buckeye45_73
Lakhota's my *****
- Jun 4, 2011
- 33,635
- 7,119
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So, will Americans only live until 54 in the future?
In your case, I can only hope. If you don't know the particulars of the plan...like LilOasshole....maybe you should read up.
So, you wish death upon me? Thank you for proving that you are devoid of morals, ethics or anything that could be described as Christian.
I HAVE read up.
Seniors and the disabled would pay sharply more for their Medicare coverage under a new plan by House Republicans aimed at curbing the nations growing deficit, a Congressional Budget Office analysis shows.
For example, by 2030, under the plan, typical 65 year olds would be required to pay 68 percent of the total cost of their coverage, which includes premiums, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs, according to CBO. That compares with the 25 percent they would pay under current law, CBO said.
The GOP budget proposal also would raise the eligibility age for the politically popular program and repeal big chunks of the health care overhaul law approved by Congress last year.
Besides overhauling Medicare, his 10-year budget proposal also would give states more control over Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, but cut the amount states would receive for the program from federal coffers by hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade.
Americans would not be required to buy health insurance, under the proposal and employers would not have to offer it either. States would not be on the hook to set up new insurance marketplaces.
Medicare enrollees would be given a set amount from the government to purchase private plans. Those plans would cost considerably more than traditional Medicare, the CBO says, partly because private plans pay hospitals, doctors and other providers more and have higher administrative costs. At the same time, enrollees would also pay a higher percentage of the overall cost of their coverage.
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Medicare was a comprehensiveand comprehensibleprogram, available throughout the country and with a core set of benefits, says Judith Stein, director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy.
In other words, it delivers the opposite of what the private insurance industry has been providing. And it is doing so with a better track record of controlling costs. Beginning in 1997, the growth in Medicares cost per beneficiary has been slower than the cost escalation in coverage delivered by private insurers. Between 2002 and 2006, for example, Medicares cost per beneficiary rose 5.4 percent, while per capita costs in private insurance rose 7.7 percent, according to MedPAC, an independent agency charged with advising Congress on Medicare issues.
So why would Congress create a new health insurance system that doesnt have a Medicare-like public plan for consumers to purchase?
Because conservatives, Democrats among them, never let the facts get in the way of their ideology. The Senate, in particular, seems intent on creating a new private health insurance cooperative that has never been tested, has no track record of delivering quality coverage at an affordable price, and which consumers would have to learn to navigate.
Forty-four years ago, on July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the law creating Medicare. In its way, Medicare was a testament to our failure to create a national health insurance system that would cover everyone. With former President Harry Truman looking on, Johnson said the need was great, and urgent. There are more than 18 million Americans over the age of 65. Most of them have low incomes. Most of them are threatened by illness and medical expenses that they cannot afford.
At the time, about half of the elderly had no health insurancethey were too old and too likely to get sick, so the private market simply wouldnt insure them. The elderly were the demographic group most likely to live in poverty, and about one in three older Americans were poor. Blacks and other minorities could not receive treatment in whites-only medical facilities, discrimination that was barred by Medicare.
Now the elderly are among the best-insured Americans, with upward of 95 percent covered by Medicare. The rate of poverty among those 65 and older is under 10 percent. The decline in elderly poverty began with the creation of Social Securitybut it accelerated, according to Census Bureau data, only after Medicare coverage began.
The need for this action is plain, Johnson said in signing the law in Trumans hometown of Independence, Mo. And it is so clear indeed that we marvel not simply at the passage of this bill, but what we marvel at is that it took so many years to pass it.
Now we marvel again at the long and contentious legislative path that health care revision is taking. We hear the same arguments against a national health insurance plan that were made nearly half a century ago.
But now we have Medicare, and its demonstrated history of delivering exactly what Johnson said it would. And the marvel of our own time is that we ignore this success, while promoting untried alternatives that may well fail.
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Medicare enjoys popular support despite the initial bitter resistance to passing it. Before its enactment, the elderly were at high risk for falling into poverty because most people had health insurance through their employer. Upon retirement, many had difficulties paying for medical care.
Over the years, the program has expanded. You are probably unaware that the Medicare program also pays for much of the durable equipment for many hospitals. It also funds the vast majority of residency training in the United States, including resident physician salaries and benefits, and gives subsidies to teaching hospitals in exchange for training resident physicians.
The president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is considering cuts to the Medicare program. We are told that the purpose of the cuts in Medicare (and to Social Security as well) would be to reduce the national deficit and protect the nation's financial health. One has to ask: Are health care and insurance against poverty for seniors and the disabled no longer priorities for our society? And if Medicare is cut, where would the money come from to educate our future physicians and other health professionals?
Rather than cut Medicare, if we want to dramatically reduce health care costs and thus lower our national debt, we need to build on what works and expand to a "Medicare for All" national health insurance program. Every other industrialized nation has some form of national health insurance. They pay half as much per person, cover everyone and have as good or better overall medical outcomes than we do. According to both the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Fund, our overall rankings are still at the bottom or near bottom when compared to other industrialized nations despite that fact that we spend twice as much.
How can these democratic nations spend so much less yet have such high-quality care? It's because none have for-profit private health plans that play central roles in financing health care. They are able to put a higher percentage of their health care dollars to actual health care because they are not paying for the waste and profiteering associated with the "middleman" private health insurance industry.
Medicare operates as a single-payer health care system with administrative costs of just 4 percent to 6 percent compared with for-profit health insurance administrative costs of between 16 percent and 26.5 percent. In a "Medicare for All" program, administrative savings would amount to about $400 billion each year by eliminating unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy. That's enough to provide high-quality health care for every American and end co-pays and deductibles. Americans could go to any provider they wished to see. And, as with Medicare, the majority of health providers and hospitals would remain private and could receive fair reimbursements for their services.
We have all made mistakes. But Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a party living in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a party frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
President John F. Kennedy
Oh so you're an old fart Roosevelt supporter, who though the the New Deal brought us out of the Great Depression.....yeah nice. it worked so well that in 1938 we had a buttload of unemployment, but hey he only had 6+ years
Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938.[1] Manufacturing output fell by 37% from the 1937 peak and was back to 1934 levels.[2] Producers reduced their expenditures on durable goods, and inventories declined, but personal income was only 15% lower than it had been at the peak in 1937. In most sectors, hourly earnings continued to rise throughout the recession, which partly compensated for the reduction in the number of hours worked. As unemployment rose, consumers' expenditures declined, thereby leading to further cutbacks in production.
Recession of 1937