Freepers are against changing Medicare

Trump seems to be signalling he's into the Republican dream of dismantling Medicare. It's on his website, it's the main agenda of his proposed HHS secretary.

And it's something Freepers are very much against. Trump's campaign more or less decoupled the pro business establishment from the inchoate anger base. Freepers hate the government, but they don't want small government.

This is gonna be a helluva lift for Trump and the GOP.

Dr. Sivana wonders where all Trump's campaign promises went:

Trump didn’t run on it. He ran on a lot of stuff, some of it big government stuff I am not big on, but I think he should work on the numerous promises he made. No free riders. Wait till 2020 for that stuff.

JonPreston with the usual Freeper go-to easy fix:

Kick illegals off Medicaid and we’ll be fine.

Whenifhow just makes up some comforting facts:

It seems like obamacare is taking money from Medicare so if obamacare is repealed the depletion of funds will stop.

M. Thatcher blames Paul Ryan:

Ryan is trying to clog the schedule to derail Trump.

rocksblues is sure Trump can't really want this!

So Ryan pushes for this, Trump vetoes it and Ryan cannot overturn the veto.

WilliamIII agrees about the veto, and his faith in Trump may be wavering:

If they start pushing this, Trump needs to publicly promise a veto

Trump promised that repealing and replacing Obamacare would be job 1. I haven’t heard anything in recent days - are they going to move forward or chicken out?

catnipman..."but what about ME?!"

Just in time for my retirement.I paid into it...since I was 16...and now they’re gonna shut the door on me.

Same here. Worked myself nearly to death and now beset with large numbers of health problems as a consequence, and that pissant P.o.S. Paul Ryan wants to fuch me.

pieceofthepuzzle has a plan, based on the premise that Medicare is as inefficient as healthcare generally:

The first thing I would do with Medicare is mandate that no more than 12% of every health care dollar spent by Medicare can go to administrative costs - with cheating punishable by mandatory imprisonment for at least 2 years. Administrative costs are over 26% in US healthcare, as opposed to 12-15% in Europe and elsewhere.

By doing this, you wouldn't have to specifically address how to decrease administrative costs. The administrators whose salaries are paid out of that money would sort themselves out - likely by decreasing the number of administrators markedly. This would be an automatic cost reduction of at least 10-15% across the board. Insurance companies would follow suit. It would streamline medicine, and put more of the money where it's supposed to be, in the direct care of patients.

Medicare overhead is like 2-3% chief.

Then Rockingham comes out in favor of administrative costs:

The logic of trying to gain efficiency by squeezing administrative costs is one of the arguments for the government running health care. The supposed gains in efficiency are illusory though because, when the malign effects of unnecessary regulations are factored out, many administrative costs are in fact associated with the quality of patient care.

The Westerner fondly remembers when we didn't worry about the poor. Also GOLD!

To end all government involvement in medicine, it has been proposed that there be a cut-off age where those younger will not receive Medicare. But they will retain their own money to save for old age health costs if they so choose. 

This was the way our free country worked before the rise of the Welfare State. I remember because I was there. My father gave me $200 for emergency room treatment should it ever be necessary when I left home at 18. Imagine a world like that before Medicare and the end of the Gold Standard?