Senate Republicans Ready To Grab Third Rail Of American Politics, Drown It In Bathtub
Fixin' to cut Medicare and lie that they aren't doing exactly that.
Now that the House has sent the Senate its budget-busting Big Beautiful Blowjobs for Billionaires Bill, with huge tax cuts for the rich and huge cuts to healthcare and food assistance for low-income folks, it’s the Senate Republicans’ turn to take their own chainsaws to the things Americans like and need. Naturally, as Politico reports, that could very well include cutting Medicare, at least as long as they can find a pretext that they’ll simply be hacking away at “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the medical care program for seniors.
Remember how indignant Republicans always get when Democrats say, accurately, that Rs are planning to cut Medicare? How dare Dems scare old folks like that! the GOP and its corps of pundits say, because even when some Republicans actually come out and say they may “have to” “look at” making cuts to Medicare (or Social Security), they seldom come out and openly promise to cut the program.
Get ready for another round of those denials, then, because Politico’s story quotes several Republican senators going on the record — oh, but only about cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse” in Medicare, and how can anyone object to that?
Maybe we can object by pointing to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis that The Big Fucking Murder Bill, along with White House rule changes, will leave 16 million Americans without healthcare coverage, even though the GOP’s official line is that they’re only cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
The article does take a moment to remind us that Medicare is incredibly popular with voters, that even many Senate Republicans would fight cuts to the program, and that while some Rs in the House flirted with making cuts to Medicare, they decided instead to gut Medicaid because they figured going after low-income folks’ healthcare would be easier to sell as a way to stick it to lazy poors who need to get their shit together.
Then it gets right to the nitty, which is that the Pubs have made at least a somewhat similar calculation about cutting Medicare: They might be able to get away with it as long as they chant the Three Magic Words insistently enough. We’re told that the idea “came up in closed-door meetings this week and, crucially, some Republicans believe President Donald Trump is on board with touching the program as long as it’s limited to ‘waste, fraud and abuse.’” Or at least as long as they say it is.
Even Majority Leader John Thune is on board with the incantation, saying Thursday, “I think anything that is waste, fraud and abuse are obviously open to discussions.” Again, what sort of commie would defend that wasteful fraudabuse? You can almost hear the gears turning as he realizes that waste, fraud, and abuse could be the big shibboleth of the summer, with or without an Oxford comma:
“The focus, as you know, has been on addressing waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid,” Thune added when pressed on Medicare. “But right now we’re open to suggestions if people have them about other areas where there is clearly waste, fraud and abuse that can be rooted out in any government program.”
Honestly, the article quickly becomes an exercise in seeing how many Republicans are willing to go on the record as favoring Medicare cuts while covering their politically vulnerable bits with a waste, fraud, and abuse fig leaf.
Here’s Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) making a bid to recapture the title of Dumbest Senator from Tommy Tuberville with his explanation of why Trump might be just fine with some Medicare cuts, as long as the right labels are applied.
“I think the president is actually open to any elimination of any waste, fraud and abuse … wherever,” he said, though added that Trump “doesn’t want to cut benefits.”
Considering that Trump is “open to” signing almost any fucking thing that’s put in front of him on camera, because he’s both inherently stupid and now addled, that’s not a very high bar.
Politico says that the plan so far is to focus on what sounds to us like at least a facially normal idea for recovering overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans, because yeah, we shouldn’t be giving private insurers more money than they’re already allowed. (Better yet, let’s make Social Security a government-run program again and get the insurance industry the fuck out of it.) Going after such overpayments
would help them recoup tens of billions of dollars, and it’s an idea that has also attracted bipartisan interest. But the GOP could get severe pushback from the insurance industry, which has fought similar efforts in the past.
The article is careful not to suggest that clawing back overpayments in Medicare Advantage might only be a first step toward engineering deeper cuts to Medicare, because that would be outrageous speculation, wouldn’t it? After all, none of the senators have come right out and said that they’d actually cut benefits, just as nobody in the House admits that “work requirements” is code for “forcing people off Medicaid.”
In its own way, Politico is helping to advance the GOP narrative: Senate Republicans say they want to be super scrupulous about only “cutting waste, fraud, and abuse,” whatever they actually do in practice to push that pretext as far as they can.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) came closest to admitting that could be the goal with Medicare, too, invoking the House cuts to Medicaid as a model:
“There was legitimate debate about: Can we do more with Medicaid? Are we doing too much with Medicaid? How much waste, fraud, abuse is there in Medicare — why don’t we go after that? I think we should.”
Notice that Cramer didn’t limit himself to Medicare Advantage there. And once the narrative is established that the cuts will very carefully be limited to the Three Unholies of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” then they’ll justify whatever Medicare cuts they want under that rubric. By definition, they’re only cutting wasteful spending, so if Mom’s lifesaving treatment gets axed, that’s only because it was fraudulent. Shame on her!
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If there is waste fraud and abuse you can be damn shit sure that Republicans would be the ones making money off of it.
I am on Medicare. I had a lipoma removed earlier this year. My dermatologist said that it didn't need to be done at that point for medical reasons, but hinted that it would be a good idea for political reasons.