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social security
We've Endured a Half-Century of Kleptocrats' Plunder of People's Wealth and Health
Neoliberalism has spurred 45 years of financialization, as Wall St. pillages-for-profit every sector, from healthcare to housing.
May 21, 2025
The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration prioritized a standard for economic and democratic empowerment of the people. FDR's New Deal advanced the common good and an economy for the people. The 1935 Social Security Act became the boilerplate for universal healthcare.
The post-WWII "Golden Age" of capitalism boosted economic growth, people's prosperity, and middle class expansion, lasting until 1975—subsequently displaced by global neoliberal capitalism.
Principle Political Dichotomy: Corporatists vs. Working People
Since the 1970s white supremacists, Christian nationalists, and aspiring oligarchs have converged under the Republican Party umbrella to seek deconstruction of democracy toward harnessing wealth and political power, while promoting supremacistentitlement—the presumed right to criminalize and hold hostage other people's lives based on gender, ethnicity, religion, and class wealth.
Nixon Supreme Court appointee Lewis Powell's 1971 Memorandum, termed a "capitalist coup," further galvanized corporate money toward rewrite of law, policy, and judicial precedent to consolidate corporate political power.
Since Reagan, continual huge tax cuts for wealthy corporatists have spiked national deficits, paid for with deficit-cutting on the backs of working people by cutting public and social programs.
Kleptocracy, also known as "socioeconomic thievery," describes the half-century robbery of the American people by corrupt leaders who expropriate wealth of the governed for their own gain. Contemporary Gilded Age Robber Barons continue to expropriate people's wealth. A RAND Corporation Report reveals that from 1975-2023 the top 1% robbed $79 trillion from the bottom 90%. Had earnings remained equitably distributed at pre-1975 levels, the average worker in the bottom 90th percentile would earn $32,000 more annually.
Even as the neoliberal "greed is good" ethic prioritized enhancement of shareholder profits, Reagan administration neoliberalism supercharged wealth transfer upward, crushing unions and wages, gutting antitrust law, deregulating banks and industries, enabling predatory private equity practices, and legalizing stock buybacks that continue to multiply billionaires' wealth.
Neoliberalism has spurred 45 years of financialization, as Wall St. pillages-for-profit every sector, from healthcare to housing. Kleptocrats leverage rivers of dark money to capture media and dominate lobbyist-controlled legislatures and elections, flooding the 2024 election with nearly $2 billion.
Commodification of Health for Profit Betrays the Original Intent of Medicare
The Social Transformation of American Medicine, by sociologist Dr. Paul Starr is a Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicle of corporate takeover of U.S. healthcare. Starr describes former President Richard Nixon as the first mainstream political leader to "take deliberate steps to change American healthcare from its longstanding not-for-profit business principles into a for-profit model to be driven by the insurance industry."
A 1971 video exchange between President Nixon and his aide John Ehrlichman celebrated the Kaiser CEO's prioritization of profit over healthcare. Enthused Ehrlichman, "...All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make."
Ostensibly intended to cut costs and improve healthcare access, Nixon's 1973 HMO Act advanced the concept of for-profit "managed care" health models. Each manifestation of managed care, including Accountable Care Organizations and Medicare Advantage, have proved increasingly profitable for Wall St. and the health industrial complex.
With passage of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, former President George W. Bush spearheaded privatized, for-profit Medicare Advantage insurance, purportedly written to "compete" with Original Medicare to save costs and improve healthcare access. Failing to do either, Medicare Advantage betrays the original intent of Medicare—to universalize coverage and rein in health costs with transparent pricing. Medicare Advantage plans often lack data and compliance information, while payment rates are manipulated based on a complex "risk modeling" process.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research reports: Even as Medicare Advantage insurers' profits are inflated, quality of patient care is reduced.
The United States remains an outlier—the only developed nation lacking universal healthcare, the only nation that places profiteering middlemen between patients and their doctors.
Since Reagan, continual huge tax cuts for wealthy corporatists have spiked national deficits, paid for with deficit-cutting on the backs of working people by cutting public and social programs. The 2025 Republican reconciliation bill promotes enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, and huge cuts to Medicaid and SNAP programs.
