JustCare

Tag: Medicare

  • Who should take Leqembi, an Alzheimer’s drug?

    Who should take Leqembi, an Alzheimer’s drug?

    After years of review, the FDA approved Leqembi—lecanemab–for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. So, now, Medicare covers this drug. But, it’s not clear if any of the 6.5 million Americans with Alzheimer’s should take the drug, given that it can cause brain swelling and bleeding. Laurie McGinley reports for the Washington Post on the pros and cons of Leqembi.

    The clinical data indicate that, in some cases of individuals with early-stage dementia and a build-up of amyloid in their brains, Leqembi can slow cognitive decline for five months or so. But, Leqembi cannot stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, and it appears that it might not always be safe or effective.

    Medicare covers Leqembi under Medicare Part B for people with amyloid buildup in their brains. Patients who want the drug might have to pay out of pocket for a PET scan to demonstrate that building or get a spinal tap. They or their supplemental insurer is also responsible for the 20 percent coinsurance, more than $5,000.

    Medicare is requiring anyone administering the drug, which is injectable, to participate in a registry that documents Leqembi’s efficacy in the real world. And, people who take it will see a warning label that underscores the drug’s dangerous side effects, including brain bleeding and swelling.

    People on blood thinners are at extra risk of brain bleeds if they take Leqembi. So, the FDA has warned physicians to consider carefully whether to prescribe the drug to these people.

    To be clear, Leqembi does not improve memory or cognitive skills. It might help people be a little bit less forgetful. Patients who take Leqembi will need to undergo several brain scans and travel to receive the drug at an infusion center.

    Medicare’s registry will help scientists better understand the safety and efficacy of Leqembi. But, curiously, the Alzheimer’s Association is seemingly not interested and opposes the registry, claiming it will create a barrier to access.

    People with Alzheimer’s who are overweight or who smoke and people with hypertension or diabetes, could slow cognitive decline by losing weight, stopping smoking and/or treating their hypertension and diabetes.

    Leqembi comes with a price tag of $26,500 a year. The Medicare program is expected to spend $500 million on Leqembi this year and $3 billion on it next year. If so, Medicare Part B premiums will rise significantly because of this one drug over time, as will premiums for Medicare supplemental coverage.

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  • Project 2025 would push everyone with Medicare into Medicare Advantage

    Project 2025 would push everyone with Medicare into Medicare Advantage

    Project 2025 is the brainchild of The Heritage Foundation and a roadmap for the Republicans if Donald Trump is elected President. If implemented, Project 2025 would push everyone with Medicare into Medicare Advantage, with restricted access to care, instead of enrolling them in Traditional Medicare and allowing them to decide whether they want to enroll in Medicare Advantage. Project 2025 would likely privatize Medicare and endanger the health and well-being of more than 65 million older adults and people with disabilities.

    For a start, if President Trump becomes President and he carries out the Medicare goals of Project 2025, people who sign up for Medicare will be enrolled automatically in a Medicare Advantage plan–a corporate health plan the government pays to provide Medicare benefits and rewards for denying care. Who knows if that plan would cover the doctors and hospitals they want to use or provide them with the care they need. So many Medicare Advantage plans are engaged in widespread inappropriate delays and denials of care.

    Yes, people would still have the right to switch to Traditional Medicare, the government-administered program that provides coverage from virtually any doctor or hospital anywhere in the United States. But, would they know they could disenroll from Medicare Advantage? Or, would they be locked in, unable to enroll in Traditional Medicare as millions of people in Medicare Advantage are today?

    Project 2025 would aggravate health inequalities. As it is, Traditional Medicare is not affordable to most people with Medicare. Because Traditional Medicare lacks an out-of-pocket cap, people also have supplemental coverage to protect themselves financially. But, supplemental coverage is both expensive and not guaranteed. So, until Congress reforms Traditional Medicare to include an out-of-pocket maximum, most people with Medicare have no choice but to enroll in a Medicare Advantage plan.

    If conservatives prevail, the for-profit corporate health insurers will take over Medicare entirely before long. It’s a cash cow for them. They have the money, the power and the mission to drain the Medicare Trust Fund and drive up their profits. Health care costs for people with Medicare will soar. Those with complex and costly conditions likely will face untold challenges getting the care they need.

