Dems counting on People over 55 being Ignorant?

[boedicca]

The first thing to do about Medicare is make laws with teeth in them for medicare fraud and agressively pursue fraudulent activities..

We already have laws against those.

The problem with Medicare is that the consumer and the payer are separated. When a consumer is shielded from costs, they do not make good economic decisions.

The other big problem with Medicare is that our government has encouraged and subsidized thoroughly unhealthy lifestyles. If people actually paid the price for their poor lifestyle decisions, perhaps they would take better care of themselves.

 

[bripat9643]

The Dem contolled Congress gave Obama almost a trillion dollars in 2009 to create jobs. How is that working out for you?

BTW, the Republican majority was elected in November 2010 but didn't take office until January 20, 2011, about 4 months ago. I will bet they introduced a jobs bill last week.

Ryan's budget was a jobs bill. Anything that cuts taxes or cuts spending is a jobs bill.

 

[candycorn]

Bluster is not an argument. Why can't you answer the question? HOW is Ryan's plan better for senior citizens?

Read the thread. The question's been answered.

Or continue looking like an idiot.

Pssst! YOU are not a 'thread'.

A lot of dumb people make that mistake.

WHY can't you answer the question? HOW is Ryan's plan better for senior citizens? Just give me ONE thing.

One would think if the answer is that easy; it would be given over and over. His unwillingness to answer leads me to believe it isn't going to benefit his case.

 

[bripat9643]

Works both ways, Mr. Hypocrite. What do you think "death panels" and "pulling the plug on grandma" were all about?

The truth.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Dems in 2008: These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis

Dems in 2011: These two entities—Medicare and Social Security—are not facing any kind of financial crisis

Don't Get Fooled Again

 

[Bfgrn]

Simple math:

Ryan's plan costs revenue with a huge tax cut to the wealthy.

Ryan's plan offsets that lost revenue by killing Medicare.

Real America doesn't want that kind of math.

Here's some math for right wing Monica's for corporations to swallow...

Cost of Medicare Equivalent Insurance Skyrockets under Ryan Plan

The plan will lead to seven dollars of waste for every dollar saved by the government.

For immediate release: April 26, 2011

Washington DC- The budget plan put forth by Representative Paul Ryan has been described by some as a serious, smart plan that will help reinvigorate the economy and reduce the deficit. Ryan’s plan to revamp Medicare has been described as shifting costs from the government to beneficiaries. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), however, shows that the Ryan proposal will increase health care costs for seniors by more than seven dollars for every dollar it saves the government, a point missing from much of the debate over the plan.

“The Ryan plan does nothing to control private-sector waste in health care costs,” said David Rosnick, an author of the report. “As a result of the waste in the private system, beneficiaries will end up paying substantially more for Medicare, in effect paying a hefty new tax on their health care.”

The report, “Representative Ryan’s $30 Trillion Medicare Waste Tax,” documents the potential effects of replacing Medicare with a system of vouchers or premium supports and raising the age of eligibility from 65 to 67 as suggested in the Ryan plan, which was passed by the House of Representatives with almost unanimous support from Republicans and no votes from Democrats. The authors note that each voucher under the plan will initially be worth $6,600, but would be frozen at this amount over the program’s 75-year planning window, paying less and less of a beneficiary’s health care costs over time.

In addition to comparing the costs of Medicare to the government under the current system and under the Ryan plan, the authors also show the effects of raising the age of Medicare eligibility. The paper also demonstrates that while Ryan shifts $4.9 trillion in health care costs from the government to Medicare beneficiaries, this number is dwarfed by a $34 trillion increase in overall costs to beneficiaries that is projected based on the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis.

The report:

Representative Ryan’s $30 Trillion Medicare Waste Tax

 

[Bfgrn]

The Dem contolled Congress gave Obama almost a trillion dollars in 2009 to create jobs. How is that working out for you?

BTW, the Republican majority was elected in November 2010 but didn't take office until January 20, 2011, about 4 months ago. I will bet they introduced a jobs bill last week.

Ryan's budget was a jobs bill. Anything that cuts taxes or cuts spending is a jobs bill.

The Bush tax cuts have been in effect for a decade...a LOST decade.

 

[daveman]

People who operate on emotion seek to influence others by emotion.

That's all they've got.

Works both ways, Mr. Hypocrite. What do you think "death panels" and "pulling the plug on grandma" were all about?

