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According to a recent ThinkProgress article, "...local cancer clinics all across America are being forced to turn away thousands of senior citizens on Medicare and deny them their chemotherapy treatments as a consequence of federal budget cuts." (See The Sequester Is Forcing Cancer Clinics To Deny Chemotherapy To Thousands Of Elderly Americans)
During the 1930s and 40s, New Deal work & construction programs built hospitals, operated mobile health clinics, offered dental exams to children, employed jobless nurses & pharmacists to help those in need, and much more.
The New Deal wasn't perfect, but the idea behind it was: To help people, through productive government programs (i.e., programs created by We The People). Today, we have abandoned such ideology. Today, we are hyper-focused on the deficit--even if that means people will die, even if that means the long-term unemployed will never again find work, and even if that means American social mobility plummets (it's already low among developed countries).
American culture is on the verge of pure ruthlessness (perhaps it has already reached that point). Welcome to the Reverse New Deal.
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