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Just think for a moment about the 55-year-old Tea Party activist who today is caught up in the excitement over Rep. Paul Ryan’s “bold” Republican budget. Picture the activist adjusting his tri-corner hat, waving his yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, and thrilled that finally someone is getting serious about dismantling the socialist tyranny of Medicare.
Assuming the Tea Partier gets his way and sees Ryan’s budget enacted, it would certainly be one of the happiest days of his life, with “liberty” winning out over the hated “guv-mint.” Along with Ryan's $4 trillion in domestic spending cuts, the detested “Obamacare,” with all its red tape restricting the freedoms of the insurance companies, would be gone, too. Then, let’s dial ahead a decade or so when the activist is reaching retirement age. Let’s assume he was lucky enough to have had a job that offered health insurance, which enabled him to handle his diabetes and to get his wife treated for her cancer. But now he is heading off into the cherished “free market” with what amounts to an $8,000 government voucher to buy health insurance. The only problem is that $8,000 doesn’t get you very far with the private insurance companies, whose principal responsibility – as any Ayn Rand fan knows – is to return a hefty profit to shareholders. For someone over 65 with a checkered health history, the insurance companies won’t exactly be lining up to take on his business. The Tea Partier can expect to pay – on top his $8,000 government “premium support” – perhaps $1,000 a month or more, along with a hefty deductible, perhaps another $5,000, and after that, co-pays. Plus, since thankfully Obamacare was repealed by Congress (or struck down by Republican justices), the insurance companies don’t have to cover any of those pesky preexisting conditions. So, his diabetes drugs are excluded. And if his wife’s cancer flares up again, that treatment would have to come out of his pocket as well. Plus, since the insurance companies were liberated from Obamacare’s oppressive regulations requiring that 80 percent or so of premiums go to actual health care, the industry will have every right to short-change its customers, while paying fat salaries to top executives and enjoying lavish corporate perks. And, as happened to pretty much everyone in America, the Tea Partier's employer would have dumped the old-fashioned pension plan, replacing it with a skimpier 401(k) policy. So, there’s only a small pot of money that he managed to squirrel away, along with a modest stipend from Social Security. His house equity would have taken a big hit, too, thanks to the Republicans eliminating the detestable Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Home prices never would have bounced back. So, the aging activist will soon have some tough choices as he enjoys his freedom to negotiate with giant insurance companies holding all the cards. Assuming he can convince one of the companies to take him on, he will quickly deplete his retirement fund for the premiums. Out of pocket, he’ll also have to handle the costs from those preexisting conditions. There will be little left for food, travel or anything else. Not too far into his “golden years,” our Tea Partier will find his money gone but his health needs growing. Then, he’ll have the freedom to turn to his children and beg them to chip in for his and his wife’s health expenses, even if that means deferring their own dreams and ignoring the needs of the grandkids. Or, he can choose to go without medical treatments, hoping that his wife’s cancer won’t spread too quickly and that his diabetes won’t require amputations. He might not even be able to afford the amputations, so the real freedom that he’ll face is the freedom to die prematurely. Our Tea Partier will face another indignity. Despite his personal sacrifices, he won’t even have the pleasure of knowing that the federal budget is finally in balance and the national debt is getting whittled down. That’s because while Ryan’s 2012 budget got rid of Medicare for people who were then 55 or younger, much of the savings went to reducing the tax rates for millionaires and billionaires, to 25 percent from 35 percent, the lowest rate since the early days of the Great Depression. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center puts the cost of the Ryan tax cuts for the rich at $2.9 trillion over the next decade. Ryan’s 2012 proposal doesn’t envision balancing the budget for almost 30 years. So, as the Tea Partier hobbles through his late 60s, suffering through insurance-induced poverty and anticipating an early death, the prospect of the government having its fiscal house in order will still be a hazy future promise, maybe a decade or more still to go. The Tea Partier, however, will be able to take some solace in knowing that he contributed to the luxury of the moneyed interests and multinational corporations. Freed from government rules and enjoying historically low tax rates, the rich will be the nation’s new royalty, able to hire servants at sub-minimum wage (since, thank goodness, those oppressive wage laws would be repealed, too). Indeed, the excess wealth of the wealthy might be the only hope for our Tea Partier. He might get to work for one of America’s “winners” as a pool boy or a gardener, although there will be desperate competition from many able-bodied people for those lowly jobs. More likely, our Tea Partier will just have to accept his fate of an early and ignominious demise. He will die a mostly anonymous death. Neither the Koch brothers nor the Murdoch family will waste any of their precious money on flowers or a card. So, pity the poor Tea Partier! [For more on these topics, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a two-book set for the discount price of only $19. For details, click here.] Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here. |
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