The truth.

 

[daveman]

Bluster is not an argument. Why can't you answer the question? HOW is Ryan's plan better for senior citizens?

Read the thread. The question's been answered.

Or continue looking like an idiot.

Pssst! YOU are not a 'thread'.

A lot of dumb people make that mistake.

WHY can't you answer the question? HOW is Ryan's plan better for senior citizens? Just give me ONE thing.

It offers them freedom to choose.

Why do you oppose that?

 

[daveman]

Read the thread. The question's been answered.

Or continue looking like an idiot.

Pssst! YOU are not a 'thread'.

A lot of dumb people make that mistake.

WHY can't you answer the question? HOW is Ryan's plan better for senior citizens? Just give me ONE thing.

One would think if the answer is that easy; it would be given over and over. His unwillingness to answer leads me to believe it isn't going to benefit his case.

Looks like you're wrong, huh?

 

[bripat9643]

The Bush tax cuts have been in effect for a decade...a LOST decade.

If taxes were the only policy that changed during that period, then you might have a case. Unfortunately, forcing banks to give mortgages to people who can't pay them is not good for job growth when the whole house of cards implodes.

Notice that I also said "cut spending."

 

[Bfgrn]

Read the thread. The question's been answered.

Or continue looking like an idiot.

Pssst! YOU are not a 'thread'.

A lot of dumb people make that mistake.

WHY can't you answer the question? HOW is Ryan's plan better for senior citizens? Just give me ONE thing.

It offers them freedom to choose.

Why do you oppose that?

GREAT! Then Ryan has my full support.

I choose to keep the same Medicare my grandparents and parents generation had. And any retiree who chooses to buy private insurance has that freedom...

 

[bripat9643]

WHY can't you answer the question? HOW is Ryan's plan better for senior citizens? Just give me ONE thing.

For one thing, it means Medicare might actually be around 20 years from now. Under the Democrat plan of doing nothing, it will implode. The country will be bankrupt.

 

[bripat9643]

GREAT! Then Ryan has my full support.

I choose to keep the same Medicare my grandparents and parents generation had. And any retiree who chooses to buy private insurance has that freedom...

So you think "freedom to choose" means the freedom to loot your children and grandchildren?

 

[Bfgrn]

The Bush tax cuts have been in effect for a decade...a LOST decade.

If taxes were the only policy that changed during that period, then you might have a case. Unfortunately, forcing banks to give mortgages to people who can't pay them is not good for job growth when the whole house of cards implodes.

Notice that I also said "cut spending."

SO...the 6% of all higher-priced loans that were extended by CRA-covered lenders to lower-income borrowers caused the economy to crash? WOW!

 

[bripat9643]

Here's some math for right wing Monica's for corporations to swallow...

Your source is a leftwing propaganda site. Look at the list of books the founder of the site has authored. It's a laundry list of leftwing causes.

Try posting something credible.

 

[Bfgrn]

GREAT! Then Ryan has my full support.

I choose to keep the same Medicare my grandparents and parents generation had. And any retiree who chooses to buy private insurance has that freedom...

So you think "freedom to choose" means the freedom to loot your children and grandchildren?

If anyone is guilty of 'looting', it's Ryan and the Republicans who want to take what grandparents and parents PAYED INTO their entire working life.

 

[Bfgrn]

Here's some math for right wing Monica's for corporations to swallow...

Your source is a leftwing propaganda site. Look at the list of books the founder of the site has authored. It's a laundry list of leftwing causes.

Try posting something credible.

OK, as soon as America's Pravda (Faux news) starts telling the truth instead of lies, I'll get back to you.

 

[bripat9643]

SO...the 6% of all higher-priced loans that were extended by CRA-covered lenders to lower-income borrowers caused the economy to crash? WOW!

That claim is just more leftwing propaganda.

The CRA Scam and its Defenders - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Daily

Gordon cites Fed bureaucrat Janet Yellen as the source of a "killer statistic" that absolves the government of all guilt: "Independent mortgage companies" which are not covered by the CRA made many more "high-priced loans" to borrowers with bad credit than did CRA-regulated banks, she says. Well, so what? Even if Yellen is correct, that does not mean that CRA-regulated loans have not caused tens of billions of dollars in defaults.

