Medicare is a part of Social Security
Jannie Jackson 17, program director and producer/host of FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin, 3/15/2017, “‘Trumpcare Is Very Destructive to Both Medicare and Medicaid’”, FAIR, https://fair.org/home/trumpcare-is-very-destructive-to-both-medicare-and-medicaid/ //IM
JJ: It seems that in the media Medicare and Medicaid are mostly mentioned as a kind of in-one-breath tag-on to Social Security, when a story is giving a thumbnail of so-called “entitlements”; these programs are rarely center stage. I wonder if you could tell us about how this Republican plan, from what we know of it, would affect Medicare and Medicaid, and, along the way, remind us of what those programs do?
NA: The so-called Trumpcare, this new healthcare plan that the Republicans have just rolled out, is very destructive to both Medicare and Medicaid. The Republicans ran against the Affordable Care Act, the so-called Obamacare, but no one ran against Medicare and Medicaid, because the programs work very well and they’re very popular. Both programs were enacted in 1965. The idea behind Medicare—it’s a part of Social Security—is that you cannot really be economically secure if you’re one illness away from bankruptcy. So Medicare provides basic health insurance for those 65 and over who are receiving Social Security.