The Real Villainy in RyanDoesn'tCare: Slowly Choking Off Medicaid

Paul Ryan wants to "modernize Medicaid." Shrink it and drown it in a bathtub is more like it.

Paul Ryan, hoping to emulate a Trump superpower, decides he, too, can lie
his way to the top of the food chain, stepping on the dead bodies
of the poor along the way.

The real deviltry in the GOP ACA repeal bill is the largely unnecessary redesign of Medicaid, a program begun under Lyndon Johnson and a linchpin of healthcare services to the poor, pregnant women, and elderly poor long-term care.

Ryan Obviously reasons, "Why just walk the ACA back when we can slip in the eventual destruction of Medicaid?" Why, indeed, Mr. Speaker. You have such a rare opportunity to be truly heartless and, admit it, downright evil.

WaPo lays it out:

The proposed American Health Care Act would break with the government’s half-century compact with states in helping to finance Medicaid, which covers 68 million low-income people, including children, pregnant women and those who are elderly or disabled.The House GOP’s legislation would end the system in which the government pays each state a specific share of all its Medicaid costs and instead would provide a fixed sum for each beneficiary — no matter how much or little of the costs that funding covered.

It's bad enough that the GOP wants to roll back a successful expansion of healthcare -- and an original Republican plan as it was! -- and worse that they'd knock healthcare back to well before the ACA to cover even fewer.

The modern GOP likes to claim the mantle of the party of states' rights. In This case, giving Medicaid dollars in block grants -- that are often then misappropriated by other, non-health-related programs -- is tantamount to driving future state budgets to the brink. States' rights indeed. The right to have your state's citizens suffer and die all the sooner.