  • John Oliver: The Medicare hospice scam

    John Oliver: The Medicare hospice scam

    Hospice offers comfort care for people with six months or less to live. Medicare covers hospice care. But, unscrupulous hospice agencies manipulate the Medicare hospice benefit for their benefit, John Oliver reports on Last Week Tonight.

    About 1.8 million people with Medicare receive hospice care each year. Hospices can provide critical support for patients and their families. The best hospices spend a few hours a day several days a week with patients; they rarely offer round-the-clock care so people usually need caregivers at home to care for them when the hospice staff are not there. Unfortunately, many hospice agencies have been found to engage in fraud, costing Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

    An English doctor and social worker came up with the notion of hospice to allow patients at the end of life to spend their last few months in peace with social and emotional supports. People in the US began receiving hospice services in 1974.

    Six thousand hospice providers in the US today are for-profit. Medicare generally pays them about $200 a day for each hospice patient, regardless of the actual amount of care they deliver. They can earn $1,500 a day for “crisis care.” Bad actor hospices try to sign up as many patients as possible and deliver as little care to them as possible.

    Hospices collect Medicare payment and then maximize their profits by providing little or no services. Oliver reports some instances of “severe neglect.” In many cases, the hospices simply phone patients to check in on them.

    Agencies bill Medicare for patients in hospice who do not belong in hospice. Sometimes hospices enroll patients who are not terminally ill to increase their revenue and defraud Medicare. In California, some hospices have discharged more than 50 percent of their patients without their dying.

    Physicians are required to certify that people qualify for Medicare hospice. But, hospices pay physicians to declare patients are terminally ill when they are not. One physician received a kickback of $250 a patient for certifying patients who were not terminally ill as terminally ill.

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  • Harris and Walz: “We’re not going back!” on Medicare and Social Security

    Harris and Walz: “We’re not going back!” on Medicare and Social Security

    Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, have proclaimed, “We’re not going back!” Seniors and our families agree. We are definitely not going back on Social Security, Medicare, or drug prices. Rather, we are going forward. Forward to expanded Social Security, expanded Medicare, and lower drug prices.

    We’re not going back to half of all seniors with below-poverty incomes. Before Social Security, people worked as long as they could, but the fast pace of many jobs “wears out its workers with great rapidity,” a commentator noted in 1912. “The young, the vigorous, the adaptable, the supple of limb, the alert of mind, are in demand,” he explained. “Middle age is old age.”

    Once a job was lost, an older worker could seldom find a new one. Parents, as they aged, routinely moved in with their adult children. Those who had no children or whose children were unable or unwilling to support them wound up in the poorhouse. Literally. The poorhouse was not some ancient Dickensian invention; it was a very real means of subsistence for elderly people in the world before Social Security.

    We are going forward. Forward to expanded Social Security, expanded Medicare, and lower drug prices.

    When Social Security became law, every state but New Mexico had poorhouses. The vast majority of the residents were elderly. Most of the “inmates,” as they were generally labeled, entered the poorhouse late in life, having been independent wage earners until that point. In 1910, a Massachusetts Commission found that 92 percent of the residents entered after age 60.

    The poorhouse was a fate to be dreaded. Even in as progressive a state as New York, the conditions were abysmal. In 1930, the New York State Commission on Old Age Security found that “worthy people are thrown together with whatever dregs of society happen to need the institution’s shelter at the moment…Privacy, even in the most intimate affairs of life, is impossible; married couples are quite generally separated; and all the inmates are regimented as though in a prison or penal colony.”

    A return to that may seem impossible, but it is not. If Social Security did not exist today, more than forty percent of those aged 65 and over would once again have below-poverty incomes.

    We’re not going back! Before Social Security, the death of one parent frequently meant the breakup of a family. Orphanages housed children with a living parent who had been unable to afford them, when the other parent died. People who became disabled and could no longer work routinely could be found begging in the street.

    Those families now have guaranteed monthly benefits, thanks to Social Security, which lifts almost a million children and more than 5.3 million adults between the ages of 18 and 65 out of poverty. And our Social Security system lessens the depth of poverty for millions more.

    Republicans want to take us back. They want to end Medicare as we know it.

    But Republican politicians want to take us back. They have put out plans that not only would cut Social Security, but end it as we know it. We cannot let them take us back.

