medicare

George Will’s editorial today in our Star-News about the evils of taxation and income redistribution almost had me. As Mr. Will said, government often gives our monies to those who neither need it or deserve it. He correctly states our monies often go to powerful interests but fails to identify those parties until the end of his editorial. Reading along, one thinks he’s talking about billions in tax subsidies to already highly profitable oil companies or capital gains tax breaks for the wealthy, bail-outs given to unethical banks and investment houses, and so on.

...to actually qualify for Medicare, a reminder:

The Medicare Annual Election Period for 2011 is Oct.15-Dec. 7.

SHIIP can help you compare plans and enroll. SHIIP is a service of your North Carolina Insurance Commissioner. Call 1-800-443-9354 or go to www.ncshiip.com for help with Medicare plan selection this year.

This item is cross-posted by Kevin Rogers at Action NC

After months of closed-door meetings and apparent deadlock, the Super Committee is finally working toward achieving their goal of $1.5 trillion in cuts - by proposing $4 trillion in cuts.

According to the Washington Post yesterday, Committee leaders suggested picking up where Obama and Boehner left off in June, discussing a plan that included provisions to raise taxes, raise the Medicare eligibility age and use a less generous measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits.

On speaking to power, or, when sanity's gone, there's always satire

So everybody’s hearing the news, right? There is a tentative debt ceiling deal, and this Administration and Congressional Democrats seem to have won everything they wanted: Republicans get to have multiple “we don’t approve” votes before 2012 on raising the debt ceiling, there won’t be any new revenue, there’s going to be another “hostage-taking” event around Christmastime, for many Democrats the issue of the Ryan Budget and the dismantling of Medicare is likely off the table for the 2012 electoral cycle, and the Administration seems to have figured out a way to not involve itself in shaping the way that entitlement reform will work out.

All in all, it’s some pretty slick negotiating, and I’m sure this Administration and Democratic Congressional leaders must be very proud. Even on bad days, however, you gotta have some fun, and that’s why I’m encouraging everyone to take a minute today to say #thanksalot.

Conyers video just called out Obama for attacking SS, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. He was plain ticked off and said so. Obama is working hard on no second term right now, abandoning his base, reneging on promises, and debranding the Demcratic Party. Frankly it is not clear that Obama regards the Democratic Party as necessary for much of anything, and post 2012 that is surely the case.

http://tinyurl.com/3gt42lq Conyers video

At another FDL posting, reported demonstration at Obama Campaign HQ in California. Reported complete lack of concern by campaign staff.

http://tinyurl.com/3cwjaxp Demonstration post FDL
Video at: http://wp.me/p3xLR-sc

All this certainly sends a message of huris, arrogance and ignorance - and this man is the titular head of the Democratic Party!

I have not been talking about the insanity around the debt ceiling and debt and deficit and the efforts of Republicans to drive us all off the cliff, but I am today – and I’m going to do it by allowing you to grab ahold of this problem and see for yourself just how unbelievably bad this manufactured crisis is going to be.

You will hear a lot of conversation about the consequences from others; today, however, you are going to get the chance to be both the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, and you will get to decide for yourself exactly what bills the Federal Government should and should not pay as the cash runs out if a deal is not made by the time borrowing authority runs out.

At that point you’ll be able to see what’s coming for yourself – and once you do, you won’t need me to tell you what ugly is going to look like.

So I disappeared for a full week, right in the middle of what should have been a busy writing schedule, and I have to claim some “personal days” to cover the time we missed here at the blog – but it won’t be time entirely wasted.

Instead, I’m going to jump into my own personal life for today’s story, and I’m going to do it so that we can stimulate some thinking about where we really need to go to if we ever hope to make some sense out of the crazy way we deliver health care in this country.

Since this appears to be the weekend that a lot of decisions are either going to be made about the future of our “social safety net”…or they wont; we’re entirely unsure…let’s talk about how it actually works for a lot of us – and how it could work a lot better.

Democrats weren't too pleased this week with a trial balloon from the Obama White House that cuts (but we won't call them that) to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid may be on the table in debt ceiling talks. To preserve tax cuts for America's nouveau aristocracy, sacrifices must be made, right?

By now you have heard that President Obama has chosen to throw Social Security and the Medicare and Medicaid Programs over the side of his proverbial fishing boat as bait to see if he can get Republicans to give him another really lousy compromise, much as he did last December when he gave up billions upon billions of deficit reduction in order to help Republicans preserve tax cuts for billionaires.

And it looks like the President doesn’t really lose if you or I get hurt here: in fact, it seems that, in his eyes, it’s to his advantage to fight against his own base as he seeks to be “the adult in the room” in the runup to the ’12 election.

So we’re going to have to find a way to put The Fear on this guy – and I think I’ve got a plan to force this President to listen.

And it works like this: if this President ain’t gonna be moved by our message…we do it by holding the rest of his Party hostage.

NYT article, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/us/05deficit.html, puts some hundreds of billions on the table in talks (I refuse to think of them as negotiations since the Whine House has no idea of how to). Also, article in FireDogLake on same subject.

Biden says flatly the Medicare and Medicaid are subject to trades. As of this point, the Dems have NO revenue enhancements from deal, and look for some garbage which extends the Obama-Bush tax cuts.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, said: We are very willing to entertain savings in Medicare. Medicare gives very good health care very inefficiently.

What the hell is that supposed to mean. Can you even imagine Medicaid being a full block grant to the NC legislature, which cannot find its way to the bathroom.