[quote=KSMountain]Someone (maybe you) called Medicare and Soc. Security “bedrock” programs. Oh yeah? Bedrock programs that have no recognition of demographics or reality. Neither one of those programs are on fiscally sound footing. [/quote]
If you want to cut Medicare and put it on sound footing? Talk to the Republicans.
Yesterday, Republicans offered amendments to “protect the excessive subsidies paid for Medicare Advantage plans”
So who’s causing Medicare costs to escalate? Republicans. And who signed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 into law? That’s right George Bush.
Medicare Advantage, however, failed in its mission: prices shot up. Private insurers complained that they couldn’t compete with Medicare for the same amount of money Medicare spends. So Republicans systematically increased reimbursement rates, and now Medicare has to pay the average private plan 114 percent what it would’ve spent to cover that beneficiary itself. That’s helped the private plans provide better service (as you would expect), and now 23 percent of seniors are in an Advantage plan.
Democrats don’t want to eliminate the Medicare Advantage program. But they want it to live within the same budget that Medicare uses. Republicans argue that pulling back these payments will force some Medicare Advantage plans to trim their benefits. That may well be true. But it is an argument against ever eliminating government overpayments to any program. It is an argument, in other words, for waste and abuse.
If you want good government, choose the party that’s best at POLICY rather than politics, sound bites, and coded rhetoric that inflame the passions of thugs and hoodlums.
“It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn’t $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.”
WSJ 3-25-10
Actually, it will not drive them crazy. It will drive them out of business and then there will be fewer workers to feed the Beast!
“It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn’t $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.”
WSJ 3-25-10
Actually, it will not drive them crazy. It will drive them out of business and then there will be fewer workers to feed the Beast!
“It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn’t $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.”
WSJ 3-25-10
Actually, it will not drive them crazy. It will drive them out of business and then there will be fewer workers to feed the Beast!
“It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn’t $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.”
WSJ 3-25-10
Actually, it will not drive them crazy. It will drive them out of business and then there will be fewer workers to feed the Beast!
