Let’s stop pretending that cutting taxes doesn’t kill people
Tax cuts often lead to privatization, which means corners will be cut. When it comes to Medicaid, that means people will die.
“As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be rich even if he has a billion dollars.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
Even though Michael Neidorff isn’t a billionaire, by every standard he’s certainly rich. The head of the health care corporation Centene pocketed $25.3 million last year, making him the 38th highest-paid U.S. CEO.
Well, by almost every standard. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his 1961 speech “The American Dream,” as long as poverty exists, no one is rich in the fullest sense of the word. As human beings, our wealth — and lack thereof — is interrelated. “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be,” King said.
I imagine King would have agreed that this is especially so when someone has built their fortune by taking from the most vulnerable. That’s what Neidorff has done, leading Centene since 2004 as it has gulped up state contracts to manage Medicaid, the federal health care program for poor and disabled Americans.
It’s not that Neidorff profits from insuring the poor. It’s that Centene has repeatedly cut corners to increase those profits. The corporation has faced charges of mismanagement resulting in at least $23.6 million in penalties in more than a dozen states as diverse as California and Kansas. It’s Illinois subsidiary slashed payments for medical equipment this year by 50 percent. Last month, the Dallas Morning News investigated the corporation’s cost cutting in Texas, highlighting the story of a foster baby who is now brain dead after a Centene subsidiary denied the round-the-clock nursing his doctors ordered.
Yet, if the Trump administration and Congress have their way, Centene, already the nation’s largest Medicaid provider, could grow even larger.
That’s because last year’s corporate tax cuts have created a trillion dollar hole in the federal budget, and Republican lawmakers want to fill it by cutting so-called “entitlements.” (It’s absurd that some folks use the term “entitlement” to smear Medicaid when it pays for about half of all U.S. births and nearly two-thirds of people in nursing homes.)
A recent House GOP plan would cap Medicaid’s funding, teeing it up to be privatized in even more states. After cash assistance to families, known as TANF, was capped in 1996, a cottage industry sprung up to squeeze profits from ever-shrinking funds. Within five years, over $1.5 billion in public money had gone to contractors like IBM and Lockheed Martin.
(By the way, Trump’s tax cut hasn’t provided the “tremendous relief” for the middle class he said it would. Adjusted for inflation, the hourly wages of ordinary workers were lower in May than they were last year.)
See, you can’t deny that we’re all interrelated when it comes to taxing and spending. When we cut taxes on the wealthy, what trickles down is pain and suffering. It often comes in the form of privatization, handing government functions to the very corporations and investors that want to cut spending on those functions to save on their taxes. Centene’s taxes will be an estimated $55 million less this year, but Neidorff is set for an even bigger windfall if Medicaid spending ends up getting capped. You’d think he’d be against cutting a program his corporation relies on for revenue, but instead he thinks it would give states more “flexibility,” a buzzword for privatization.
The thing is, those who want to cut taxes and “entitlements” actually see the same world that King saw. They might say it’s all about “boosting the economy” and “growing the tax base,” but the end result is denying people basic human needs like health care. They see that we’re all interrelated yet come to the exact opposite conclusion: that they aren’t rich if others aren’t poor.
They always ask, “How are we going to pay for that?” when we propose policies that help poor and working people. So we should ask, “Who is going to pay for that?” when they propose to cut taxes. They need to be called on their bluff.
Jeremy Mohler is a writer and communications strategist for In the Public Interest, a nonprofit that advocates for the democratic control of public goods and services. He’d love to hear from you: jmohler@inthepublicinterest.org
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