    Instead of going backwards, we can and must go forward. Vice President Kamala Harris and her Democratic Party have plans to expand Social Security for seniors, for those with disabilities and for families experiencing the death of a provider.

    In fact, when Harris was in the Senate, she was an original cosponsor of the Social Security Expansion Act, and when her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, was in the House of Representatives, he was an original cosponsor of the Social Security 2100 Act. Both bills expand benefits across-the-board, update the cost of living adjustment, so benefits don’t erode over time, expand benefits in other important ways, and ensure that those benefits can be paid on time and in full for the foreseeable future, by requiring the uber-wealthy to pay their fair share.

    And we’re not going back to a time without guaranteed government-provided health insurance for seniors and people with disabilities. Before President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law in 1965, most seniors were not able to find health insurance at any cost. For those who could, the coverage was inadequate and the cost was exorbitant.

    We can and must go forward. Harris and her Democratic colleagues want to expand Medicare. The essential benefits of vision, hearing and dental services must be added and the need for supplemental insurance must be eliminated. And Medicare should be extended to children and all ages in between.

    We’re not going back to Big Pharma ripping off Medicare beneficiaries. For years, politicians promised to rein in Big Pharma and empower Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. The Biden-Harris administration got it done.

    If you too are determined to not go back on these important freedoms, the choice in November is clear.

    Republicans want to take us back. They want to end Medicare as we know it. They want to replace it with vouchers, forcing seniors to fend for themselves in a hostile marketplace. Additionally, they have promised to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and let Big Pharma charge whatever outrageously high prescription drug prices they decide. We’re not going back to Medicare beneficiaries paying more than $35 per month out-of-pocket for insulin. We’re not going back to Medicare beneficiaries paying more than $2,000 out-of-pocket per year for Medicare Part D prescription drug spending.

    Instead, we will go forward to a future of even lower prices for even more prescription drugs. And that future must include providing those lower prices for all Americans.

    We’re not going back to a world without the Affordable Care Act. We’re not going back to a world without Medicaid expansion, without coverage for “pre-existing conditions.”

    That is just some of what is at stake in November.

    We’re not going back to a world where Republicans hand out tax breaks to billionaires. We want to protect Social Security and expand benefits, paid for by requiring billionaires and other uber-wealthy to pay their fair share.

    Social Security Works is proud to stand with Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Walz in the fight for freedom. The freedom to retire with dignity and independence. The freedom to get the medical care we need. The freedom to get the drugs our doctors prescribe.

    If you too are determined to not go back on these important freedoms, the choice in November is clear. Let’s unite and usher in a future that takes us forward together.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Emergency or urgent care? Why it matters

    Emergency or urgent care? Why it matters

    A growing number of hospitals are offering people both hospital emergency room services and urgent care at one site, reports Philip Galewitz for KFF Health News. This model could be a financial winner for Intuitive Health, which is offering it in partnership with hospitals. Patients have little say over whether the care is billed as ER or urgent care or the cost.

    The doctors at the Intuitive Health facilities decide whether patients receive ER care or urgent care. And, they have every financial incentive to choose hospital ER care. If the doctors decide the wound treatment is ER care, the cost could be thousands of dollars more than if urgent care.

    There’s no bright line between what services are urgent and what services are emergency. Often care received in a hospital ER could have been gotten at an urgent care facility, such as ultrasounds and blood work. Physicians notify patients when the physicians determine the care needed is emergency care. While patients can choose not to receive ER care, the facilities can still charge them a triage fee.

    The value proposition for Intuitive Health–backed by Altamont Capital Partners, a private equity firm–is even greater than being able to bill for ER care for services that need not be treated as ER care. Intuitive Health can build a large patient base that leads to more medical tests, more physician and hospital services and more revenue.

    Patients using the Intuitive Health facility in Florida had short waits for care. They appear to like having access to both emergency and urgent care services at one location. Intuitive is responsible for administrative activities, such as collecting payment; their hospital partners provide the physicians and do the billing.

    Medicare pays for these services because of the hospital affiliation, as do most other insurers. But, what patients pay varies considerably. If patients pay the “all-inclusive” fee out of pocket, it’s $250. With insurance, their copays could be higher than that, depending upon what the facility charges their insurers.

    Patients with commercial insurance have no federal protection from surprise medical bills, since the protections do not cover urgent care facilities.

