Tom Brokaw, eat your heart out:
Seniors are the least likely of all age groups in the U.S. to say that healthcare reform will benefit their personal healthcare situation. By a margin of three to one, 36% to 12%, adults 65 and older are more likely to believe healthcare reform will reduce rather than expand their access to healthcare. And by 39% to 20%, they are more likely to say their own medical care will worsen rather than improve.
I read somewhere that the fact that our seniors are all covered by medicare really makes health care reform difficult. When the most reliable voting bloc already has their coverage paid for by the state, all the Republicans have to do is peel off a few other haves and convince the old folks that Obama wants to euthanize them.
Phoenix Woman
Thing is, they don’t think of Medicare as gummint. And the GOP takes advantage of that.
Kryptik
Seriously, that’s the most vile thing to come out of this debate. The unbelievable argument that ‘if they reform health care, all that means is that they’re KILLING OLD PEOPLE!!’
But hey, emotion and fear over fact and actually doing some good, you know.
drew42
Another way to look at it is, “Hey, I didn’t start getting this great healthcare until I got old. Wait your turn, you young whippersnappers!”
Kryptik
@Phoenix Woman:
Of course, decades of being told that the government is the devil, and vote for us so we can prove government never does any good probably has a lot to do with that.
No shame, these folks.
RSA
Based on discussions with some of my older conservative relatives, I believe there are many old people on Medicare who truly hate the idea of government-subsidized health care without ever realizing that they’re the beneficiaries of it. (See also welfare-haters who have been on welfare and pro-life activists who have had abortions.)
dmsilev
I’d really like Obama to come out and say “If someone tells you that our health care reform will deliberately kill seniors, they’re lying to you. Period. End of discussion.”
And then stand back and watch the whining from various GOP lawmakers about how they’re being slandered by the mean guy in the White House.
-dms
Brachiator
The Democrats knew that they wanted health care done. And it has been a pet issue for some, like Senator Kennedy.
Although Obama has done well in explaining some of what he wants, and in having town hall meetings, there is no reason why he should have to do all the heavy lifting.
I was initially surprised at the lack of foresight and tactical planning on the part of the Democrats. Now I see that disorganization is just how they roll.
And don’t give too much credit to Republicans or sell seniors too short. Many seniors have kids, grandkids, great grandkids. Some seniors are even having to raise a grandchild.
So even if they are sitting pat with their own health plans, they are not going to let their kids suffer, and so are not necessarily easily picked off by the GOP.
The Saff
I already had a discussion with my 78 year old mom a few weeks back about health care reform. She says, “I don’t want government taking over health care.” Um, I sez, what do you think Medicare is? The tax dollars they take out of my paycheck twice a month is paying for your healthcare.
Then she says that people can always go to the emergency room for medical treatment. “But that’s the most expensive way to treat illness.”
I tried to explain the basics as best I could. I also told her that she needs to stop listening when my dad has on Fox Noise.
I couldn’t help but raise my voice to mom because it was SO frustrating.
tammanycall
If that’s the case, the Dem messaging guys need to make it clear that Medicare is government health care that was championed and passed by Democrats.
ericvsthem
67 year old woman who works for me told me Wednesday that she doesn’t want Canadian-style health care where she’d have to “wait in long lines.” Said she didn’t give care one bit about what happens to the uninsured being driven into bankruptcy because of their health care bills. She does not trust Obama (even though she voted for him) and is afraid that he will “take away [her] health insurance.”
I related to her how my family struggled when I was a kid. My father was a steel worker in Ohio and lost one job after another when mill-after-mill closed up shop. There were many times when we couldn’t afford to see a doctor, and I didn’t see a dentist for years at a time.
She replied again, “I don’t care, I’m not waiting in long lines. I have friends in Canada and I’ve heard their stories.”
I got mine, indeed.
Tax Analyst
The Saff said:
“I couldn’t help but raise my voice to mom because it was SO frustrating.”
But at least you didn’t beat her with a stick.
Actually, I admire your self-control.
