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The GOP plans to cut $270 billion from Medicare over the next seven years. The cuts will mean smaller payments to health care providers, making them more reluctant to treat Medicare patients.

The Republican leadership believes healthy people will leave Medicare in favor of Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs), because if policy-holders stay healthy, they get to keep the money they didn’t spend on care. But the money they keep is money that would normally pay the costs of those in Medicare who get sick. As more money drains out of the Medicare system, more relatively healthy people will leave Medicare in favor of MSAs or private insurance services such as HMOs and managed care plans. This creates a “death spiral,” in which the sickest Medicare recipients are left behind in an underfunded and rapidly collapsing Medicare system.

Insurers are contributing millions to politicians to make sure that Medicare is privatized–and to increase their chances of getting a big piece of the action.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

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