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  • Drug prices keep going up, some faster than inflation

    Drug prices keep going up, some faster than inflation

    Until Congress regulates drug prices in the US as every other wealthy country does, prescription drug prices will continue to go up and an increasing number of Americans will suffer or die because they can’t afford their drugs. In the week ending July 5, pharmaceutical companies raised prices for 195 drugs, reports MM+M. Price increases were greater than the rate of inflation for more than half of these drugs.

    Eli Lilly, BMS, Pfizer, AbbVie, Novartis and GSK raised prescription drug prices of certain drugs around seven percent, more than twice the rate of inflation, which was three percent. Prices rose $620, on average. Many of these drugs were cancer drugs or drugs for people with autoimmune conditions.

    The price of Revlimid, a Celgene/Bristol Myers Squibb drug, which treats myelodysplastic syndrome, multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma increased seven percent. The drug price jumped from $83,322 to $89,155.

    Some drug prices rose only a small amount. But, we know that even a very small out-of-pocket cost increase for a drug means that some people will stop taking their drugs. These price hikes will not stop until Congress regulates drug prices.

    Medicare has begun negotiating the prices of ten high-priced drugs. We will know very shortly how the negotiated prices compare to what people pay in other wealthy countries for the same drugs. For reasons I cannot explain, people with Medicare will not benefit from these new prices until January 2026.

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  • JD Vance toes the GOP line on Social Security and Medicare

    JD Vance toes the GOP line on Social Security and Medicare

    J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, might be a smart man, but he does not appear smart enough to recognize the value of Social Security and Medicare. He also strongly opposes a woman’s right to an abortion. While he says he supports negotiating prescription drug prices, so did Trump at one time and then he didn’t. In short, we’re playing with fire if Donald Trump and JD Vance become our next president and vice president.

    Social Security and Medicare: To quote Nancy Altman, “Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance to be his vice president is more evidence that our earned Social Security benefits are not safe if they are elected. Though Trump said in 2016 that he would not cut Social Security, every one of his budgets included cuts. Moreover, he unilaterally undermined its dedicated revenue (fortunately only temporarily), but promised that he would make those cuts permanent, if re-elected. Cutting Social Security’s dedicated revenue produces automatic benefit cuts. As president, Trump surrounded himself with Mike Pence, Mick Mulvaney and a long list of others with long anti-Social Security histories. Vance is no different: he praised former Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to make massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and called Social Security and Medicare “roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity.”

    Prescription drugs: Back in 2022, Vance said he supported Medicare drug price negotiation. It’s not clear if he continues to hold that position, given that Trump does not appear to do so any longer. Vance and Trump also say they support allowing companies to import drugs from abroad.

    Abortion rights: Vance strongly opposes a woman’s right to choose. His expressed position against abortion rights is even stronger than Trump’s.

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  • Voters overwhelmingly support adding dental benefits to Medicare

    Voters overwhelmingly support adding dental benefits to Medicare

    Voters overwhelmingly support adding dental benefits to Medicare, reports BusinessWire. But, will Congress ever do so? Dentists are a big obstacle to receiving dental care as are the costs of dental care, yet the costs of not getting care for your teeth can be brutal.

    In a bipartisan poll, 92 percent of voters support adding a dental benefit to Medicare. And, for good reason. Your oral health can seriously affect your mental and physical health. Without proper dental care, millions of older adults have lost their teeth or struggle from gum disease and then struggle to get proper nutrition.

    Right now and historically, more than 30 million older adults and people with disabilities lack dental coverage.  A lot of the people who have dental coverage can’t use it, either because out-of-pocket costs are still prohibitively high or there are other limitations on their coverage. Although Medicare does not cover routine dental care and most other dental care, Medicare recently began to provide some cancer patients with some dental coverage.

    People often join Medicare Advantage plans because these plans often say they offer dental benefits. But, when you look under the hood, their dental benefits tend to be hollow. As a result, high percentages of people in Medicare Advantage plans have not gone to the dentist in the last year.

    Medicare dental benefits are a top priority for Democrats and Republicans alike. Americans support dental benefits as much as they support abortion rights.

    Congress is well aware of the need for a Medicare dental benefit, but has yet to pass a Medicare dental benefit. Senator Sanders introduced a bill in the Senate to expand Medicare dental benefits and improve them in Medicaid. The bill also gives dental benefits to veterans through the Veterans Administration.

