4 ms·

My autistic kid and my whole family rely on Medicaid while we have no income. Is it worth my kid not having their necessary treatments to save a few thousand bu

• imperial_march 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • AnEro 2y ago
    Crash out, it's delusional to think the anti-medicaid and public healthcare party is only going to go after bloat in medicaid in good faith.
  • rimbo789 2y ago
    Having worked financial management in federal govt and private sector there is far far far more graft, outright theft and corruption, and incredible waste in the private sector than the public sector.
    • Volundr 2y ago
      Pretty much this. I too have done both private sector and government. People think government is more wasteful than private because it's public. When government wastes a few million some unneeded program the details are just an FOIA request away. Oftentimes it's already published somewhere if you know where to look. That (even a publicly traded one) business wasting millions on a Salesforce rollout that never gains traction and gets quietly abandoned? Odds are no one not directly involved knows. And the exec pushing it gets promoted.
      • xoac 2y ago
        I witnessed the described Salesforce scenario first hand. The amount of waste and dissonance was staggering.
      • unsnap_biceps 2y ago
        In a past job, my company lost track of tens of thousands of servers. They were racked up, powered up, sitting at a PXE boot screen for almost 5 years before someone noticed them sitting idle. They were storage nodes with pci-e flash storage (very expensive at the time), so I'm sure it was in the high 10's of millions of Capex that was completely wasted, and I'm sure at least a million in opex for the datacenter space and power and all that jazz for the 5 years. By the time they were noticed, they were EOL and "recycled" (aka sold off to used server resellers). I totally buy that Public is way more efficient then Private companies overall.
    • markus_zhang 2y ago
      Can't say for public but private does have a lot of corruption. I always laugh at those who say everything is going to be efficient once private.
  • unsnap_biceps 2y ago
    I fail to see how anyone can look at a treasury line item and determine if it's waste or not. This isn't the way to reduce waste. This is a way to reduce spending regardless of how efficient it is or isn't. Entirely different goal.
  • thisisnotauser 2y ago
    Do you have any evidence to substantiate that fairly radical claim? Because literally every Google result on every subject seems to indicate you are incorrect. Medical coverage: https://www.cbpp.org/research/correcting-seven-myths-about-medicaid https://www.cbpp.org/research/correcting-seven-myths-about-m... Education: https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI9511238/ https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI951123... Heck, even things like increased funding for the IRS have incredible ROI: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• toomuchtodo 2y ago
  I wouldn’t worry about it yet, at some point they’re going to impact the same population who showed up for J6; those folks are highly motivated under the right circumstances, and were unconditionally pardoned.
  • latentcall 2y ago
    I’m praying for it. My MAGA FIL seems too far gone but I can sense inside an ability to reflect and redirect.
  • ok_dad 2y ago
    It’s hard not to worry, my kid’s life depends on Medicaid. I’d he doesn’t have therapy, he will not become a functioning adult, if that’s even possible anyways. As an adult, he’ll have even less protections than as a child with autism, especially in the “anti-DEI” world. Not sure why everyone is saying not to worry, in the face of this type of action by musk.
    • Sundiata_ 2y ago
      [dead]
    • toomuchtodo 2y ago
      I’m not saying not to worry out of nihilism or lack of empathy, but of emotional health for you as the situation develops. Will it be fine? Lots of options available still to resolve this.
      • ok_dad 2y ago
        Thanks for clarifying, that makes sense, I should probably cool off and let others take the comment reigns.
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
• amarcheschi 2y ago
  When I read about cuts to welfare and security, I'm usually angered against those who implement such cuts (I'm Italian, but this still stands whether it's us, eu, italy...). Reading your comment, I just felt very sad. It's like you lived a reverse American dream. I feel sorry for you. Feeling powerless it's a shitty feeling, especially if you have done everything right
• ta8645 2y ago
  Your dire predictions are a little premature. If we take them at their word, they're looking to reduce waste, and there's little reason to believe that treatment for autism falls into that category. Does anyone believe that there is no corruption or waste between the time of funding and delivery to a patient? Any dollars saved, and any efficiency gained, should be a net positive, no?
  • outside1234 2y ago
    Waste to Elon is spending money on poor people instead of giving him a tax cut.
