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medicare advantage
Social Security Advantage: Trump and Musk’s Evil Plan to Privatize Our Safety Net
The goal is to make interacting with Social Security such a difficult and painful process that retired Americans will get angry with the government and begin to listen to Republicans and Wall Street bankers who tell us they should run the system.
Mar 06, 2025
Tuesday night, U.S. President Donald Trump stood before the nation and, with the full backing of billionaires like Elon Musk, laid the groundwork for the biggest heist in American history—the rapid, systematic destruction of Social Security, disguised as “reform.”
We saw the formal announcement of it during Trump’s State of the Union address, and the DOGE announcement earlier in the week that 7,000 employees at Social Security are to be immediately laid off—with as many as half of all Social Security employees (an additional 30,000 people)—soon to be on the chopping block.
Republicans and their morbidly rich donors have hated Social Security ever since it was first created in 1935. They’ve called it everything from communism to socialism to a Ponzi scheme.
It took Bush almost three years to convince Congress to start the process of privatizing and ultimately destroying Medicare. Having learned from that process, odds are Trump will try to privatize Social Security within the year.
In fact, it has been the most successful anti-poverty program in the history of America, one now emulated by virtually every democracy in the world.
But the right-wing billionaires hate it for several reasons.
The first and most important reason is that it demonstrates that government can actually work for people and society: That then provides credibility for other government programs that billionaires hate even more, like regulating their pollution, breaking up their monopolies, making their social media platforms less toxic, and preventing them from ripping off average American consumers.
Thus, to get political support for gutting regulatory agencies that keep billionaires and their companies from robbing, deceiving, and poisoning us, they must first convince Americans that government is stupid, clumsy, and essentially evil.
Former President Ronald Reagan began that process when he claimed that government was not the solution to our problems but was, in fact, the cause of our problems. It was a lie then and is a lie now, but the billionaire-owned media loved it and it’s been repeated hundreds of millions of times.
Billionaires also know that for Social Security to survive and prosper, morbidly rich people will eventually have to pay the same percentage of their income into it as bus drivers, carpenters, and people who work at McDonald’s.
Right now, people earning over $176,100 pay absolutely nothing into Social Security once that amount has been covered. To make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, and even give a small raise to everybody on it, the simple fix is for the rich to just start paying Social Security income on all of their income, rather than only the first $176,100.
The entire solvency and health of Social Security could be cured permanently, in other words, if we simply did away with the “billionaire loophole” in the Social Security tax.
But the idea of having to pay a tax on all their income so that middle class and low income people can retire comfortably fills America’s billionaires with dread and disgust. So much so that not one single Republican publicly supports the idea.
How dare Americans have the temerity, they argue, to demand morbidly rich people help support the existence of an American middle class or help keep orphans and severely disabled people from being thrown out on the streets!
Which is why Elon Musk and his teenage hackers are attacking the Social Security Administration and its employees with such gusto.
By firing thousands of employees, their evil plan is to make interacting with Social Security such a difficult and painful process—involving months to make an appointment and hours or even days just to get someone on the telephone—that retired Americans will get angry with the government and begin to listen to Republicans and Wall Street bankers who tell us they should run the system.
(This won’t be limited to Social Security, by the way; as you’re reading these words Trump and Musk are planning to slash 80,000 employees from the Veterans Administration, with a scheme to dump those who served in our military into our private, for-profit hospital and health insurance systems.)
The next step will be to roll out the Social Security version of Medicare Advantage, the privatized version of Medicare that former President George W. Bush created in 2003. That scam makes hundreds of billions of dollars in profits for giant insurance companies, who then kick some of that profit back to Republican politicians as campaign donations and luxury trips to international resorts.
Advantage programs are notorious for screwing people when they get sick, and for ripping off our government to the tune of billions every year. But every effort at reforming Medicare or stopping the Medicare Advantage providers from denying us care and stealing from our government has been successfully blocked by bought-off Republicans in Congress.
