Romney Plan would hasten end of Medicare...

[Lakhota]

 

[Greenbeard]

Gee, you mean a plan from a filthy rich white guy who will never want for anything in his life is is not going over well with seniors like me? Don't mess with my Medicare!

You've got much to look forward to:

Marilyn Moon, vice president and director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research, calculated that restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by $342 a year on average over the next decade; in 2022, the average increase would be $577.

Plus the donut hole springing back open and the elimination of several preventive benefits.

And that's before we even get to vouchercare.

 

[g5000]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/u...in-romneys-medicare-savings-plan.html?_r=1&hp

Now that he has Paul Ryan hanging around his neck, he is stuck with this plan.

This will play well in Florida!

I am going to make the problem very simple for you to comprehend.

Go to the Fiscal 2013 budget here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/budget.pdf


Go to page 208, which is the 212th page of the document.


Under the Outlays section of that page, I want you to add up the amount of money which is mandatory for FY2012. The mandatory payments the government absolutely must make.

Those would be Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the interest on the federal debt, etc.


You will find they add up to $2.398 trillion.

That is how much money we spend before we even pay for things like national defense, those roads and bridges Obama and the rest of us did not build, food stamps, hookers and blow for scientists studying the sex life of orangutans, and so forth.


Now I want you to go to the Receipts section on that page and look at the figure at the bottom of the column for the same year, FY2012.

That is how much money the federal government collected.

$2.590 trillion.


Perhaps you can see the problem now.


After paying for all the mandatory shit, we only have $198 billion (about two-tenths of a trillion dollars) left to pay for all that other stuff.


This is why we are now running a greater than $1 trillion deficit each year.

We clearly cannot continue on like this.

We can no longer consider these mandatory programs to be "sacred cows", regardless of how much pissing and moaning the Democrats can muster up.

Nor can we consider defense a sacred cow any longer, regardless of how much pissing and moaning the Republicans can muster up.


Many thanks to [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW5IdwltaAc]Hal Mason[/ame] for some of the content of this post.



.

 

[Mustang]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/u...in-romneys-medicare-savings-plan.html?_r=1&hp

Now that he has Paul Ryan hanging around his neck, he is stuck with this plan.

This will play well in Florida!

A few months ago, I heard a politician talking in the background to an elderly person about Medicare and the changes that the Republicans were planning on making to the system and how it would benefit her. Frankly, I wasn't really paying much attention at the time, and I regret that now because I can't recall who it was.

The woman seemed somewhat befuddled by it. Maybe it was her age. Maybe it was the uncertainty of it all. At any rate, the politician was trying to engage in what's known in sales as benefit selling. That's when you try to convince someone that something you want them to buy (or accept) is in their interest. That doesn't mean it actually is in their BEST interest, of course. Well, that's the moment when the politician told the woman the great news about Medicare vouchers. And that great news was that she was being put BACK IN CHARGE of her health care. Yeah, the gov't was going to get out of her way so she could be in charge by dealing directly with any one of several private companies who would compete for her business instead of the gov't getting in the way.

Of course I laughed. Being put in charge of your own health care was the equivalent of being lowered into a row boat in the middle of the ocean, being handled a couple of oars, and being told that you would be in charge of finding land. No, you wouldn't have to depend on the ship's crew any more. No, you're MUCH better off in that row boat depending on yourself.

But that's not the only reason I laughed. I mean, could someone please tell me how many private companies are actually vying to insure elderly people? I ask because I can't imagine that there are many who would want to insure a group with such a statistically higher rate of health problems.

 

[g5000]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/u...in-romneys-medicare-savings-plan.html?_r=1&hp

Now that he has Paul Ryan hanging around his neck, he is stuck with this plan.

This will play well in Florida!

A few months ago, I heard a politician talking in the background to an elderly person about Medicare and the changes that the Republicans were planning on making to the system and how it would benefit her. Frankly, I wasn't really paying much attention at the time, and I regret that now because I can't recall who it was.

The woman seemed somewhat befuddled by it. Maybe it was her age. Maybe it was the uncertainty of it all. At any rate, the politician was trying to engage in what's known in sales as benefit selling. That's when you try to convince someone that something you want them to buy (or accept) is in their interest. That doesn't mean it actually is in their BEST interest, of course. Well, that's the moment when the politician told the woman the great news about Medicare vouchers. And that great news was that she was being put BACK IN CHARGE of her health care. Yeah, the gov't was going to get out of her way so she could be in charge by dealing directly with any one of several private companies who would compete for her business instead of the gov't getting in the way.

Of course I laughed. Being put in charge of your own health care was the equivalent of being lowered into a row boat in the middle of the ocean, being handled a couple of oars, and being told that you would be in charge of finding land. No, you wouldn't have to depend on the ship's crew any more. No, you're MUCH better off in that row boat depending on yourself.

But that's not the only reason I laughed. I mean, could someone please tell me how many private companies are actually vying to insure elderly people? I ask because I can't imagine that there are many who would want to insure a group with such a statistically higher rate of health problems.

Can you tell me how many doctors are going to accept Medicare patients as the reimbursement rates decline?

Answer: not very many. Thus the annual "doc fixes" passed by Congress since 1999.


The system is seriously broken and cannot continue in the status quo.

.

 

[Darkwind]

i see the libtard menace is out in full lie mode today, as usual.

The plan does not eliminate Medicare. It gives older Americans a choice of continuing in Medicare, or vouchers for private insurance.

Suck to have a choice, huh libtards.

No it doesn't.

It eliminates Medicare.

It turns it into a voucher program and puts a cap on pay outs.

The intent..is getting rid of it entirely.

An outright lie.

 

[Political Junky]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/u...in-romneys-medicare-savings-plan.html?_r=1&hp

Now that he has Paul Ryan hanging around his neck, he is stuck with this plan.

This will play well in Florida!

Excellent piece.