3 things to know about Trump's budget plan for Medicare, Medicaid

ABC News ^ | February 11, 2020 | Anne Flaherty and Jordyn Phelps

[TheZMan]

lol, GMTA. Replied to the thread and then scrolled down to yours.

[Eleutheria5]

Let me guess. He’s cutting the rate of growth of medicare and medicaid spending, but not the actual amount to be spent, which will still go up, but at a lower rate. Same trick they tried in 1995, even ran ads with a catchy jingle and lots of scare tactics. They have no new ideas, just the same old BS.

[Loud Mime]

Current services baseline budgeting is as much of a problem as sustaining annual increases in funding.

[100American]

And therein lies the key to saving and cuts...

My business partner attended an event in Washington DC focused on new ideas and better ways of providing services to our citizens

The key takeaway from the whole event was when members of different departments shared that they do not interoperate or share data. We know this as the Department of Redundancy department.

Left hand, meet right hand

You know the drill, and bloated bureaucracies have no incentive to downsize and reduce the overhead we pay and the bite it takes

In process development I call it TPM, Time People and Money

I strive for efficiency, they do not.

The upshot of the event was they were looking for solutions outside of the Bureaus to develop new methods, dare I say solutions to bridge the problem as they could not in the atmosphere and self protecting world in Washington that like Trump I disdain

A visual if I may, watch Nancy signing the Impeachment docs using a pile of pens each with only part of her signature. Each to me represents a bureaucracy that collectively became the result.

Madness

Change the processes and cut the staffs needed to support this archaic and nonsensical system and measure the effectiveness of it and tune it for best results and cost

[eartick]

I think some cuts can be made in that financial black hole

I think this is the part that is so conveniently left out.

There will be massive cuts to overhead (offices, people and supplies) but not to the actual money that will flow to Medicare and Medicaid.

This is how the MSM and the deep state operative. Control the narrative

[Eleutheria5]

I’ll settle on the mitigation of the latter, for now.

[TigersEye]

... including $451 billion less for Medicare.

That's about how much fraud there is in Medicare isn't there? I suggest a $10 billion dollar increase in DoJ funding devoted to going after fraud in Medicare and Medicaid.

Offer the perps they catch an option, pay back what you stole X2 or prison Xdecades.

[Yulee]

Just like the old food stamp ploy declared by the Dems. He is probably just cutting the proposed percentage of increase, rather than the actual amount.

The Dems have built in yearly big increases in every area, and scream to high heaven if there is any move to freeze, or decrease the percentage of increase.

They view this as a cut.

We need to cut proposed increases in spending and actually pass a budget, which Congress has not done in may years.

[Prince of Space]

When I became eligible for Medicare in 2018, they sent me a card and a bill for my premiums in advance. Since hubby is still working and we have health insurance already, I ignored the bill for Part B because I didn’t need or want it.

Lo and behold, when I started SS the following year, they claimed I owed MC $1700 for my unpaid Part B premiums for a freaking year! I had to download and send them a form explaining why I was refusing Part B, and I was never gonna see that $1700 again.

WTF? In the real world, if you don’t agree to purchase something and never even use the product, you’re not expected to pay for it. In the world of govt services, that’s not how it works. So I don’t wanna hear their sob stories of how they overpaid ppl and can’t get the money back, because they do the same thing to us all the time!

[BruceS]

This is the same playbook as in the 90s, with Gingrich and the Republican House. There ARE NO CUTS, there are reductions in the rate of growth. We need to do the same thing to every part of the Federal Government - reduce the rate of growth, until economic growth helps revenue to catch up to the spending.

[Crucial]

A severe economic downturn is inevitable in the next few years if government spending isn’t curbed. The national debt is HUGE, as big as our GDP now and we have to pay interest on it. It’s getting more difficult for the Fed to stimulate the economy through bond purchases which they are now constantly doing. It used to be QE was only used in emergencies but now is constantly and stealthily implemented.

[apoliticalone]

YES and agreed we must get our debt and monetary policy under control. But it could have been done without screwing citizens. Now I’ll rant.

If only GW Bush and Clinton were was awake at the switch and defended the USA against the 9-11 attack by 20 Arabs from a cave in Afghanistan, we’d have saved many lives and many trillions. And if only we had kept the housing market under control. Trump talked about that in his campaign but never again. And if we put in place strict punishment for corporate fraud and those like the Oxycontin Sacklers as a deterrent.

Instead we have become a nation where spying on citizens and security are now centric, while our borders etc are still somewhat porous. We are a different country, and one where justice is no longer justice. A Dem as POTUS would destroy us.

Too bad we never go back and put politicians etc where they belong. But they say we must look forward and never backward.