Some states have opted out of ObamaCare but this week seniors on social security are learning this will cost them $1200 per year in reduced payments and the republicans who thought they were getting away politically by sticking with the outrageous minority that opposes universal healthcare are going to hear from the angry seniors who always vote.
If you missed it, the United States, which has more billionaires than any other country, is also the only civilized/first world country where you can go bankrupt trying to stay alive and couldn’t (before the Affordable Care act/ObamaCare) even buy health insurance if you actually need it because you have some serious illness. Even most communist countries used to have universal health care.
Of course emergency medical care is always available to everyone and the cost of the uninsured is simply passed on to those who pay or have insurance, one big reason for the high cost of medical services – many people don’t have insurance, can’t get it, and can’t pay otherwise. The same goes for all those people who run up giant medical expenses and can’t pay them. Everyone else gets higher bills because they couldn’t buy insurance.
If you haven’t heard about this big cut in Social Security payments it is no wonder; I track this sort of thing and hadn’t heard a whisper about this giant new “tax” on seniors applied only in those states which failed to take Federal medical funds. The refusal seemed strange to me on many levels including the fact that states which complain about excessive Federal regulations and demand states rights are refusing to manage their own health care networks, instead loading it onto the Feds who they say they want out of their State’s business.
But something I feel certain about is that 99% of seniors getting those Social Security checks each month didn’t know their checks would be cut in those states that opted out.
In Pennsylvania specifically, I’ve seen the paperwork, and seniors will have their monthly check cut by about $100 because the states will no longer have Federal funding to cover part of Medicare. Notices went out this week in Pennsylvania where a $995 monthly SS benefit will be cut to $880.
Those elderly poor who are already barely getting by, forced to choose in some instances between heat and food in winter months, will be in dire straits indeed when their yearly benefits are cut by about $1,200.
When they get their yearly SS benefit statement they will learn the sad truth.
Food stamp funding has also been cut here.
Write your state representative and thank him. Better yet, stop by his local office each day with all your friends to warm up in his government supported office. Perhaps they will offer you some hot coffee already bought with government funds. And, by the way, he or she has free insurance, a per diem for doing his/her job, and a pension.
Another consequence in some states might be that cutting SS payments by 10% could just bring some households below the poverty level who were previously denied food stamps, free cell phones, rent and utility assistance simply because their total income is now low enough to let them qualify for benefits which are several times the $100 they loose.
That could cost some states a considerable additional amount.