Beeb
My guess is a lot of them were suckered into Medicare Advantage plans and Obama keeps mentioning changing M.A. without being clear on the specifics. It’s something he ought to spell out — if, that is, he can. That’s a problem when there’s no one bill to focus on. Beyond that, if he just keeps promising to close the donut hole, he’ll win them over. They’re not cheap, but they can be bought.
NonyNony
Just FYI – the “Greatest Generation” is at this point mostly dead. The “seniors” nowadays are mostly from the “Silent Generation”. (“Silent Generation” is 1925-44 IIRC, so that group would be the folks now between the ages of 65 and 89).
And frankly when you’ve been told for most of your life that the Medicare system is in dire need of reform, and the most common refrain is that costs need to be cut and means testing needs to be added (which is what “Medicare reform” has been about as long as I’ve been alive), you’d probably be a bit worried about healthcare “reform” killing your coverage.
Bisquits
Wait till the boomers start to retire. I think this attitude will only get worse. On the flip side, because of their huge numbers, something will have to be done.
The Saff
Tax Analyst: Well, it would’ve been kind of hard over the telephone. That said, I felt like I was losing it with her.
Oh, yeah, and I got the “I don’t want to wait in long lines, a la Canada-style healthcare” too from mom.
I was like, oh, just shoot me now.
JenJen
I do believe there is some kind of under-the-radar movement aimed at Seniors, because my mom keeps showing me all these emails, linked and everything, saying Obama wants to kill my mother. Seriously. It’s just unbelievable.
Where is this stuff coming from, because it is not mainstream. This weekend, all good people who want health care reform should talk to their aging parents and set them straight. Like a “Great Schlep II.”
Lee
You tell the seniors that if the Republicans are successful in killing THIS government program that they will come after THEIR government program next since Republicans hate government run health plans so much.
The it is up to the Republicans to explain why they like one government run plan but not the other. Since they are having a hard time explaining why the birfer movement is made up of crazies they will probably fail at this as well.
Silver
Fuck the old people. Not literally, because that’s a fetish I’m not into…
If reform derails, I’m getting right on the “Dissolve Medicare” bandwagon. You want to keep me in insurance hell, then you can join me, your old bastards…
HumboldtBlue
You can take that “greatest generation” bullshit and shove it up Bull Connor’s ass as well. The vapidity of that fucking phrase and the people who use it are the same sort who don’t fucking realize that Medicare is a Govt. run health care system.
Greatest generation my ass. If these motherfuckers would ever deign to read a book not published by regnery they’d know that the fucking Russians won WW2 in Europe while was plastered mountains in Italy with enough brass to equip a million marching bands.
inkadu
@JenJen: Damn. I’d hate to see all the flame wars that your mother is starting by forwarding those e-mails.
beltane
Maybe these old people should receive statements which tell them how much their Medicare insurance would cost if they had to pay for it in the open market, presuming they are insurable, which they are not.
Capri
The natural response to statements that Republicans don’t want government-run, socialized medicine it to say that Republicans want to eliminate medicare.
Sentient Puddle
…which is typified by that one person who said to Obama “Keep your government out of my Medicare!”
I realize that a lot of [Republican] policy is based on misinformation, but for some reason, the health care lies piss me off more than the rest. I was initially thinking that it may be because they’re the kind of lies that anyone spending two minutes on the Internet can debunk, but then I realized that applies to a ton of the other lies too.
Seebach
67 year old woman who works for me told me Wednesday that she doesn’t want Canadian-style health care where she’d have to “wait in long lines.”
I like how she’s condemning some 5 year old kid to death or injury when she’s already lived a full life. That’s very disgusting.
Martin
So why do you want to kill your mother? It’s okay, we won’t tell her.
Tom Hilton
In other words, they have it backwards: healthcare reform won’t lead to euthanizing old people; euthanizing old people is a necessary condition for healthcare reform.
(I know, I’m going to hell…)
kay
If I were a retiree I might do a cost/benefit and realize if I’m not earning income I’m not paying income tax, so I’m not too worried about tax increases, and if I’m 80 I’m not all that worried about the deficit either.
