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Gonzalez and GOP are a threat to Medicare

The Daily Record - 10/15/2018

My dad, like many people’s parents and grandparents, relies on Medicare to help pay his health care costs. I always expected Medicare would be there for my husband and me, too, when we retire. However, if Republican Anthony Gonzalez wins the 16th Congressional seat, Medicare as we know it may be gone.

According to Gonzalez, the large U.S. budget deficit means programs like Medicare need to be replaced with cheaper health care savings accounts and a vague “market-based system” where patients will shop for the lowest-cost providers of health care services.

However, Republicans themselves created the huge deficit — $1 trillion per year by 2020—by giving tax breaks to wealthy Americans and corporations.

While Gonzalez and other Republicans insist Medicare be cut because of the deficit, they are also proposing to make these tax cuts permanent, which even the conservative think-tank, the Tax Foundation, says will add another $2.4 trillion to the deficit. Republicans have created a budget problem, but now they want seniors and future seniors to pay the costs of a solution.

Moreover, no matter how much the average person is able to put into a medical “savings account,” such an account cannot come close to covering the costs of a devastating illness or accident.

Finally, when people are sick or injured, we cannot reasonably expect them to gather all the available information about different types of medical procedures and providers and make dispassionate cost-benefit analyses.

Even with non-emergency treatments, the information necessary to make such decisions is not easily available, and few people have the necessary background to make sense of it, let alone to do so when they or their loved ones are ill or in great pain.

For all these reasons, I’m voting for Susan Moran Palmer for the 16th Congressional seat. She is fiscally responsible — for example, she proposes that Medicare reduce costs by putting prescription drugs out for bid, just like the government does with other federal contracts — and, especially important, Palmer will protect Medicare so it will be there when we and our loved ones need it.

Denise Bostdorff

Wooster

CREDIT: DENISE BOSTDORFF

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