Tag: medicare
Elon Musk

Top Treasury Official Quits As Musk Seeks Control Over Social Security And Medicare Payments

Allies of billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk are reportedly attempting to gain control of the U.S. Treasury's payment systems that handle roughly $6 trillion in payments every year. Now, the top career official at the Treasury Department is resigning.

That's according to a Friday article in the Washington Post, which reported that surrogates of Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," or "DOGE" (which is not yet an official government agency authorized by Congress) are now aiming to control the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). The BFS oversees payment systems that make trillions of dollars in payments annually to households and businesses, as well as to Americans receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits.

David A. Lebryk, who President Donald Trump appointed as acting Treasury secretary after taking office, suddenly retired following an apparent "dispute" with Musk's associates. After Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was confirmed by the U.S. Senate earlier this week, Lebryk stepped out of the acting secretary role, though he still remained at the Treasury Department until Friday.

Lebryk's retirement announcement came after decades of service in the Treasury Department under presidents of both parties and 11 different Treasury secretaries. DOGE officials have reportedly been trying to control the BFS' payment systems since after Trump's election victory, and doubled down on those requests after Trump's inauguration. Lebryk's departure was described as a "shock" to Treasury Department employees, who said he had a "sterling" reputation at the agency.

“Please know that your work makes a difference and is so very important to the country. It has been an honor to work alongside you," Lebryk wrote in an email to colleagues. “Our work may be unknown to most of the public, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t exceptionally important.”

BFS' payment systems made more than 1.3 billion payments totaling roughly $5.4 trillion in fiscal year 2023 alone, according to the Post, with every payment made on time. Mark Mazur, who was a senior Treasury Department official under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said attempts to seize control of the BFS for political purposes is unprecedented.

“This is a mechanical job — they pay Social Security benefits, they pay vendors, whatever. It’s not one where there’s a role for nonmechanical things, at least from the career standpoint. Your whole job is to pay the bills as they’re due,” Mazur told the Post. “It’s never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda... You have to really put bad intentions in place for that to be the case.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

GOP Governor Urges Medicare, Social Security To Be Cut And 'Privatized'

GOP Governor Urges Medicare, Social Security To Be Cut And 'Privatized'

New Hampshire Republican Governor Chris Sununu is bullish on a billionaire-led effort to cut social safety nets for working-class Americans — including the political third rail of Social Security.

Semafor reporter David Weigel recently interviewed Sununu, who is retiring after his successor, Republican Governor-elect Kelly Ayotte, assumes office on January 8. The Granite State governor expressed optimism about billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," or "DOGE," (which is not yet an actual federal agency authorized by Congress) which he is co-leading with billionaire pharmaceutical investor Vivek Ramaswamy.

While Musk and Ramaswamy's advisory panel is expected to recommend the elimination of various labor and environmental regulations and the firing of thousands of public sector workers, Sununu is particularly hoping they will pursue cuts to both Medicare and Social Security. Sununu compared Musk and Ramaswamy's efforts to former President George W. Bush's failed proposal to privatize Social Security in 2005.

"George W. Bush was absolutely right, and he’s been proven right time and time again," Sununu said. "You have to move that retirement age. That’s just so obvious... Whether it’s 62 or 64 or 65, find the right number that works. Do it for the next generation. Allow some of this to be privatized. Those models have proven to be absolutely rock solid, and work."

"George W. Bush was a couple of senators away from getting this done," he added. "So many of America’s problems would be cured."

Sununu specifically argued that the proposed austerity measures were necessary, saying: "In about eight years, Social Security benefits drop to 83 percent, Medicare goes bankrupt [and] the interest rates come due." The first point seems to come from the May 2024 Social Security trustees report, which states that the fund reserves that help pay for Social Security benefits will be spent down by 2035.

However, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and others have pointed out, Social Security could be made solvent for decades by simply removing the cap on paying into the fund. Currently, the super-rich only have to pay a 6.2 percent payroll tax of the first $132,900 they earn in a year into Social Security. But Sanders argues if that cap were removed, Social Security benefits would be fully paid for 52 more years. The Vermont senator added that seniors who earn less than $16,000 per year would get an additional $1,300 per month in benefits if that cap were removed.

