Elon Musk and Congress are waving a chainsaw towards the American safety net which has kept most of us healthy and provided some security in old age for 90 years. Talbot County is especially vulnerable as a rural area with older residents.
1. Social Security is an insurance program that all workers pay into until they lose their jobs, become disabled, retire, or die. Thirty percent of Talbot County residents rely on social security benefits for income; for about 40% of them, it is their sole income. Trump claims he won’t cut benefits, but Musk seeks to lay off half the Social Security Administration workers and close the field offices.
2. Medicare and Medicaid, created in 1965, are slated by Congress’s budget resolution of February 25 for a cut of $880 billion, perhaps all in Medicaid, to enable tax cuts for the wealthy. 16.8% of Talbot’s citizens are on Medicaid, which pays for nursing homes and healthcare for those under 65 with limited income. The loss of Medicaid money would heavily affect our Memorial Hospital and clinics. Some nursing homes could close.
3. To help young families with children, another safety net was created by combining Medicaid with CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program). 34% of children in Talbot County are on this program, and cuts in Medicaid will affect it.
4. The Affordable Care Act (also called Obama Care) was signed into law in 2010, offering a more affordable health insurance to Americans, particularly those with existing conditions such as diabetes. Republicans have sought for years to end this program.
We must speak up to save our safety net.
Lena Gill
Easton
Deirdre LaMotte says
….and it is stunningly grotesque for the richest man in the world to be gleefully taking a bejeweled chainsaw
to these programs, satirically and actually.
For he and his sidekick Trump to slash life saving programs to the poorest in the world: USAID and Medicaid, for their own tax cuts
is unfathomable.
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” — Louis D. Brandeis
Mickey Terrone says
It cost Musk %44 billions to buy Twitter to become an influencer of massive proportion. But his best investment by far was the $250 millions he spent buying Trump on the cheap for the immense de facto control he now possesses over our government and the lives of millions of our fellow citizens. Musk and Putin are now co-owners of Donald Trump.
So, to those who voted for Trump, you have helped place an unelected billionaire nazi and a murderous foreign dictator in virtual possession of our commander-in-chief, enabling them to destabilize our national security and the greatest democracy in world history. Your vote for Trump and his congressional Republican stooges (like Andy Harris) also to serve as his accomplices to subjugate you by eventual impoverishment with no social security, medicare or other reasonably priced health insurance.
Perhaps the most pathetic aspect of this American catastrophe is that so many of you will refuse to recognize these crimes against the American people and democratic republics worldwide until you stop receiving your social security checks, can’t afford health insurance or health care. Perhaps you think you’re safe and free because you are white. You will be neither as a political non-entity in an oligarchy controlled by multi-billionaires (See Russia for further reference) Americans are currently on a steep, slippery path downward into that dark purgatory without liberty or freedom.
Putin controlled Trump’s White House debacle with his mindless abandonment of Ukraine’s democracy and Musk is dismantling every vestige of consumer protection from unchecked oligarchic business power as congressional Republicans cower in fear from speaking out on behalf of average Americans. Our country’s ideals and values are now in abject danger because Trump was elected by his 1.5% plurality. I’m proud to proclaim that I voted for Kamala Harris as a patriot because I could see the malignancy of Donald Trump eating away at the values and decency of far too many deluded Americans.
Rodney Tong says
And Musk just said recently that western civilization has been destroyed by “too much empathy”.
Not a good human being.
Caroline Thomas says
Thank you for your comment, Deidre. Spot on!
Bishop Joel Johnson says
Thank you for this excellent letter. It is ironic that Mr. Musk proclaims those living on their Social Security investment are parasites, when he in fact is the greatest parasite of them all, buying the presidency for Mr. Trump, the two of them reaping billions off the United States.
Carol Voyles says
Yes, the two of them reaping billion$ as thousands across our nation lose jobs.