Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security
The Budget proposal for 2012 would privatize Medicare, ending the program as we know it. It would turn Medicare into a voucher program, which would put health insurance companies between you and your doctor, eliminate the free choice of doctors traditional Medicare beneficiaries now enjoy, and eliminate guaranteed access to care. In the 10th district of Ohio alone, the proposal would increase prescription drug costs for nearly 7,000 people who fall into the “Donut Hole,” lapse in coverage built into the Medicare prescription drug plan. It would also eliminate new preventive care benefits for 106,000 Medicare beneficiaries in the district.
The best way to make Medicare sustainable is to eliminate the very reason health care costs are so much more than any other country in the world by far - health insurance companies. Many analyses have shown that Medicare for All would save enough money that we could cover everyone in the U.S. for all medically necessary services without spending any more than we currently spend on health care.
The Budget proposal also calls for major cuts to Medicaid, which currently provides health care to 94,000 in the 10th district. As with Medicare, the proposal would eliminate the guaranteed access to care that low income families need. Instead, according the Congressional Budget office, “Because of the magnitude of the reduction in federal Medicaid spending under the proposal ... states would face significant challenges in achieving sufficient cost savings.” They “could reduce the size of their Medicaid programs by cutting payment rates for doctors, hospitals, or nursing homes; reducing the scope of benefits covered; or limiting eligibility.” In the 10th district of Ohio, coverage would be pared back for 10,500 dual eligible seniors and individuals with disabilities who need Medicaid to help pay for their Medicare coverage. It would threaten nursing home care for 3,100, reduce the health care of 53,000 children, including 2,800 newborns each year, and could cut payments to hospitals that cover 23,000 emergency room visits each year.
Efforts to undermine Social Security entail restricting access to it or restricting the level of benefits. Social Security provides monthly benefits to more to more than $25 billion each month to more than 2 million Ohioans, over half of whom are retired. For many elderly Ohioans, it is also an essential bulwark against poverty: without Social Security, the poverty rate among the elderly in Ohio would increase from 8%, where it is today, to just under 47%. Social Security also provides an essential safety net for more than 275,500 disabled workers in Ohio, and about 350,000 of Ohio’s children rely on Social Security income as their most important source of income. In the 10th district alone, more than 18% of the roughly 600,000 residents received approximately $1.46 billion in benefits in 2008.
Proposals have been floated to privatize Social Security, under the guise of “making it more viable.” The main theme of the current crop of proposals to “fix” Social Security would shift funds—and current surpluses—from the Social Security trust fund into private accounts, leaving retirement security vulnerable to the whims of the same markets that brought us our current economic recession. The claimed purpose of these proposals is to fix the “crisis” of Social Security and to give Americans the choice to save their pension money as they see fit. But in fact, these privatization measures would only use surpluses in the trust fund to cover the cost of extending tax cuts for the wealthiest (those with incomes greater than $250,000 annually), leaving Americans, and especially Ohio’s most vulnerable populations, with a disaster.
I will fight to protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
If you need assistance with the Social Security Administration, please visit the Services for You section of the website.
Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee 
Education and Workforce Committee 
