Medicare under assault

One way to destroy our current Medicare system is to make sure it doesn’t have enough money to operate. If doctors don’t get paid – or paid enough – they won’t treat patients. This is where the tea party is leading us.

Created and financed by the Koch brothers – and arch-conservative, filthy-rich oilmen who hate Medicare – the tea party dictates Republican Party financial policy. Republicans block tax increases for rich people and corporations while the number of people on Medicare balloons due to a huge influx of baby boomers.

The result is less money for Medicare just when it urgently needs more money.

For example, a recent editorial in The Spokesman-Review said that, in our state, doctors treating Medicare patients get paid about half what they get for treating non-Medicare patients. Only 72 percent accept Medicare patients.

Will the tea party/Republicans succeed in killing our current Medicare? They just might.

Their only opposition is the spineless President Barack Obama and Democrats, who gave Speaker of the House John Boehner 98 percent of what he wanted in the contrived debt crisis.

Look for the same with Medicare, now that Republicans say they’ll “save” it through privatization, which will make it unaffordable while further lining the pockets of the insurance industry.

R.E. Simmons

Spokane