    The dental industry, which does not want to see its rates regulated, opposes a dental benefit. Dentists already have a good supply of patients because there is a huge shortage of dentists in the US, with 58 million Americans living in dental deserts. And, they say they do not want to deal with Medicare’s administrative burdens.

    Increasingly, states are allowing dental therapists to treat cavities and other dental needs without supervision from dentists, as a way to help ensure people get dental care. Dental therapists can provide people with temporary crowns and remove teeth that have decayed. While they do not have as much training as a dentist, they have more training than a dental hygienist.

    Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and, Wisconsin all permit dental therapists to provide certain dental care.

    Hundreds of thousands of Americans travel out of the country for their dental care. Mexico offers dental care at far lower cost than in the US.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Older adults are extremely worried about affording health care

    Older adults are extremely worried about affording health care

    Older adults are extremely worried about affording their health care, concerned they will not be able to pay for the care they need, reports Judith Graham for KFF Health News. Health care affordability is top of mind for older adults as they see prices rising for all their basic needs.

    The National Poll on Healthy Aging found that people over 50 had three major health care concerns: costs, costs and more costs. The cost of medical care, the cost of long-term care and the cost of prescription drugs. People were “very concerned” about these costs.

    People surveyed had other concerns, also related to costs, including the cost of health insurance and Medicare and the cost of dental care. They were also concerned about financial scams.

    People were less concerned about loneliness, being overweight and age discrimination.

    It’s not surprising that older adults are so concerned about health care costs. Twenty-five percent of older adults depend entirely on Social Security for their income, which averages $1,913 a month for an individual. Ten percent of older adults have annual income below the federal poverty level.

    Older adults cannot rely on Medicare, be they in Traditional Medicare or a Medicare Advantage plan, to cover their dental, vision or hearing care or their long-term care. Medicare only covers limited care in a skilled nursing facility or at home if you meet certain criteria. And though Medicare Advantage plans like to tout the dental, vision or hearing care they cover, they tend to offer very limited benefits that are of little help to covering the costs of the services people need.

    People often go without dental care and eyeglasses since Medicare does not cover them. On average, people with Medicare spend about $7,000 a year on medical care. Younger people spend about $4,900 on average.

    People also struggle to pay for long-term care. Nursing home care costs $104,000 on average in 2023. Care in an assisted living facility costs $64,200 on average in 2023. Services at home from home-health aides cost $75,500 a year on average.

    A large proportion of older adults–17 million–live on less than $30,120 a year ($40, 880 for a couple,) twice the federal poverty level. After you pay for Medicare Part B and D premiums and a Medicare supplemental policy, millions of people with Medicare have spent more than 4o percent of their monthly Social Security check, about $468 out of $1,121.

    Medicare Savings Programs can help cover Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket costs. You can apply through your Medicaid office. You qualify based on your income and assets, but many people are unaware of the programs. Six million people qualify who are not enrolled, according to Graham.

    You can check out additional programs that lower your health care costs here.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Donald Trump’s threat to Medicare and Social Security

    Donald Trump’s threat to Medicare and Social Security

    Donald Trump was the worst president for seniors in the history of the nation. That is not hyperbole. Alarmingly, if elected again, he will be even worse—and, worryingly, more effective.

    When Trump ran for president in 2016, he claimed he would be the one Republican not to cut our earned benefits but, when he actually became president, every single one of his budgets proposed deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as well as Medicaid.

    When Trump couldn’t get the cuts enacted, he employed the old tactic of “starve the beast.” Figuring tax cuts are easier to enact than benefit cuts, he cut income taxes which help to fund Medicare and Medicaid, and sought to defund Social Security, which has its own dedicated revenue source.

    To advance his goal of undermining Social Security, Donald Trump grabbed the questionable power to go after its dedicated revenue unilaterally—something without precedent. Because Trump was limited to executive action, he was able to only defer the revenue, but he made clear that he would not just defer the revenue, but eliminate it, if he were re-elected. Insufficient dedicated revenue leads to automatic cuts. Conveniently, automatic cuts means there is no one to clearly be held accountable.

    Trump’s goals to undermine these programs, so vital to seniors, have not changed. Trump continues to claim he won’t cut benefits despite his record to the contrary, but tells the truth from time to time. Moreover, he is reportedly considering, once again, defunding Social Security, if he has the chance. Trump also plans to continue to give his billionaire friends massive tax giveaways.

