The Future of Medicaid

Medicaid, as Ned's friends know well, is a program that assists very low income Americans to pay their often outrageous and grievous medical bills. What many of his friends may not know is how much of Medicaid goes to pay for nursing care, most of this in for-profit "homes" that cater to the very frail and Alzheimers-ridden of our very elderly. Now, the Sneering Plutocracy need read no farther, because this program does not affect them, since they have enough filthy lucre, flayed from the backs of employees and shareholders, to pay for anything. No, Medicaid pays for, we are given to understand, about half of the nursing home bills of the very elderly. Without it, they will simply be thrown out onto the streets to starve, or dumped onto their children or relatives. In this context, Ned points to seven years ago today, September 7 2005, when 32 residents of a nursing home in New Orleans DROWNED as they were not evacuated during Katrina, one of our Bush legacies. Most of these pathetic oldsters were of course on Medicaid.
And so, friends, if the GOP have their way and turn Medicaid into a political football funded by "block grants" to the states, expect your frail parents to have to exhaust their life savings (and your inheritance) in order to qualify for Medicaid, and then to be thrown out into the streets when their block grant runs out.
So we pass another milestone in The Greatest Country That Ever Was Or Ever Can Possibly Be In The  Whole World.