GOP's Planned Cuts to Medicaid Will Impoverish and Imperil Millions of Aging Baby Boomers & Seniors

[RKP5637]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/gops-planned-cuts-medicaid-will-impoverish-and-imperil-millions-aging-baby-boomers-and?akid=15335.1119768.9U9YVn&rd=1&src=newsletter1074274&t=1

“About half of households age 55 and older have no retirement savings,” the federal Government Accountability Office notes. “When all households are included—not just households with retirement accounts—the median retirement account balance is $2,500.”

The House Republican leadership’s Obamacare repeal bill will not only cause upwards of 24 million people to lose their health care coverage over the next decade, as the Congressional Budget Office has said, but it will also push millions of seniors already on the financial edge into deep and harsh poverty.

“Today’s seniors were once Democrats,” was the heading from a 2014 report by the Gallup poll that looked at changing senior voting patterns. “In 1993, Americans then aged 45 to 79 represented the age group that today is 65 to 99. At that time, 20 years ago, those 45 to 79 were highly Democratic, with a 12-point advantage in favor of the Democrats… Over the last seven years [Obama’s term], seniors have become less Democratic, and have shown an outright preference for the Republican Party since 2010.”

Even the demographic best prepared to enter their senior years from a fiscal standpoint—white households, many of whom voted for Trump—won’t last long under the GOP’s envisioned defunding and dismantling of Medicaid and Medicare. Whites, on average, have $142,000 in retirement savings and assets. That’s compared to average black household savings and assets of $11,000. Latino households and single women also have much smaller retirement savings.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. And there's more.

A lot of Baby Boomers can't find employment that pays for necessities (shelter, food, heat, utilities) because of the job market and age discrimination. To survive, they need the federal government programs. Many of them have PAID INTO these programs. To have them cut off from their benefits is theft and cruelty.