Moreover, Yellen and Gordon don't seem to understand what an "independent mortgage company" is. Many of these companies are like the one in which my next-door neighbor is employed: they are middlemen who arrange mortgage loans for borrowers — including "subprime" borrowers — with banks, including CRA-regulated banks. Some killer statistic.

By ignoring the role of the Fed in creating the whole housing-market mess, Gordon's pronouncement that it is entirely a result of "market failure" is laughable on its face. He also flatly denies that CRA lending has had anything to do with why so many uncreditworthy borrowers have defaulted now that the Fed-generated housing bubble has burst. This, too, is an untenable position.

When the CRA was created during the Carter administration, the administration also funded with tax dollars numerous "community groups" that have helped the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, and other federal regulatory agencies to enforce the act. Under the CRA, if a bank wants to make virtually any change in its business operations — merging, opening up a new branch, getting into a new line of business — it must first prove to regulators that it has made "enough" loans to the government's preferred borrowers. The (partially) tax-funded "community groups" like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) can file petitions with regulators that stop the bank's activities in their tracks, perhaps defeating them altogether. The banks routinely buy off ACORN and other "community groups" by giving them millions of dollars as well as promising to make even more dubious loans.

In order to try to diversify the risk of these loans, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company ("Freddie Mac") pioneered the "securitization" of bundles of these high-risk loans so that they could be sold on secondary markets. Such "securitization" exploded during the 1990s as a result of government regulation. As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke himself stated in a March 30, 2007 speech entitled "The Community Reinvestment Act: Its Evolution and New Challenges" (published online by the Fed),

Securitization of affordable housing loans expanded, as did the secondary market for these loans, in part reflecting a 1992 law that required the government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to devote a large percentage of their activities to meeting affordable housing goals. (p. 3)

In 1994 the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act loosened up the regulatory barriers to bank mergers. Consequently, said Bernanke, "As public scrutiny of bank merger and acquisition activity escalated, advocacy groups [like ACORN] increasingly used the public comment process to protest bank applications on CRA grounds." In other words, there was a burst of additional legalized extortion perpetrated by the Fed and its pet "activist organizations" beginning in the mid-1990s. As a result, says Bernanke, "banks began to devote more resources to their CRA programs." What an understatement.

Also in 1995, the US Treasury Department created the multibillion-dollar "Community Development Financial Institutions" fund to "provide banks with access [i.e., taxpayers' dollars] to new opportunities to finance community economic development" as "encouraged" by the CRA, said the Fed chairman.

The government also "streamlined" the regulatory requirements for CRA loans in 1995, allowing — and indeed pressuring — banks to make such loans without the benefit of many traditional credit-worthiness criteria, such as the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, savings history, and even income verification! Instead, the Fed told banks that participation in a credit-counseling program, many of which are federally funded, could be used as "proof" of a low-income applicant's ability to make his mortgage payments. In other words, federal bank regulators required banks to make bad loans based on nonexistent credit standards.

In his April 26 New York Post article on the CRA entitled "The Real Scandal," Professor Liebowitz explains how the government's Fannie Mae Foundation singled out one bank in particular as the role model for all other banks in America in terms of its commitment to CRA lending: Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, had committed to $600 billion in low-income or "subprime" loans as of 2003. Today, Countrywide is essentially bankrupted and has been merged with Bank of America.
How Capitalism Saved America

The myth that the CRA would not be harmful to bank-industry profits was hidden for years by the Fed-created housing bubble, which allowed for easy refinancing of all the bad debt. "[The] CRA increased lending and homeownership in poor communities without undermining banks' profitability," Robert Gordon proudly proclaims. But now that the bubble has burst, all those unqualified borrowers — whom the government calls "subprime," as though their credit ratings are only a tiny, tiny smidgen below "prime" borrowers with the very best credit ratings — are defaulting on their mortgages in droves.

Bank profitability has been extremely "undermined," to put it mildly. The bursting of the Fed-generated housing bubble is the reason why the CRA scam was not exposed until now, despite having been in operation for some thirty years.

 

[bripat9643]

Your source is a leftwing propaganda site. Look at the list of books the founder of the site has authored. It's a laundry list of leftwing causes.

Try posting something credible.

OK, as soon as America's Pravda (Faux news) starts telling the truth instead of lies, I'll get back to you.

ROFL! How does atacking FOX make your propaganda any more credible?