They won’t benefit but they won’t bear any of the costs of reform either.
This might be a good time to get down to the nitty gritty, because seniors are all but admitting here that they’re looking after their own interests, and no further than that. Okay. Let’s talk in those terms.
That’s an honest conversation, though, and we can’t have those, because we have to propagate myths to placate the foolish romantics who make up our media.
A Mom Anon
There is a concerted effort out there to scare the shit out of old people. They keep showing up at these AARP townhalls saying the same shit they did at the one Obama was at. I’ve been listening to the radio(KTLK out of LA) all day and alot of callers have said people are showing up at these things(some wearing Palin 2012 shirts)spewing the same thing. It’s coming from somewhere,talk radio,Fox,emails,all the above,I don’t know.
I was at the dentist yesterday and the front office ladies were saying alot of this crap too. I sent them to the Healthcare Reform Myths website,but I have no clue if they’ll bother educating themselves. It sucks,I really like these women(who are about my age,50ish)I thought they were smarter than that.
Sigh.
The Bag of Health and Politics
And what is really ridiculous is that the health care reforms would go a long ways towards reducing the donut hole, and therefore helping older Americans.
But politically, the same playbook which worked in 1994 won’t work now. Obama got elected mainly on overwhelming young voter support.
I think it’ll pass, and then the older Americans will be happy with it.
Finally to be fair to the Greatest Generation, many of them are passing away, and the over 65 cohort now includes the young baby boomers.
Leelee for Obama
This thread is so depressing. I find it remarkable how some older people never equate their longer lives with the fact the Medicare has kept them alive. I think Rep. Weiner had the right idea yesterday-let’s do away with Medicare-Force them to vote on it and show the Repubs for the lying assholes they are.
gex
Someone needs to tell Nana and Gramps that if the younger workers all go bankrupt or die from a fucked up health care system, we won’t be able to pay enough in taxes to pay for their precious Medicare.
I see the revenge of WordPress error has arrived.
gex
@Silver: I’m with you. If a bunch of assholes want to start whining about government run health care, and succeed in this much needed reform, then it is time to teach them the wisdom of the saying, “be careful what you ask for, you just may get it.”
WereBear
It’s truly amazing how so many seniors don’t realize Medicare IS a government run program.
If we can ever break through the fog the Republicans are dead and they know it. There was this same sort of disinformation about Medicare in the first place, and now you’d have to pry it from their cold, dead, arthritic fingers.
Of course I’d like to get old (considering the alternative) but I really dread becoming one of the whiny, paranoid, pains in the ass so many older people are.
Yet, as I learned growing up in Florida, they were like that when they were younger, too.
So there’s hope.
Martin
Yes, the BJ server is slowly regaining its sentience after the major upgrade. It started with trojans in the toolbar, cut off access to the style sheet, and is now barfing on comment posting. Soon we’ll be back to the good old days of 24/7 WordPress > Error
LosGatosCAa
Hey, you Health Care Reformers!
Get the Hell of my lawn!!!!
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
I asked two co-workers “Wouldn’t you be willing to sacrifice a little in order that your fellow citizens are taken care of?” The answer, of course, was “No!” Both of these people sit in the pew at a Southern Baptist church every Sunday.
But Brachiator nailed it up above: Obama is getting no cover from the congressional Dems. They’re worse than pathetic. Or they’re totally in the tank for the insurance lobby. Or both.
Beeb
Somehow the Republicans have managed to equate the public option with welfare. “Obama wants to take your money and give it to poor people who BTW are all either black or illegal aliens so you’ll be reduced to eating cat food before you’re euthanized.”
Seniors on Medicare don’t think it’s welfare because they paid Medicare taxes while they were working and pay Part B premiums now. Plus which, like Social Security, it isn’t means tested. Perhaps Obama or a surrogate should start making it clearer that the public option will have premiums too, and deductibles, and that “affordable” does not mean “free.” Then — and this is where how to pay for the subsidies becomes important — he needs to be clearer that no one is suggesting using middle class tax money to pay for those. Telling people that emergency rooms impose a hidden tax on everyone isn’t working because, um, it’s hidden.
