What happens in the Paul Ryan End Medicare Plan when your private employer does not offer retirees medical benefits? Here's what GOP Representative Rob Woodall of Georgia's 7th Congressional District had to say:
"You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, 'When do I decide I'm going to take care of me?'"
As if the woman hadn't been paying into Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid through her years of work at a private company. Someone needs to explain to these fools that the woman did take care of herself by working and paying into the program. A program enacted through popular legislation, executive signature, and supported over judicial challenges since the 1930's.
And that GOP representative has the temerity to call her a freeloader in front of a town hall meeting. Because that's what he did. And the "handout" narrative is so deep at this point, he gets applause for saying it. As if Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all programs forced upon the middle class by a government controlled by a bunch of laughing, lazy, good for nothing layabouts in their Welfare Cadillacs.
Every place I have worked professionally has employed some measure of custodial staff (mostly through contractors) that show up to work at crappy times, work long hours on their feet, pitch in to help other members of their working families, and still have to recieve some sort of food stamp benefit to make ends meet. I can guaran-damn-tee you that the "private company" they work for doesn't offer them retirement benefits. And they're going to be shit out of luck and a burden on their families once they aren't able to work anymore - because they're going to work until their health gives out. They have no real recourse for retirement or medical care once retired, after all.
Somebody needs to explain to me how, exactly, they haven't been taking care of themselves after paying into their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits their whole working lives. Somebody needs to explain to me how the Ryan plan deals with those people. Because I haven't heard a good explanation so far.
I've been trying not to drink too deeply of the "Ending Medicare Forever to Pay for Our Newly Minted Feudal System of Subsidizing the Already Uber Wealthy" Demagougery flavored Kool-Aid, but at what point should I start taking this more seriously? At what point do I have to listen to the very words of the GOP Congressmen themselves when they say "Ending Medicare Forever" and question the morality or philosophy or work ethics of people who are depending on the system they've paid into like they were supposed to.
At what point can I begin to accept that Ending Medicare Forever to pay for tax breaks is not a demogouging fear tactic to win elections, but the GOP's stated philosophical and legislative goal.
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