Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Problem is most of the spending is on social services nobody is willing to touch. If you even think about touching Medicare/medicaid or SS: your own party will get rid of you. There are a lot of other things that are large budget items nobody can think touching.

View on HN

The bill that was recently passed has massive cuts to medicare and medicaid

Medicare too? I heard a lot about Medicaid being cut, but very little about Medicare.

Can you point me to some specifics about the cuts to Medicare?

(Going on it in less than two years, so I want to know.)

Yes, Medicare too. Unless Congress intervenes, Medicare providers will see about a 4% cut every year starting next October. The new law's deficit boost triggers automatic sequestration cuts across the board each year for ten years.

Total 10 year cut: $~490 billion

Source: https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-03-republicans-cutting...

The source is clearly biased (sorry), but I believe it's accurate on the numbers.

Interestingly my representative just sent me a message assuring me that both were protected in the bill. Which proves my point, you don't touch them, or if you do you ensure it looks like you didn't.

Well, based on unbiased information out there (like GAO for example) your representative is clearly lying. Maybe you consider voting for someone other than your representative…

> Problem is

social services aren't a problem (sorry to be pedantic but i think it's really important to recognize that these things are necessary, and we can afford them).

> most of the spending is on social services nobody is willing to touch. If you even think about touching Medicare/medicaid or SS

but the BBBA passed, with massive cuts to medicare/medicaid (which will have some insane downstream cost effects on the broader healthcare/insurance industry as a whole, which will be passed on to insured individuals).

> your own party will get rid of you

that doesn't really appear to have happened to a degree that matters yet, because these orders are coming from the top of the GOP, but i suppose we'll see when the shit really hits the fan in the next couple of years.

I'm not a big fan of social security, but social security revenue is supposed to be "off books"... wanting to cut the payable, but still keep the receivable is more than a little dishonest. And if we look at what's happened, I didn't see much in the way of "social services" that escaped the axe other than social security. There are, of course, cuts that could make a difference (the DEA alone is $10bil/year... and there's another $5-10bil used for DEA shit in the state dept. budget), but those are the ones that no one's willing to touch. We don't even immediately have to go after the military, though there's half a trillion per year there (or more) that could easily be cut. And guess what? Just as things are about to get desperate, world events are unfolding that will even make the most cowardly pacifist hesitate to take slices out of that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com