"When Republicans say they want to run back George W. Bush’s plan to destroy Social Security, believe them," Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson told AlterNet. "Elon Musk's slash and burn commission is a transparent plot to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid."

Like Social Security, Medicare is also not a contributor to the federal deficit. Just as both employers and employees contribute 6.2 percent toward Social Security, they also contribute a 1.45 percent Medicare tax from every paycheck to keep the program funded. And unlike Social Security, there’s no wage cap on paying into that fund.

While Medicare's Hospital Insurance fund is expected to reach its limit in 2026, this can be remedied by — as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) recommended in 2019 — repealing language in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that eliminated the individual mandate built into the Affordable Care Act. The individual mandate decreased the number of uninsured patients, which decreased the amount Medicare paid for uncompensated care. The CBPP also called to reinstate the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which was projected to help slow the growth of increasing costs.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

RFK Jr. Should Be Treated Like The Plague He Is

RFK Jr. Should Be Treated Like The Plague He Is

At a New York rally in October, Donald Trump promised the crowd that if elected, he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "go wild" on health, food and medicines. It delighted the crowd, who imagined they were cheering for better health and better medicine. They're in for a bitter surprise.

Some who should know better are offering cautious approval.

Well, he has a point about fluoride in the water, a Washington Post columnist conceded. American health care has "become too reliant on treating every matter of discomfort with a pill instead of tackling questions about environment, culture and behavior," mused a New York Times contributor.

They seem to think we can take what we like from the Kennedy buffet and leave the rest. Not so. If he is confirmed, we won't get only the three percent of Kennedy ideas that are sane; we will be saddled with the 97 percent that are deranged. It isn't that Kennedy is merely misinformed — though he is. It's that he's an active agent of misinformation. That's a character problem. Hiring him to run health policy for this country is like hiring an arsonist to head the fire department.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases to which human beings are susceptible. It used to kill about 500 in the U.S. every year. In 2019, Samoa was experiencing a spike in measles cases due to a mistake and a lie. The mistake was made in 2018 by two nurses who mixed ingredients for a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine incorrectly, causing the deaths of two infants. (They pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.)

The lies came soon after, encouraged by RFK Jr., who has consistently propagated the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism, peanut allergies, and other ailments. Though he now denies that he was ever "anti-vaccine," Kennedy declared as recently as July that "there's no vaccine that is safe and effective," and, in another interview: "I do believe that autism does come from vaccines."

Many Samoans had seen the film Vaxxed, produced by two of Kennedy's anti-vaccine allies, which alleged that the MMR vaccine was dangerous, which led to an uptick in parents refusing to get their kids vaccinated. After the deaths of the two infants, RFK Jr. threw gasoline on the fire with a visit to the island in 2019, meeting with local vaccine opponents and voicing suspicions that the MMR vaccine had contained a mutant strain and had caused the then-burgeoning epidemic. Eventually, more than three percdnt of the whole population of the island was infected. For babies aged 6 to 11 months, that figure was closer to 20 percent. More than 150 of them died.

When you think of RFK Jr., think of rows of tiny coffins.

Anti-vaccine activism has been the hallmark of Kennedy's career, but it by no means exhausts his appetite for crackpottery. He has sworn to end the FDA's "war" on raw milk. Listen, if Kennedy wants to drink the stuff himself, it's a free country and he can afford as many cows as he wants. But how did we reach a point in our history when it became necessary to argue that pasteurizing milk is a sound health measure? Unpasteurized milk and cheese has been implicated in many recent outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli, and other foodborne illnesses. It can also transmit bird flu.

RFK Jr. has speculated that Wi-Fi causes cancer and "leaky brain," that antidepressants are responsible for school shootings.

Nor is it just Kennedy's attraction to doltish ideas that should set off alarms. It's his tendency to imagine sinister forces controlling things. He believes the CIA killed his uncle, John F. Kennedy, as well as his father, Robert F. Kennedy.

It wasn't enough for him to claim that the COVID-19 vaccine was the "deadliest vaccine ever made"; he also suggested that the virus itself was somehow "targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese." He is on record supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin instead of vaccines.

As secretary of health and human services, RFK Jr. would have supervisory authority over the FDA, CDC, NIH, the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and the Indian Health Service, among other agencies. He has suggested that 600 employees of the NIH, which oversees vaccine development, should be fired immediately and replaced by his own choices.