  • thisisnotauser 2y ago
    Honest people don't flagrantly break laws. It would be foolish to take these people at their word when we live in an extremely transparent democracy where the effectiveness of these programs was trivial to gather data on until a week ago when these hooligans took it offline.
  • ok_dad 2y ago
    Read about autism treatment in red states. I’m not going from no evidence here, I’ve been deep into all the cracks, in trying to get my son from level 2 support up to a functioning human, I know what’s at stake and what each political party has actually done in their spheres of influence and I’m horrified at the things Republicans say about autism and care for autistic people. I don’t trust trump or musk as far as I can throw them tired together on this topic, and even if their word is to be accepted the downright reckless way they’ve been doing things is evidence enough that they don’t care about the damage they do.
    • ta8645 2y ago
      Yes, I agree that they're taking the SV approach of "move fast and break things". They believe that government is severely broken, and this is their chance to reform it in significant ways. But obviously that's little comfort to you, if you get caught up in any breakage. What I wish is that the Democrats had heard the plea of so many working class Americans, who were basically saying the same thing as you. "Your policies, (like mass immigration), make me fearful for the future, and I don't know how I will survive, or thrive". It was the dismissal of their fears, often with derision and insults, that pushed so many of them into the arms of Trump.
• greenchair 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • notahacker 2y ago
    Nothing says "sincere, well intentioned audit" quite like a billionaire gloating on social media about shutting down entire departments over the weekend whilst his staff of 7 interns with no auditing experience demand access to everyone's data on the basis they're the United States Digital Service...
  • ok_dad 2y ago
    “Entitlement” means “life dependent” I guess, so they should be afraid! Smashing things with a hammer isn’t an audit, I audited medical device manufacturing processes from time to time in the past and this isn’t an audit. Audits are for asking questions and then you take those answers and write a report. After the report you make a plan of action and then there are approvals and change management. Once that’s done, you make the changes and then have a period of time where you more closely watch and increase inspections and audits to ensure everything is going as planned, that’s called validation. You don’t rush into offices, take them over, kick out senior employees, make charges to a system you don’t understand, and cut funding for whole departments at large. That’s not auditing, that’s more like a coup.
• harmmonica 2y ago
  I'm sorry you're having to worry about this and I just want to encourage you to continue to speak out about your plight if your worries about Medicaid turn into reality. The only way for people to actually understand why the government needs to backstop folks is if the folks who are being backstopped communicate their experiences. At least then people can make more educated decisions on what they're voting for. And at the risk of being that guy on the internet, one of the things that could be beneficial is making sure you have all of your documentation in order to prove that Medicaid for you and your family should not be interrupted. I'm 99.9% sure that Medicaid is not going anywhere, but I do think there is going to be a tremendous amount of scrutiny on enrollment and aggressive attempts to cut costs. Fair or not, the people who are organized, and can show proof of their situation, are going to be in a better position to argue their case than those who are incapable of getting organized. That includes making sure you download any statements or info from government websites because it's possible (likely?) some of those may go offline. For other folks reading this, I'm making no political statement here. I'm taking the parent at face value, expressing sympathy and trying to be as helpful as an internet commenter can be (of course that's not very helpful).
  • ok_dad 2y ago
    No it’s very helpful to say those things, thank you. One of the most important things in this kind of situation is documentation. I guess my anger and rage is also because not only is my family dependent on Medicaid but most of the families I know at my kid’s therapy center are on it. I am not just being personally affected but this affects so many in my community locally and as autism affected families. It’s enraging that the SV break things fast approach is being used for something that affects tens of millions of people and who rely on it for their literal lives in most cases, and some folks here are cheering it on!
• belter 2y ago
  One important point to understand the speed at which these actions are happening.. As the deadline for the current tax breaks draws near, there is increasing urgency around the administration push to extend and potentially expand these benefits, particularly for billionaires ;-) Despite having the political upper hand through control of both the House and the Senate, there is a significant obstacle: The massive federal deficit. To make these tax cuts feasible, the administration would need to offset the cost by cutting government spending. Unfortunately, much of that spending goes toward social programs, meaning millions of Americans who rely on government support could be adversely affected. It's a shame the needed tax raises are not in discussion.