Once Republicans have damaged the staffing of the Social Security Administration so badly that people are screaming about the difficult time they’re having signing up, solving problems or errors, or even getting their checks, right-wing media will begin to promote—with help from GOP politicians and the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News”—people opting out of Social Security and going with a private option that resembles private 401(k)s.
Rumor has it they’ll call it “Social Security Advantage” and, like Medicare Advantage, which is administered for massive profits by the insurance giants, it will be run by giant, trillion-dollar banks out of New York.
While big insurance companies have probably made something close to a trillion dollars in profits out of our tax dollars from Medicare Advantage since George W. Bush rolled out the program, Social Security Advantage could make that profit level look like chump change for the big banks.
And, as an added bonus, billionaires and right-wing media will get to point out how hard it is to deal with the now-crippled Social Security administration and argue that it’s time to relieve them, too, of the regulatory burdens of “big government”: Gut or even kill off the regulatory agencies and make their yachts and private jets even more tax deductible than they already are.
This is why Donald Trump repeated Elon Musk’s lies about 200 year-old people getting Social Security checks and the system being riddled with fraud and waste. In fact, Social Security is one of the most secure and fraud-free programs in American history.
But Tuesday night was just the opening salvo. It took Bush almost three years to convince Congress to start the process of privatizing and ultimately destroying Medicare.
Having learned from that process, odds are Trump will try to privatize Social Security within the year.
And he may well get away with it, unless we can wake up enough people to this coming scam and put enough political pressure—particularly on Republicans—to prevent it from happening.
Tag, you’re it.
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Rampant Medicare Advantage Fraud Is Staring Musk in the Face. Critics Predict He'll Ignore It
"I'll bet Elon and the DOGE boys can't find Medicare Advantage," quipped one economist. "You know these people were not hired on merit."
Feb 06, 2025
Privatized Medicare Advantage plans overbill the U.S. federal government by up to $140 billion per year as they make patients appear sicker than they actually are to rake in more taxpayer money.
It didn't take a team of inexperienced engineers combing through the complex and sensitive inner workings of government payment systems to reach that conclusion, but that's reportedly what Elon Musk's lieutenants are now doing at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) with the stated goal of locating and combatting "fraud."
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journalreported that representatives of the so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) have gained "access to key payment and contracting systems" at CMS with an eye toward "pinpointing what they consider fraud or waste."
Precisely what Musk and his lackeys see as fraud, and whether pervasive Medicare Advantage overbilling fits their definition, is unclear. In a post to his social media platform on Wednesday, Musk claimed—without elaborating or providing any evidence—that CMS is "where the big money fraud is happening."
But critics expressed doubt that Medicare Advantage, a huge cash cow for private insurers that's supported by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, will become a focal point of Musk's austerity blitz.
"You don't have to search payment systems for Medicare fraud, you could turn to the latest published report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission which helpfully lists $83 billion in annual fraud payments," The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote Wednesday. "The unnecessary overpayments are all made to private insurers in Medicare Advantage, the privatization of Medicare. We found the money!"
"Alternatively, if you're hunting for Medicare fraud you could go to the office of Senator Rick Scott," Dayen added, referring to the Florida Republican whose healthcare firm committed large-scale Medicare and Medicaid fraud.
Last month, Dayen noted that a crackdown on Medicare Advantage is "an unlikely avenue for DOGE" given that Mehmet Oz—who campaigned for the U.S. Senate on a plan dubbed "Medicare Advantage for All"—is poised to lead CMS.
Nor has Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is on track for Senate confirmation to lead the department that oversees CMS, expressed any interest in tackling Medicare Advantage fraud. During his confirmation hearing last week, Kennedy failed to correctly answer basic questions about Medicare, including Medicare Part C—also known as Medicare Advantage.
Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, quipped Thursday that "I'll bet Elon and the DOGE boys can't find Medicare Advantage."
"You know these people were not hired on merit," he added.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Baker pushed back on the view that "Musk and his crew somehow want a world without government," writing that in reality they simply "don't want government social programs that help people who are not rich."
