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senior citizens
Project 2025's Plan to Kill Medicare Via Default Enrollments in For-Profit Alternative
"If implemented, Project 2025 would lead to a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers," warns a new Center for American Progress report.
Aug 15, 2024
Project 2025—the far-right initiative to expand U.S. presidential power and purge the federal civil service—poses a dire threat to the government-run healthcare coverage enjoyed by tens of millions of senior citizens by making private, for-profit Medicare Advantage plans the default option for all Medicare enrollees, a report published Thursday warned.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) report said the goal of the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups behind Project 2025 involves "pushing the United States toward a future of fully privatized Medicare."
"If implemented, Project 2025 would lead to a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers, and at the expense of Medicare's financial sustainability," CAP said, noting that "Medicare Advantage costs the Medicare program 22% more per enrollee than traditional Medicare."
"If Project 2025's plan to make MA the default option were to expand the proportion of Medicare beneficiaries in MA to 75%—up from its current enrollment level of 51%—CAP estimates that wasteful spending could approach an eye-popping $2 trillion over 10 years," the publication states.
Furthermore, the report says that "making Medicare Advantage the default option would restrict more Medicare enrollees' options over which doctors and hospitals they can receive care from."
Report co-author and CAP research associate for health policy Brian Keyser said in a statement that "Project 2025's plan to make Medicare Advantage the default option would give corporations even more power and strip doctors and patients of the freedom to make decisions about what care enrollees can or cannot receive."
"Project 2025's plan makes it clear—its priority is to help boost profit-driven corporations' bottom lines at the expense of Medicare enrollees' access to care and the future solvency of Medicare," Keyser added.
Often derided as "Medicare Disadvantage" by critics, MA was created by a GOP-controlled Congress and signed into law in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush "as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies," according to frequent Common Dreams opinion contributor Thom Hartmann.
A report published last year by Physicians for a National Health Program revealed that MA plans are overcharging U.S. taxpayers by up to $140 billion per year, enough to completely eliminate Medicare Part B premiums or fully fund Medicare's prescription drug program.
The MA report is part of a CAP series on Project 2025—which also includes ananalysis from last week showing how the initiative "would make it easier for big corporations to dump dangerous toxins that poison Americans."
According to the report, the initiative's plan to dismantle environmental regulations—as former President Donald Trump, the 2024 GOP nominee, did during his first term—threatens to reverse progress in protecting Americans from toxins like lead, soot, and other poisons including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as "forever chemicals" because they don't break down easily over time.
In an attempt to distance himself from the extremist agenda, Trump has claimed that he "knows nothing about" Project 2025 or who is behind it.
However, at least 140 people who worked in the first Trump administration have been involved with Project 2025, and last week The Washington Post published an article revealing that Trump took a private jet flight with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts to a conference where the GOP nominee said that the conservative think tank is "going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do."
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Trump Eyes Social Security Cuts By Slashing Payroll Tax
"He is dusting off the old Republican playbook and bringing back the strategy known informally as 'Starve the Beast,'" said one advocate. "In this case, Social Security is the beast."
Apr 18, 2024
Amid new reporting that former U.S. President Donald Trump's economic advisers are urging him to cut the federal payroll tax, a key revenue source for Social Security and Medicare, advocates on Thursday urged voters to remember that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has long threatened to do just that.
"Don't be fooled," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, which lobbies to strengthen the social safety net for retired Americans. "At the end of his term in office, Trump delayed Social Security's dedicated revenue paid from workers and their employers. He was quite explicit that, if reelected, he would convert that delay into a permanent cut."
Altman was referring to an executive order Trump signed in August 2020, allowing companies to delay payroll tax payments—an option most companies declined to take as the Treasury Department made clear they would have to pay all of the deferred taxes the following year and that employees would see smaller paychecks as a result of the program.
Trump promised to make the payroll tax cut permanent, and as Reutersreported late Wednesday, the former president is discussing the proposal with economic advisers including Fox News host and former National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and right-wing commentator Stephen Moore.
The former president is weighing cuts to Social Security's revenue stream even as Republicans complain that the popular program is unaffordable and push to raise the retirement age to delay Americans' use of the funds.
The GOP has long claimed Social Security is headed toward insolvency and pushed to privatize the program or cut benefits, but last year's Social Security trustees report found that the program's trust fund currently has a $2.85 trillion surplus and could pay 80% of benefits for the next 75 years even if Congress takes no action to expand it—as long as it continues to be funded through taxes.
"Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient dedicated revenue to pay its costs. That is why it doesn't contribute even a penny to the deficit," said Altman. "If Trump succeeds in slashing that dedicated revenue so that it is no longer sufficient to fully cover the cost, it will result in an automatic benefit reduction. This would happen without any Republicans having to vote for the cuts, or Trump having to sign them into law."
"He is dusting off the old Republican playbook and bringing back the strategy known informally as 'Starve the Beast,'" said Altman of Trump. "In this case, Social Security is the beast."
Along with cutting payroll taxes, which are paid by workers and employees and amount to 7.65% of each employee's gross pay in order to fund senior citizens' post-retirement income, Trump has proposed extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the vast majority of which benefited the wealthiest Americans, according to the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Altman noted the contrast between Trump's tax proposals and those of President Joe Biden, who has proposed strengthening Social Security and extending its solvency by requiring people with wealth over $100 million to pay at least 25% in income taxes, raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, and quadrupling the stock buyback tax to disincentive companies lavishing their shareholders with their profits instead of investing in their workforce.
