title:  WATCH: Donald Trump Is Considering Gutting Medicare And Giving It To Wall Street
text: If you re on Medicare or close to qualifying for Medicare and you voted for Donald Trump, you re a special kind of stupid who just got screwed.House Speaker Paul Ryan can t wait for rubber stamp puppet Donald Trump to take over the White House.He and his fellow Republicans have waited for years to throw hard-working Americans off a cliff and now they are about to get what they always wanted.The GOP has hated Medicare since President Lyndon Johnson signed the program into law in 1965. Medicare is a single-payer system that Americans pay into every time they get a paycheck. And when they turn 65 they can enroll and get a large part of their healthcare coverage taken care of by the federal government. Over 55 million Americans currently rely on Medicare. The program is fiscally solvent through 2028 and a simple way to make it infinitely solvent would be to apply the payroll tax to all income over $100,000.But none of those facts matter to Trump and the Republicans in Congress.You see, they want to privatize the program, which is code for giving it to Wall Street. And as we all know, Wall Street isn t exactly the best place to keep our money. If President Bush had privatized Social Security, something Republicans also want to do while Trump is in charge, the recession would have wiped out the funds and millions of senior citizens would have been left in dire straits.But Trump minion Kellyanne Conway told PBS on Tuesday that Trump is willing to consider Ryan s plan to dismantle Medicare. President-elect Trump has made very clear that he wants to make good on the promises that we as a nation have made to the seniors who rely upon Medicare, and certainly the lower income Americans who rely upon Medicaid and other entitlements like Social Security, frankly, for those who receive that,  she claimed.Ryan s plan however would raise the the retirement age of Medicare and turn it into a voucher system that won t be guaranteed like the system that we have now. He will, I m sure, take a look at Speaker Ryan s proposal and other proposals,  Conway continued.  In this case, he will go ahead and look at alternatives as long as it does not interfere with what he has said, his commitment to keep the promises to those currently relying on them. Here s the video via PBS. The Medicare remarks are at the 5:20 mark.Trump is already backing away from just about every campaign promise he has made and Medicare is no different.According to Talking Points Memo,During the campaign Trump had vowed that he was  not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.  Now, his transition website states that he will  modernize  Medicare,  so that it will be ready for the challenges with the coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation   and beyond  and  [m]aximize flexibility for States [sic] in administering Medicaid. In other words, gutting Medicare and handing what s left to Wall Street is on the table, and if Republicans have their way the program will be dead within the next four years.That means every senior citizen who relies on Medicare for their healthcare needs should start preparing for the higher costs, less care, and less government oversight that comes with handing large government programs that work to vultures. And while seniors may get a half-assed version of Medicare, anyone else who hasn t reached retirement will get nothing but a voucher that isn t worth shit.Frankly, if you are a senior citizen or a worker who has paid into Medicare in hopes that it will be there for you when you need it, you re out of luck. And if you voted for Donald Trump and the GOP, you deserve the reaming you are about to receive.Featured Image: Mark Wilson/Getty Images