"Try to get a handle on the Medicaid thing." Those are the words David R. Brinkley, Gov. Larry Hogan's budget director, used to explain the Hogan administration's proposed cuts to the state's Medicaid program ("Critics fault Hogan's plan to cut Medicaid spending," Feb. 13). Reading the whole article dealing with this subject brought to mind one of Governor Hogan's campaign ads in which a woman says she is voting for candidate Hogan because he is not going to adversely affect the state's social safety net. Lots of luck with that.
The new administration is picking its winners and losers. Certainly some of the winners are small businesses, who at least in part, through low wages and lack of worker health care benefits, cause the need for part, probably a good part, of the nation's social safety net programs. In that sense small businesses benefit from these programs that subsidize their workers.
I have nothing against small businesses, although I know of some horror stories like the craftsman laborer who was told by his boss, the business owner, to buy his own tools and give the receipt for them to him so he would have the "evidence" of a business expense for tax purposes. Or the small business owner who didn't make estimated payments during the tax year and complained that he owed so much in taxes at the end of the year. I have always felt the "small" business argument made in this country is a "whose-on-top" argument. The small businessman or his or her workers.
Note that the employee cited in this article would be affected negatively by the proposed Medicaid cuts. Not the employer. The bottom line is, we need to acknowledge the injustices that stem from the way we do capitalism in this country. We don't need politicians up and down the line to compound these systemic problems or to blame those affected by these injustices for their root cause. Do our job.. Either fix or assuage the injustices created by the system.
Joseph Costa, Baltimore