"Musk's view is that the government should only be there to make him and his fellow billionaires richer," Baker wrote. "We could have a much more efficient insurance system if we had Medicare for All, but that would wipe out the private insurance industry. Instead, we are going the other way and whittling down traditional Medicare and increasing costs by pushing people back to private insurers with Medicare Advantage."
"It is absurd that people on the left have allowed the Musk billionaire libertarians of the world to pretend they are anti-government," Baker added. "They just want a government that only serves their interest rather than society as a whole."
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RFK Jr Refuses to Say Healthcare Is a Human Right at Confirmation Hearing
"The problem is that Kennedy isn't 'anti-establishment' in any way that would actually help working-class people at the expense of wealthy plutocrats."
Jan 29, 2025
Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's nominee to direct federal health policy, faced the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday having made a name for himself as a public figure bent on "making America healthy again"—pushing anti-scientific warnings against seed oils, falsely claiming as recently as 2023 that "autism comes from vaccines," and pledging to protect Americans from harmful toxins.
But Kennedy's confirmation hearing to be the secretary of health and human services presented the latest evidence that the environmental lawyer and former presidential candidate has little if any concern about how the health of the country is impacted by one significant factor: the fact that Americans rely on a for-profit industry—empowered to deny coverage for lifesaving treatment on a whim—in order to obtain healthcare.
In his opening statement to the committee, Kennedy signaled a lack of interest in discussions about the finances involved in the U.S. healthcare system—one in which the top five health insurers have reported more than $371 billion in profits since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, while increasingly denying medical claims and charging families an average of $26,000 per year in premiums.
"I don't want to make this too much about money," said Kennedy, adding that "the nation has been locked in a divisive healthcare debate about who pays."
He dismissed debates about whether healthcare costs at the point of service should be paid by the government, corporations, providers, or families as "like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" and turned his attention to "chemical additives in our food supply" and "chronic disease."
Ahead of the hearing, political commentator Ben Burgis wrote at MSNBC that while Kennedy has sold himself to the public as an anti-establishment figure, unafraid of standing up to Big Pharma by spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines, "the problem is that Kennedy isn't 'anti-establishment' in any way that would actually help working-class people at the expense of wealthy plutocrats."
He has all but dismissed concerns about health insurers like UnitedHealthcare, which made $23 billion in profits last year and now reportedly denies 1 in 3 medical claims, including for cancer treatments in some cases.
"The profit motive is human nature," Kennedy said in an interview with the online news show Breaking Points in 2023.
The nominee said at the hearing that he has "often disturbed the status quo by asking uncomfortable questions," but in an exchange with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) about Medicare and Medicare Advantage, the privatized system into which right-wing policymakers aim to push more seniors, even as it denies patients necessary care, Kennedy made clear again that he doesn't aim to question the status quo regarding the for-profit system.
Americans "would prefer to be on private insurance," said Kennedy. "Most Americans, if they could afford to be, will be on private insurance."
The comment drew incredulous laughter from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime proponent of Medicare for All, according to reports.
Kennedy didn't cite any sources for his claim. A Gallup poll last month found that 62% of U.S. adults—the highest percentage in a decade—believe the government should guarantee that all Americans have health coverage. The survey was released days after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, an event that sparked a nationwide discussion over the for-profit healthcare industry's claim-denial practices and exorbitant out-of-pocket costs for patients, which have proven deadly for some and have pushed millions of Americans into medical debt.
Later, Sanders pointed to the $70 billion the insurance industry raked in last year as 85 million Americans remained uninsured or underinsured and asked whether Kennedy agrees that the U.S. "should join every other major country on Earth and guarantee healthcare as a human right."
Kennedy replied that healthcare should not be treated as a human right as free speech is, because "in healthcare, if you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and you get cancer, you are now taking from the pool."
Annabelle Gurwitch, an author and activist, said Kennedy's response pointed to a worldview that is "dangerous to our health."
"So now we are going to determine care based on a metric that measures perceived responsibility: We'll need to police eating habits, drinking habits, and perhaps genetics and doling out care based on that," said Gurwitch, urging senators to "vote no on Kennedy."
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