those providers a comfortable living, whether these individuals are physicians or technicians or nurse practitioners or orderlies or clinic clerks or whatever, even though the amounts for each service would vary due to depth of medical involvement. But professions in healthcare should not be, as some currently are and many others are not, highways to wealth. People should enter and work in the healing professions because they desire to HEAL, not because they desire to become rich and/or powerful.
Access is also solved by the one payer plan as well since, literally, everyone who resides in the United States would get coverage — no exceptions. Once everyone was enrolled in the new plan, Medicare and Medicaid could be jettisoned because they would be redundant. Under this system, instead of having insurance companies collect premiums from both employers and employees as is currently done, additional taxes to fund healthcare would be gathered as another 10% (in addition to the 50% already levied) from business PROFITS combined with a second 10% tax deduction from individuals’ paychecks. I suspect this would more than pay for the healthcare system. Using my current income as an example, I would be paying $80.00 every two weeks for an annual contribution of $2,080. One salaried physician I know would be contributing $69,000 annually. Multiply this by EVERY person working in America! Since the employers’ contribution into the fund comes as 10% from PROFITS, rather than a matching premium on each employee, the annual amount would vary but simultaneously relieve a substantial portion of overhead that gets figured into the costs of commodities and services. Yes, the more one earns as an individual, the more one pays for identical coverage but that coverage should pay for everything except cosmetic procedures and discrimination on the basis of wealth would be eliminated.
There will be, of course, people who will argue that such a system destroys the incentive to succeed. Not really, either for individuals or for enterprises! I have experienced 0 income; it is a nightmare; no sane person desires it. Undoubtedly, there are lazy people who may content themselves with less income, but for every one of those there will be five or more people just as industrious in order to gain more for themselves and their enterprises because, while taxes would increase, so would shares of the resources for both individuals and businesses.
The other argument that will be heard against such a plan is that hardworking people will be paying for healthcare for the indigent. Yes, we will be and we should be. The largest group of non-taxed people will be children, our future, those too young to work. Unless we wish to re-institute child labor (and that idea is abhorrent), children will get healthcare provided from the incomes of others. Children are ALREADY dependent on the incomes of others. Parents now must provide for them. But should parents alone be responsible for the health of children? Are not children an investment of society in a future and do we not want them to be as healthy as possible so that, when they achieve adulthood, they will contribute their full potential — physical, intellectual, social, spiritual — to society? Today, there are too many parents unable (not unwilling) to provide for their children’s optimal health. Such burden should be shared because really it does take a community to properly rear a child.
Other indigent people are adults who have been unlucky: laid-off because their employers downsized, unable to get employment because they have been injured or contracted a serious disease, lacking skills because the educational system did not work for them, and other reasons. Why should they be denied healthcare when its provision could empower them to overcome their non-productive state? What about people who contribute towards the good of society but who are not paid, such as stay-at-home mothers or family caretakers and volunteers for non-profit organizations? Do they not deserve healthcare so they can continue to contribute to society in their own ways? Sure, a few people may try to abuse this system and freeload off society as indigents. But, remember every therapy provided will need documented necessity for compensation, and no system, however designed, can be devoid of the potential for abuse.
Another approach to reducing the deficit if to slash the Pentagon budget to one-third of its bloated enormity. The Pentagon could surely use some “austerity measures” and this would eliminate/prevent considerable “pork.” Then, Congress could also cancel funding for our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, so that we must pull out quickly instead of gradually. Maybe hell will break loose in the Middle East with our absence or maybe not. I do not trust “expert” predictions.
Now, the question arises what should we do with military personnel since we really do not need such a huge force? Two-thirds could be put into “reserve status” and retrained for work where the government DOES need manpower: the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, NOAA, Bureau of Lan Management, National Park Service, Food and Drug Administration, and a host of other departments and agencies struggling to get their jobs done. For decades, these government agencies have been understaffed and pleading for personnel. (I know because I was a Ranger in the National Park Service.) Keep all these military personnel on their current salaries and transfer them into these positions, where they can fight fires, prevent poaching and vandalism, oversee public lands, inspect agricultural facilities on a regular schedule, etc. If America ever were attacked, since all of them would be on reserve status, spending two weeks each year keeping themselves fit for combat, they could be mobilized. The Gulf War demonstrated that reserve units performed just as effectively as active duty units. A corollary benefit would be that these military personnel would become more easily integrated into civilian life and be able to form relationships and careers within communities.”
Those were my suggestions over a year ago. I have little hope for implementation of these, whether the Democrats or the Republicans win at various levels. But I will continue to keep advocating for progressive reforms.
The interesting thing is that very few citizens of either party actually trust big business. I suspect you would be hard pressed to find a citizen who thinks insurance companies, drug companies or defense contractors should be trusted with our money, our well being or our government. And yet, they fail to understand that these entities rather than citizens are the ones that will benefit from the Republican goals of eliminating Obamacare, deregulating corporations, and spending more on defense. They fail to see that these corporate interests are driving the advertising that is influencing their vote.
Republicans think this election is about religion or patriotism. It’s not. It’s about who makes a profit and how much they make and who gets screwed in the process. How can we help the majority of Republican’s and conservatives see that they are being used? How can we help these Republicans wake up to the fact that they are being conned into acting against their own self interest??