I am 87, a vet, and fear that Project 2025’s plans for Medicare and Medicaid will decimate both popular and valuable programs. Project 2025 considers Medicare and Medicaid to be “runaway entitlements [by their definition, an evil in itself] that stifle medical innovation, encourage fraud, and impede cost containment.” (p.463) Rather than correcting these bogus, imaginary problems, Project 2025 wants “quality options with affordable prices driven by competition and innovation,” that is, marketplace competition with huge profits for the CEO’s and the shareholders in their companies at the expense of the insured.

Buyers beware! Medicare Advantage (MA) plans spend millions on advertising to get you to enroll. In this and other newspapers, OpEds and letters to the editor have criticized MA plans for not delivering as promised and costing more than traditional Medicare.

Now to Medicaid, which covers healthcare for the lowest income Americans, including millions of children through CHIP, Project 2025 wants states to “adopt work incentives for able-bodied individuals” to “disincentivize permanent dependence” (p. 468). This is an old movie. In 2018 a similar work requirement in New Hampshire (“Granite Advantage”) was scrapped as unworkable and suspended by a federal court judgment. But what about the aged and infirm Medicaid recipients in nursing homes, care facilities, and private residences across the state? Project 2025 is silent regarding this group except to propose a life-time cap on benefits. What happens when they reach the cap? Why would anyone want Project 2025’s radical changes in two established social safety net programs?

Kent Hackmann

Andover