The Republicans are reassuring the voters who are worried about Paul Ryan’s Medicare “reform” that they’re not getting stiffed — “just” their kids.
It’s a scam, of course. You do understand what Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan is, right? Groupons for healthcare! We’re supposed to be thrilled at getting healthcare for 50% off (or whatever their Deal of The Day is). Who doesn’t love a deal, right?
They think this is a brilliant plan. They’re wrong. They’re forgetting about women. We’re the ones who always know when a deal isn’t a good deal.
The women 45 and older who, statistically speaking, are the ones dealing with the brunt of their elderly parents: overseeing medical care, trying to figure out what’s best for their parents and wrestling with the Medicare paperwork.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that Medicare made my parents’ final years far more comfortable than it would have been without it. Yes, my dad had a union pension and some investments, but that just covered the basics. Without Medicare, my parents — a father with pancreatic cancer and a mother with congestive heart failure and an eroding spinal column that required several surgeries — would have been impoverished.
And if the women who are dealing with their parents are anything like me, we’re not only thankful our parents had Medicare, we’re counting on it for ourselves, because we don’t want to be a burden to our children.
We also want that security for them.
Now, amoral politicians have one serious handicap: They assume everyone else is as selfish and uncaring as they are. They really don’t understand mothers.
They think we don’t care about our kids? Morons.
Every chance I get, I fight like hell for Medicare and Social Security, even though my own kids don’t even believe it’ll be there. One of them even believes the conservative propaganda that Baby Boomers selfishly bankrupted the country.
I fight anyway. I’m a mother. I know that even if I’m not here to see it, they’ll thank me later.
And so will my grandchildren.
Fight the good fight, Susie — thank you for what you do here.
Listening to the few Repubs who held town hall meetings and got recorded, they are baldly and evilly lying to their constituents. And fooling some of them (as Obama fooled many of his supporters — it’s hard to accept one has made a huge mistake with one’s vote; it takes time to sink in) quite effectively. A definitely elderly sounding woman agreed with her Repub rip-off artist, saying to the reporter that she understood “something” had to be done, and this gives people who are younger time to prepare for…paying a shitload more (she didn’t say that).
And no one on the incomes that the lower 60% of earners in this nation are getting can in any way save enough to be prepared for what hits people as they age. We are going back to pre-LBJ times, folks, without the good eocnomy of the 50’s.
See Susie’s post about rents taking 50% of income for many renters. Think food price increases, thanks partly to hedgies and other speculators. Think energy costs. (Damn it, Obama — why didn’t you go for jobs AND renewable energy programs, you corporate owned puppet.)
Hard times a comin’, voters. Very hard times. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.