    And we know what those cuts will look like. The Republican Study Committee, which includes 80 percent of all House Republicans and 100 percent of House Republican leadership, releases a budget every year. Every year, it contains deep, draconian cuts and radical transformative proposals for Social Security. Indeed, its recently-released FY 2025 budget slashes Social Security’s already inadequate benefits by $1.5 trillion in just the first ten years. In fact, it cuts Social Security by $73 billion in the first year alone.

    These are much deeper cuts than are necessary to eliminate Social Security’s modest projected shortfall. And they would occur much sooner than if Congress did nothing whatsoever! Even worse, the Republican proposal would radically transform Social Security, ending it as we know it.

    Social Security provides wage-related benefits designed to maintain one’s standard of living when wages are lost in the event of old age, disability, or death. Today’s extreme Republicans want to instead provide only subsistence-level benefits, designed to barely keep beneficiaries above abject poverty. And these radicals propose to privatize Social Security and Medicare, on top of that.

    For years, politicians have talked about giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. Biden got it done. Thanks to Biden, out-of-pocket insulin costs have been capped at $35 per month, hearing aids are cheaper, and inhaler prices are lower. If Trump wins a second term, he has made clear he will seek to repeal those reforms, just as he sought to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Nor will Medicaid be spared.

    None of this should be a surprise. Before running for president, Trump slandered Social Security by calling it a Ponzi scheme – an illegal enterprise used to dupe and defraud the unsuspecting. He supported privatizing Social Security and raising the retirement age, with the condescending remark, “how many times will you really want to take that trailer to the Grand Canyon?”

    Before running, Trump praised proposals by former Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan that would have destroyed Medicare by turning it into a voucher program, forcing seniors to fend for themselves in a hostile market.

    And there’s more evidence of Donald Trump’s true plans. Look who Trump surrounded – and continues to surround – himself with. Everyone around Trump is hostile to these programs.

    In 2016, Donald Trump picked Mike Pence to be his running mate, despite the fact that Pence had a clear record of favoring cuts to these programs, including raising the retirement age and privatizing our earned benefits. Pence wouldn’t help Trump steal the 2020 election so he is being replaced – but not because of his policy views on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those who are reportedly being considered have as hostile or even worse views than Pence.

    And Trump’s other appointments were no better. Just to name two, Trump appointed extreme Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid opponent Mick Mulvaney as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and later chief of staff. Mark Meadows, another Trump chief of staff (currently under indictment) also has a long record of supporting massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

    Perhaps even more concerning than Trump’s hostility to programs that are vital to seniors is his utter disregard for their health and well-being. It was seniors who overwhelmingly bore the brunt of Trump’s completely incompetent handling of the COVID pandemic. Too many Americans, disproportionately seniors, died because of Trump.

    Rather than deal effectively with the pandemic, Trump’s administration shockingly used it to further Trump’s goal of undermining Social Security. At the height of the pandemic, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner proposed pressuring desperate Americans, thrown out of work because of the impact and dangers of COVID, to trade their earned Social Security benefits for upfront, immediate cash. Fortunately, it went nowhere, but did show a single-minded effort to rip away the protections of Social Security despite where the focus should have been – on saving lives.

    It is essential that the American people not be fooled by the rhetoric. Trump has shown he understands how unpopular cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare, cutting Medicaid, and raising drug prices are with everyone but his billionaire donors. But he showed early on that he understood the politics. In 2011, for example, Trump told Sean Hannity that Republicans “are going to lose elections” if they “fall into the Democratic trap” of advocating cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid without bipartisan cover.

    So don’t be fooled. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and drug prices are on November’s ballot. Donald Trump will be more effective this time around. The choice is clear: Trump and his Republican allies in Congress want to cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut Medicaid, and increase the already-huge profits of drug companies while giving tax breaks to Big Pharma and their other billionaire friends. Democrats want to expand Social Security, expand Medicare, lower drug prices, and force billionaires and multinational corporations to pay their fair share.

    For the sake of all of our economic security, it is essential that the American people, and seniors in particular, understand this fundamental difference between the two parties and vote accordingly.

    [This post was originally published on Common Dreams.]

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