Were House Republicans serious about cutting "waste, fraud, and abuse," instead of cutting Medicaid coverage for 8.7 million people, they would eliminate Medicare Advantage scams that bleed $140 billion in annual overpayments from the Medicare Trust Fund—invested in as a lifetime earned benefit by every U.S. worker. Fraudulent "upcoding" exaggerates patient health conditions, costing $23 billion in 2023 overpayments. Some Medicare Advantage plans employ AI or a computer algorithm to instantly deny payments—reportedly used by Cigna to deny over 300,000 requests for payments in 2022.
Rigged to maximize government overpayments to pad shareholder and CEO profits—ultimately to privatize Original Medicare—Medicare Advantage overpayments are funded by taxpayers and Medicare Advantage and Traditional Medicare enrollees, who pay, among other costs, increasing Medicare Part B premiums annually—totaling $13 billion higher premiums in 2024.
A physician-authored report advises: "The time has come to declare Medicare Advantage a failed experiment and abolish it." Taxpayer overpayments to Medicare Advantage should instead go to boost an economy and healthcare for the people by eliminating profit-maximizing insurance middlemen. At least 22 studies report annual $600 billion Medicare for All administrative savings, enough to extend comprehensive health coverage to all ages.
A 2018 economic analysis by UMass Amherst Economists concluded that Medicare for All would significantly improve healthcare outcomes, and reduce healthcare spending by nearly 10%—from approximately $3.24 trillion to approximately $2.93 trillion. Additional projected annual prescription drug savings total $200-$300 billion.
Washington Complicity in Half-Century Privatization of Medicare
Further boosting privatization of Medicare, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) "innovative payment" experiments, modeled on "Managed Care" Accountable Care Organizations, were written into the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office reported in 2023 that CMS experiments with "value-based" ACO payments failed to control costs, improve quality, or increase equity, costing Medicare $5.4 billion more than it saved during its first decade.
Medicare for All Would Vitalize an Economy for the People
The United States remains an outlier—the only developed nation lacking universal healthcare, the only nation that places profiteering middlemen between patients and their doctors. U.S. healthcare spending since 1980 outpaces other nations, and demonstrates "by far the worst overall health performance."
Only Single-Risk-Pool Medicare for All can leverage cost-savings of global health budgets to achieve financially sustainable, universal, comprehensive healthcare, while greatly reducing the 30% administrative costs of thousands of fragmented Medicare Advantage plans. The newly introduced Medicare for All Act of 2025 would eliminates out-of-pocket costs—premiums, copays, and deductibles—and unnecessary supplemental plans—Medicare Parts A, B, C, D, and Medigap.
For the first time in almost a century prioritization of universal health coverage would eliminate profiteering middlemen, boosting an economy that serves working people—not the ballooning billionaire kleptocracy.
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The 'Iron Stache' Is Back: Wisconsin Ironworker Randy Bryce Announces 2026 House Run
"With what Trump and Musk have been doing, it's more important than ever to get union people, working people, into Congress."
May 20, 2025
As congressional Republicans and the administration of President Donald Trump set their sites on slashing vital social services, former union ironworker-turned-progressive Democratic U.S. House candidate Randy Bryce announced Tuesday that he will seek to oust the incumbent Trump ally in 2026 and help save Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Bryce—also known as the "Iron Stache" due to his prominent moustache—is a disabled veteran who launched his 2018 campaign with a viral video skewering then-House Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) attacks on healthcare. Bryce, who raised over $7 million with donations averaging around $25, won the Democratic primary but lost to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) in the 2018 general election.He aims to face Steil in the next cycle.
"Every great story begins with a spark. Ours began in 2018, when one man stood up to Washington," Bryce said in an ad released Tuesday announcing his new campaign for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District seat. "Now, as old enemies come out of the shadows, we need him one more time."
"Trump promised to bring manufacturing back," Bryce continued. "Eight years later, we're still waiting. We can't afford to wait any longer—not for jobs, or healthcare, or a damn living wage."
"This isn't about left versus right," he added. "This about the billionaires versus the rest of us, and we've got the numbers!"
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreported Tuesday:
At the time, Bryce ran on supporting "Medicare for All" legislation, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and boosting unions. He remains a member of the Ironworkers Local 853 and in the years since his first campaign, he said, has served as a union representative, worked with Social Security Works, an advocacy group seeking to expand Social Security, and more recently has helped people with disabilities find work.