Some Pollyannas imagine that Kennedy's leadership might mean healthier eating habits. That would be desirable (if unlikely), but it substitutes hope for analysis. Kennedy goes on jags about healthy eating at times. He has inveighed against ultraprocessed foods (which isn't crazy) but then lurches into jeremiads about seed oils "poisoning" our bodies. For the record, canola, sunflower and soybean oils are safe (though fat, like anything else, is best in moderation). If Kennedy wants to fry his potatoes in beef tallow and wash it down with raw milk, more power to him, but under no circumstances should any sane person take his health advice. Nor should any senator consent to give him authority over government agencies that regulate our food and medicines.

He sees himself as a knight errant, but unfortunately, his "cures" involve reversing some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history: pasteurization, vaccines, and the scientific method of determining truth.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Even Murdoch's New York Post Mocks Appointment Of 'Fruitcake' RFK Jr.

Even Murdoch's New York Post Mocks Appointment Of 'Fruitcake' RFK Jr.

It takes a cracked mindset to name a cracked pot with no scientific training to head the agency that oversees 11 agencies tasked with protecting Americans' health. They include the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Medicare and Medicaid.

Donald Trump's pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services suggests utter lack of concern for the well-being of everyday Americans. "Bobby," as Trump affectionately calls him, could threaten cutting-edge research into cancer cures, for heaven's sake.

Trump is clearly enjoying his latest clown show, urging Bobby to "go wild on health care."

Expect Bobby and his Trump-delivered supporters to accuse scientists and public health officials of being part of some dark elite bent on forcing vaccinations. They will undoubtedly find innocent missteps during the COVID epidemic to inflate their accusations.

Believe me, the elite doesn't care. The elite — which I define not as the rich, but as the informed — know who has medical expertise, and it's not this weirdo who says that a worm has been eating his brain. The elite know to get their shots.

RFK Jr. advocates drinking raw milk, which can contain harmful bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Go ahead. Drink raw milk if you want. Me and mine will pass.

RFK Jr. insists that current levels of fluoride in the drinking water lower IQ. Little evidence supports that, but lots of data show that fluoride reduces cavities. Trump says removing fluoride "sounds OK to me."

The New York Post has been one of Trump's bouncier cheerleaders, but it found no wit in the pick of this fruitcake to head HHS. I quote its editorial:

"We sat down with RFK Jr. back in May 2023. ... When it came to the topic (of health), his views were a head-scratching spaghetti of what we can only call warped conspiracy theories, and not just on vaccines. ... 'Pesticides, cellphones, ultrasound' could be driving an upswing in Tourette syndrome and peanut allergies. ... A radical, prolonged and confused transition ordered by a guy like RFK Jr., who will use his high office to spout his controversial beliefs, leaves a lot of room for things to go wrong — and for people to wind up harmed or even dead."

As for the latter, recall that hundreds of thousands of COVID patients died because they failed to get properly vaccinated, according to reputable studies. Who can forget the pathetic pleas of patients breathing their last breath, begging doctors for the shot and being told it was too late?

Recall how Trump downplayed the seriousness of COVID with his rancid brand of humor, his suggestions that the afflicted might find a cure swallowing a disinfectant such as bleach. He touted hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug found useless against COVID. What a card!

When Trump came down with COVID, there was no "running wild" with his care. He was airlifted to Walter Reed Hospital, where he received first-class treatment informed by the best science: Regeneron monoclonal antibodies, antiviral remdesivir, and dexamethasone, a steroid.

Forgive these suspicions that Trump takes some sadistic pleasure in exercising his power to get people to hurt themselves. But that's right up there in the malignant narcissist's playbook, and he is a textbook case.

Back to me and mine, we have every intention of ignoring the idiot who believes that Americans are being "unknowingly poisoned" by canola oil, corn oil, and sunflower oil. We have our COVID shots. We have our flu shots.

You want to take advice from a fruitcake who illegally dumped a dead bear in Central Park? Feel free. That's your right.

In Trump Part II, it's every man for himself. For women, same idea.

Froma Harrop has worked for Reuters, The New York Times News Service and the Providence Journal. She has written for such diverse publications as The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar and Institutional Investor.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


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