Obama's 'First Priority', Cut Medicare While Unemployment Is Exploding Its Costs

June 12, 2009 (LPAC)—All Americans have now heard, from the "end of life directive" President, Barack Obama, in Green Bay, that U.S. healthcare costs are exploding and have to be cut down, with the first priority being to cut Medicare and Medicaid spending. The mantra of "getting control over exploding healthcare costs" is sung by Obama's healthcare henchmen Peter Orszag, Larry Summers, and Ezekiel Emanuel in every public event, presentation, and report.      

But what's actually "exploding" is not healthcare, which the White House is ordering be cut down by Congress, but unemployment, which the White House is effectively doing very little to cut.      

As of May, the actual number of Americans wanting full-time employment and unable to get it, reached more than 30 million, verging on one-fifth of the entire U.S. civilian work force. Even the official Federal unemployment rates in May had reached 17.5% in manufacturing, and 19% in construction—the very economic sectors which would have to be mobilized for the United States to recover from the ongoing economic collapse.      

Those who've lost full-time employment have also lost their health insurance, in most cases.      

The result? the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that for 2009, the healthcare expenditures of HMOs and private health insurance companies, far from "exploding," will fall to a 15-year low.      

Medicare and Medicaid are bearing the full force of this collapse in health coverage by HMOs and insurance companies. The same Federal Center estimates that combined Federal and State Medicare/Medicaid spending in 2009 will have risen to $1.2 trillion, 20% more than in 2008. Now, because their tax revenues are falling sharply in the collapse, states are beginning to eliminate Medicaid coverage for large numbers of lower-income residents when their new fiscal year begins on July 1: California is on the verge of an immense cut-off from health insurance of 2 million people including 1 million children; Minnesota is about to eliminate care for 34,000 in its state Medicaid program; etc.      

Thus the burden of necessity for Federal Medicare/Medicaid coverage rises even further, as the states default.      

And this—not the $3-400 billion a year "executive overhead" of the HMOs—is what Obama now prioritizes to cut, immediately, by over $100 billion, and by $5-600 billion in ten years. To do so now, will add medical denial and death to joblessness, for millions of poor and newly-poor Americans.