Do you want fries with your Mighty Dog?

If Congressional Republicans get their way on their plans to convert Medicare from a guaranteed health care program for the elderly and disabled into a voucher program, what will that mean to people in our area?

House Republicans have already voted their approval for a budget plan that would end Medicare as national single-payer health insurance. Instead, eligible persons would receive vouchers they could use to cover part of the cost of private insurance – assuming there would be any affordable private insurance for such high risk patients.

House Democrats have just created an interactive database that allows you to see, District by District, what will happen under the Republican plan and how many people will be affected.        

There are 87,000 in the 2^nd District aged 54 and older – they would continue to stay on Medicare, but the Republican plans will cost them a lot of money. Over the next ten years, this group will lose $218 million worth of preventative care (no longer covered) and $79 million worth of prescription drug coverage.

Up until a few years ago, this country placed a high priority on making sure the elderly do not end up leaving out their lives desperate and destitute. We created a “three-legged stool” approach to ending poverty among the elderly. One leg was defined benefit pensions – all but gone now in the private section and under extreme attack in the public sector.

The second leg was savings. But 401(k)s and other savings tools looked good in theory, but not so good when employers (e.g. Enron) went bust and took their employees’ 401(k)s with them. And just about everyone’s 401(k) crashed when the market did in 2008.

The third leg was government help – Social Security, Medicare and other government programs, such as Food Stamps, subsidized housing, etc. This third and final leg is targeted by the Tea Party-driven Republican chain saw.

Over the coming weeks, we will see a growing list of Republican candidates lining up to run against President Obama, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. Jim Langevin in 2012.

Unless you prefer to learn how to cook using Mighty Dog Beef as a substitute for hamburger, I suggest you carefully examine where these candidates stand on Medicare and Social Security.

Author: Will Collette

Charlestown is in Rhode Island’s Second Congressional District. The new Medicare database shows that 400,000 people in the 2^nd District under the age of 54 would lose the guaranteed coverage Medicare currently provides (they’ll get vouchers instead).