Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Trump brags about deals that will save Medicare money by negotiating drug prices. He could do this due to a law signed by Biden that no Republicans supported.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8nIqB581Cs
Medicare Advantage costs the government more and too often fucks patients who need care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejoi9yfLVCc
Arguments that we shouldn’t have Medicare for All because medically and scientifically incompetent people like Trump and RFK will gain power and make bad decisions…ignore that people in power like them can also influence private corporations to do healthcare the way they want, so that is a threat either way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTSUMD-VCqg
“the 2025 trustees reports for Social Security and Medicare are out. Once again, they confirm what we’ve known for decades: Both programs are barreling straight toward insolvency. The Social Security retirement trust fund and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund are each on pace to run dry by 2033.
When that happens, seniors will face an automatic 23 percent cut in their Social Security benefits. Medicare will reduce payments to hospitals by 11 percent. These cuts are not theoretical. They’re baked into the law. If nothing changes, they will be made.
…
legislators could raise the payroll tax from 12.4 percent to 16.05 percent. That’s a 29.4 percent increase. Or they could restructure Social Security so that only people who need the money would receive payments. But because facing this problem in an honest way is politically toxic, legislators are ignoring it.
…
Policymakers could gradually raise the retirement age to reflect modern, healthier, longer lives. They could cap benefits at $2,050 monthly, preserving income for the bottom 50 percent of beneficiaries while progressively reducing benefits for the top half. They could reform the tax treatment of retirement income to encourage private savings, as Canada has done with its tax-free savings accounts. Any combination of these reforms would help.
But that would require admitting that the current path is unsustainable. It would require telling voters the truth. It would require courage. So far, these admirable traits have been sorely lacking in our politicians.
…
Waiting until the trust funds are empty will leave no room for gradual, targeted solutions. It will force crisis-mode slashing that will hurt the most vulnerable.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/29/social-security-and-medicare-are-racing-toward-drastic-cuts-yet-lawmakers-refuse-to-act/
““No senator wants to be the reason their local hospital shutters its doors, and now is their opportunity to stop that from happening,” said a source familiar with hospital industry thinking, granted anonymity to speak freely on strategy.
More than 250 hospital leaders flew into Washington on Tuesday to urge senators to preserve Medicaid as part of an American Hospital Association lobbying campaign. The association spent almost $8.5 million on lobbying in the first quarter of the year, a high water mark dating back almost two decades.
“There are aggressive conversations ongoing … to make sure that all senators recognize the vulnerability that it is going to potentially put all of our hospitals in,” said one stakeholder granted anonymity to speak on strategy”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/hospitals-senate-medicaid-megabill-taxes-00410769
Medicare Advantage private health insurance companies have a strong say in whether someone gets elevated medical care. They have the incentive to see you as healthier than you are so they don’t have to pay for Medical care. Whistleblowers say that United Healthcare has said something like ‘they are old anyways, so maybe no one will notice’.
United Healthcare apparently illegally incentivized nursing homes to give United Healthcare leads so the insurance company can sell old people products. Families have complained that their loved ones were sold products when the elderly family member was not capable of making such a decision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ikJ9t2OVis
The best place to find fraud in the U.S. government is to look at Medicare providers cheating Medicare and at the IRS where taxpayers rip off the rest of America by cheating on their taxes.
If Musk is right, and the House and presidency would have been held by the Democrats without him, then that means one man decided the election by spending millions of dollars, including buying a media company and using it to boost certain ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ_w5cAvbLI
Rep. AOC Breaks Down Medicare Advantage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIRiLXPlCTw
“contrary to what Musk claimed, tackling “waste, fraud, and abuse” cannot possibly generate enough savings to eliminate the annual budget deficit, which was nearly $2 trillion in fiscal year 2024, let alone reduce the ever-climbing national debt, which currently exceeds $36 trillion, including $29 trillion in debt held by the public.”
…
“Even if Musk succeeds in curtailing “waste, fraud, and abuse,” there is only so much he can accomplish by focusing on “driving change through executive action based on existing legislation,” which is how he described his agenda last November. Any serious attempt to reduce federal borrowing will require new legislation that addresses the main drivers of federal spending, including Social Security, Medicare, and the military budget. But the platform on which Trump ran takes all those things off the table while promising pricey policies that will only exacerbate the problem that Musk decries.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/12/elon-musk-implausibly-claims-competence-and-caring-can-cut-the-federal-budget-deficit-in-half/
Medicare Advantage: Good? Or Bad? Part Six: Did Medicare Advantage Achieve its Goals?
https://youtu.be/17Xx8VNNEjU