We are told to beware of foxes guarding hen houses, and yet a chainsaw-wielding billionaire Elon Musk and others are aiming to take away healthcare from millions of people by cutting $880 billion from Medicaid.

Medicaid provides healthcare access for low-income adults and children, including 1 in 3 people with disabilities.

Among adults on Medicaid under age 65, approximately 92 percent are working.

The proposed spending reductions will make room in the budget for huge tax cuts, not for you or me, but for the very wealthiest Americans and corporations.

And now the DOGE foxes are salivating over our earned benefits, Social Security and Medicare.

On March 5, Social Security, led by its new commissioner, announced plans to gut the program’s workforce by 7,000 employees.

Greater efficiency? No, they’re already severely understaffed.

This will make Social Security’s services slow, inefficient and unreliable, to then prove to us that it would be better to collectively put billions of our retirement funds in the hands of Wall Street investors.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, picked to lead the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, calls his own plan for privatized health care “Medicare Advantage for All” despite the fact that it is the insurance companies of Medicare Advantage that have overcharged between $75 billion and $140 billion annually in genuine, criminal fraud over the last several years, while causing patient harms by delaying and denying care.

Do not be flimflammed by the rhetoric from the voracious foxes in this administration.

Instead, pay attention to who’s tearing down our vital programs and why.

Lisa Dekker

Port Angeles