"The choice this election is clear: Trump and the Republicans will cut Social Security and give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires," said Altman. "The Democrats will expand Social Security, paid for by requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share."
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In 'Landmark' Ruling, Top EU Court Rules Swiss Climate Inaction Violates Human Rights
"This ruling is a call to action for the climate movement—we will not stop demanding action from governments on their clear obligations, set out in this ruling, to prevent climate catastrophe," said one attorney.
Apr 09, 2024
A decision handed down by one of the European Union's top courts on Tuesday should signal to governments across the bloc and beyond that their time may soon be up when it comes to delaying climate action, as the panel ruled the Swiss government has violated the human rights of its senior citizens by refusing to abide by scientists' warnings and swiftly phase out fossil fuel production.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) announced its decisions in three separate climate cases, including one brought by theKlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection, in Switzerland.
The group of about 2,400 women aged 64 and up argued last year that the Swiss government has violated their rights by failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to stop intensifying heatwaves and other climate impacts from affecting citizens.
The plaintiffs cited research showing that older women are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illnesses and death.
Switzerland has pledged to cut planet-heating fossil fuel emissions by 50% from 1990 levels by the end of the decade. In 2021 voters rejected a proposal to tax airline tickets and fuel to help the country meet its goal.
According to the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, Switzerland is warming at twice the rate of the global average.
The Climate Action Tracker has classified Swiss climate policies and actions as "insufficient," partially because it has implemented agreements with other countries to offset its domestic emissions in an attempt to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Gerry Liston, an attorney representing another group of litigants from Portugal, told The New York Times that the ECHR's acknowledgment that Switzerland's policies are not based in science was especially significant.
"No European government's climate policies are aligned with anything near" the Paris climate agreement's goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C, Liston said, "so it will be clear to those working on climate litigation in those countries that there is now a clear basis to bring a case in their national courts."
Joie Chowdhury, senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law, said the ruling—the first by an international human rights court on governments' climate inaction—is likely "to influence climate action and climate litigation across Europe and far beyond."
"Today's historic judgment... leaves no doubt: The climate crisis is a human rights crisis, and states have human rights obligations to act urgently and effectively and in line with the best available science to prevent further devastation and harm to people and the environment," said Chowdhury. "The ruling reinforces the vital role of courts—both international and domestic—in holding governments to their legal obligations to protect human rights from environmental harm. It also affirms the power and courage of those who speak out and dare to demand a livable future for all."
The other two cases on which the ECHR ruled Tuesday, finding them "inadmissable," were brought by a former mayor of a town in France and a group of six Portuguese children and young people, ranging in age from 12-25.
Damien Carême, former mayor of Grande-Synthe and now a member of the European Parliament for the Green Party, argued France had taken insufficient steps to protect the coastal town from flooding. The ECHR ruled that the case was not admissible because Carême no longer lives in Grande-Synthe.
The six Portuguese plaintiffs had argued that the effects of fossil fuel-driven planetary heating—including heatwaves and wildfires—have and will continue to affect their lives and wellbeing. The court ruled the group had not exhausted all its legal options in Portugal.
The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), which represented the Portuguese group, said the court's decision was still "a win for all generations," because the court made clear that "government failure to rapidly cut emissions is a violation of human rights."
"This ruling is a call to action for the climate movement—we will not stop demanding action from governments on their clear obligations, set out in this ruling, to prevent climate catastrophe," said GLAN.
The Council of Europe's 46 members, which includes all 27 E.U. countries, are bound by the ECHR's rulings, and the verdict opens the countries up to similar cases in national courts.
Delta Merner, lead scientist at the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the court's mixed rulings "underscore how difficult it can be for impacted communities to demonstrate in a legal setting what science has clearly shown for decades: the direct connection between heat-trapping emissions, climate change, and the extreme weather impacts they are experiencing such as heatwaves and wildfires."
"The uphill battle for climate accountability persists as vulnerable communities bravely challenge entrenched political, economic, and legal systems that have historically prioritized the fossil fuel industry and private interests," said Merner. "The courts still have a critical role to play in holding high-emitting entities accountable for their role in the climate crisis, helping to address historical responsibility for the release of heat-trapping emissions resulting in climate injustice, and protecting human rights for current and future generations."
The ECHR has had six other climate cases on hold pending the decisions handed down Tuesday, including one against the Norwegian government. Plaintiffs in that case argue Norway violated human rights by issuing new licenses for oil and gas drilling in the Barents Sea beyond 2035.
Scientists and the International Energy Agency have said in recent years that there's no place for new fossil fuel production on a pathway to limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C.
Courts in Australia, Brazil, Peru, and South Korea are also considering human rights-based climate cases.
Despite the ECHR's mixed rulings, Merner called the decision regarding Switzerland "groundbreaking."
"This ruling highlights the undeniable link between government climate policies and the fundamental rights to life and family," said Merner. "With extreme weather events like heatwaves becoming more frequent and intense due to fossil fuel exacerbated climate change, this landmark judgment sends a clear message: Governments must strengthen their efforts to combat climate change, not just as a matter of environmental policy, but as a crucial aspect of protecting human rights."
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