Meet some of the members of the new Republican death panel

Republican Death Panelist Paul Ryan

Republican Death Panelist Mitch McConnell

Republican Death Panelist Donald Trump

The Republican Congress, Senate, and Donald Trump are coming for Grandma. 

They’re coming straight to the nursing homes of America, where 1.4 million Americans, mostly elderly, all of them frail, are being cared for.

And they’re going to see to it that Grandma and Grandpa — and there’s a good chance this will eventually include you when you get old — will die a ghastly death, impoverished, uncared for, homeless, and suffering.

The victims of the new Republican Death Panel aren’t “freeloaders” or “welfare cheats.” These are honest Americans, hardworking in their day, who held down jobs, raised children, taught school, ran small businesses, served in the military, often lived frugally to save for their old age, and tried, each in their own way, to make life in America better.

They are now in nursing homes because they can no longer care for themselves and, in most cases, there is nobody able to properly care for them.

To get into nursing homes, they first had to spend down their life savings for their nursing care. Then, when they were virtually broke, Medicaid took over and began paying their costs.

Now the Republican health care “reformers” want to murder them. Oh, they’re not going to do it by putting a pillow over their faces and smothering them. Or by pumping some fiery poison into their veins. Or by shooting them. That would be relatively merciful.

No, the Republicans have a crueler idea.

They’re going to force the frail elderly out into the streets, where they can die slowly in the gutter. The death panelists won’t do it directly. Like the Mafia don who never goes out and shoots anybody himself, but simply says “I wish Joey the Mouth would disappear,” and then feigns innocence when Joey is found at the bottom of the river wearing concrete shoes, they’ll enlist, or force, others to do it for them.

They’re going to do it by cutting the Federal contribution to Medicaid, forcing the states, which cannot afford Federal-size contributions, to try to cover nursing home costs. But the states won't be able to do it. Not most of them, anyway.

The eventual upshot will be that many older people who fall ill and cannot care for themselves will not be admitted to nursing homes. And many people currently getting cared for in nursing homes will be forced to leave. Since their life savings have already been “spent down,” they will have no place to go. They will be pushed out into the streets. And there they will die.

That’s when the Republican death panelists, led by Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan, whose work will be signed and approved by Donald Trump, will blink innocently and say, “Not my fault. All I did was cut Medicaid overhead so the rich could have a tax break.”

It’s time to call out the defunding of Medicaid for what it is. And what it is is murder, pure and simple. Murder of the poor to give more money to the very rich. Murder, bloody murder!