About a decade ago, Donald Trump stressed one specific point as a way of differentiating himself from his adopted political party. “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump declared in 2015. “Every other Republican’s going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do. I do.”
Once in office, that didn’t quite work out. As a Washington Post report summarized in 2023, “His avowed stance, however, is at odds with Trump’s own record as president: Each of his White House budget proposals included cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs.” (He also failed to figure out “where the money is.”)
Nevertheless, as Trump tried to return to power last year, he again declared: “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare. We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
I suppose there’s room for conversation about the precise meaning of “jeopardize” and “hurt,” but it appears Trump and his team are poised to again let down those who believed he’d leave the social insurance programs untouched. The Washington Post reported that the administration is eyeing a new policy that would make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments. From the article:
The Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs. But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.
How many Americans would lose access to disability benefits under the proposed rule changes? According to the Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC, one recent analysis put the total at over 750,000 people.
Alas, the Social Security Administration is facing other Trump-imposed challenges, too. The department has struggled throughout the year with the administration’s agenda, which has led to office closings and longer wait times for beneficiaries, and The New York Times reported two weeks ago that problems are intensifying as frontline SSA workers “are asked on a daily basis to do more with less.”
The Times quoted one Social Security technical expert who works in a field office in the Midwest, who said, “In my 24 years, I have never seen it so bad to the point that a lot of us are medicated.” The worker said she takes an anti-anxiety medication daily.
As for Medicare, the health care program is facing Trump-imposed challenges of its own. The Times reported last week: Millions of low-income seniors are missing out on crucial help paying for Medicare — and the recently enacted federal budget law blocks an effort to help them get it. The Trump administration budget law does not reduce any of Medicare’s standard benefits. But the law does suspend until 2034 a requirement that states adopt a Biden-era plan to increase enrollment in state-run Medicaid programs that help seniors who qualify get a hand paying for out-of-pocket Medicare costs. Before Trump took office, the Biden administration set out to make it easier for Americans to enroll in Medicare Savings Programs by streamlining the bureaucratic process. Now, the incumbent administration has blocked implementation of the policy — for nearly a decade. In case that weren’t quite enough, NBC News reported two weeks ago that Team Trump is moving forward with a program that will “find out how much money an artificial intelligence algorithm could save the federal government by denying care to Medicare patients.” From the article: The pilot program, designed to weed out wasteful, ‘low-value’ services, amounts to a federal expansion of an unpopular process called prior authorization, which requires patients or someone on their medical team to seek insurance approval before proceeding with certain procedures, tests, and prescriptions. It will affect Medicare patients, and the doctors and hospitals who care for them, in Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington, starting Jan. 1 and running through 2031. “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Trump vowed last year. I have some bad news for voters who believed him.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