Like his ally Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Bryce believes that Democrats lack a coherent vision for defeating Trumpism and the oligarchy that's enriching itself at the expense of working-class Americans.
The solution? "With what Trump and Musk have been doing, it's more important than ever to get union people, working people, into Congress," Bryce toldCapital Times associate editor and Nation national affairs correspondent John Nichols on Tuesday, referring to de facto Department of Government Efficiency chief and world's richest person, Elon Musk.
Working-class Dem Randy Bryce Takes On Trump Ally Bryan Steil For Key Wisconsin House Seat. — Bryce is the union Ironworker whose 2018 challenge to Speaker Paul Ryan went viral and, ultimately, saw Ryan decide to quit. Bryce says he’s running in 2026 to save Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
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— John Nichols (@nicholsuprising.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 8:20 AM
"What Trump's doing, and what Bryan Steil is helping him do, is really scaring people," Bryce told Nichols. "I'm talking to veterans, to people who rely on Medicaid, to families that can't keep up with rising prices, to workers. They're all angry."
"You've got an administration that is strangling the Social Security system, laying off people, cutting services," he added. "The Republicans in Washington are pulling what's left of the rug out from under us. I just think this is a going to be an election where people in the 1st District say, Enough!"
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'A Huge Scandal': Internal Doc Exposes Trump-Musk Hunt for Social Security Fraud as a Sham
A newly reported document shows that "anti-fraud checks" implemented at the Social Security agency found virtually no improper benefit claims—while slowing payments substantially.
May 16, 2025
An internal Trump administration document reportedly shows that anti-fraud checks recently installed at the Social Security agency have found just two cases of potentially improper benefit claims out of more than 110,000—a rate of 0.0018%.
The documents, first reported Thursday by Nextgov/FCW, further undercut President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's narrative that Social Security is brimming with fraud. Musk falsely claimed in March that "40% of the calls into Social Security were fraudulent."
The anti-fraud checks for Social Security have been applied only to benefit claims made over the phone. According to the internal document, "No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases." Earlier this year, amid widespread outrage, the Social Security Administration (SSA) walked back a proposal to scrap many of its phone-based benefit claim services.
Nextgov/FCW noted Thursday that the Trump administration's deployment of the anti-fraud tools beginning last month "did cause delays, as SSA changed its phone procedures to add the checks on the backend."
"The lags stem from the three-day hold placed on telephone claims in order to run the anti-fraud [checks], a move that 'delays payments and benefits to customers, despite an extremely low risk of fraud,'" Nextgov/FCW reported, citing the internal document.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement that "the Trump-Musk Social Security takeover has only meant more chaos and confusion for Americans."
"Every one of DOGE's so-called 'mistakes' is a backdoor cut to people's benefits," said Warren. "There's nothing efficient about making it harder for people to access the checks they’ve earned and are owed."
On social media, Warren called the revelations in the internal administration document "a HUGE scandal."
This is a HUGE scandal. Elon Musk, JD Vance, and Trump are lying about Social Security fraud. Internal documents show DOGE found "no significant fraud"—but did slow retirement claim processing by 25%. Nothing efficient about making it harder for people to get their benefits.
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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) May 15, 2025 at 4:13 PM
It's long been clear that Social Security fraud is minuscule, with an inspector general report published last year estimating that just 0.84% of Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022 were dispensed improperly—and even those improper payments were not necessarily fraudulent.
The new reporting out Thursday bolstered warnings that the Trump administration's hunt for fraud is a mere pretext for slashing Social Security benefits and weakening the program.
"Turns out there ISN'T rampant Social Security fraud, but Elon's witch hunt, driven by his insane conspiracy theories, IS keeping seniors from getting their benefits as quickly as they should be," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote on social media. "THIS is Republican governing: hunting for nonexistent fraud while breaking Social Security."
Frank Bisignano, the newly confirmed SSA administrator, has close ties to Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and has defended the president's false claim that tens of millions of "dead" people are receiving Social Security benefits.
CNNreported earlier this week that as SSA combs "through its databases to check whether beneficiaries are alive or dead" at Trump and Musk's behest, agency staffers are "seeing more people coming in to be resurrected" after being falsely deemed deceased.
"I've been saying it all along," former SSA chief Martin O'Malley wrote Thursday. "Elon Musk is the biggest fraud, not Social Security."
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