And all of this would have been a lot easier if they had just gone with “Medicare for everyone” to begin with. Sigh.
Molly
@Capri: “The natural response to statements that Republicans don’t want government-run, socialized medicine it to say that Republicans want to eliminate medicare.”
Win.
Zifnab
Can’t we ramp up the “Medicare is going bankrupt!” whine alarm and hitch that to health care reform instead? Maybe something along the lines of, “If we don’t get more people paying into the program, you’ll all be eating cat food out of a card board box when all the social programs implode exactly eight minutes pasted right now!”
Alternately, perhaps we can give Larry King the mumps and tell old people if they don’t support reform, they’re next.
JenJen
@inkadu: My dear, sweet, progressive, senior-citizen mother wouldn’t dream of forwarding those emails. Rather, she hits “reply all” and puts every one of those mofo’s on blast.
Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Lola
Why the surprise? My conservative city in California could never pass education measures that would slightly increase sales tax. What do old people care about the quality of our K – 12 system? It is sad really.
Leelee for Obama
@JenJen: I officially LOVE your Mom!
Leelee for Obama
@Lola: Apparently, no one told them poor, uneducated kids are more likely to commit crimes in their precious neighborhood, and taxes for more cops are out of the question, amirite? It’s beyond sad. Sometimes, I really do despair of this country ever growing up.
Seebach
I know one of the reasons that people don’t like giving to “the poor” is that they imagine some big, black scary welfare queen wasting the money. Why doesn’t anybody imagine some pure, Aryan, wispy snowflake of a girl who’s dying of tuberculosis, just as her breasts are budding. Wouldn’t that just set GOP hearts a-flutter? Why doesn’t she cancel out the scary welfare queen?
Max
As a Gen X’er, I have my doubts that the Boomers, who are about to bankrupt social security and medicare, are too concerned about the future generations either.
I have quite a few relatives of that age that regurgitate the “everyone can go to the emergency room” bull$hit. Meanwhile, they are counting the days till they can qualify for ss and medicare.
At 38, I have long resigned myself to the fact that I will never see any benefit from my annual maxed out contributions.
No offense meant to any Boomers on this board.
Also.
PG
It’s partly the fault of Democrats who didn’t have the courage to just put forward the plan of “Medicare for All.”
Yeah, single-payer, I said it. And no, single payer =/= government ownership of hospitals and employment of providers. We have single-payer for seniors and their doctors still run their own practices and don’t have long waiting lines. Let’s extend it to the rest of us.
Let the Republicans explain why the system that’s doing so well for the seniors shouldn’t be extended to the rest of us. (Kind of like Bill Kristol’s sad moment on The Daily Show of explaining why the government apparently was providing great health care for soldiers but would totally screw it up if they provided health care for the rest of us.)
Just like the seniors, we can buy additional insurance or have it provided through our employers (seniors who were union members had prescription coverage and other extra benefits long before Medicare offered any of that), but we want to be guaranteed health care from any provider willing to take government insurance too.
Maybe seniors would be more embarrassed by their “got mine” attitude if they had to openly say, “I don’t want my grandchildren in the same health care program I have.”
RareSanity
Actually, there would be a pretty simple fix, but it would require enormous titanium balls and a threshold for some short term political pain. It goes like this:
Obama, Reid and Pelosi make a combined statement that:
“Since the prevailing opinion on health care reform is that people don’t want the government in charge of their health care; we want you to know that we have heard you. We have also decided that discrimination on access to governmental health care programs, based on age and/or income, is not moral and can no longer continue. Therefore, Speaker Pelosi will be introducing a bill to the House that will that will eliminate ALL federal funds for ALL medicare and medicaid programs. This measure will not only provide fairness in the way the government deals with its citizens on health care, it has the added advantage of eliminating one of the largest financial burdens of the government. Another important provision in the bill will be to lower the tax rates of all Americans equivalent to the cost of these unwanted services.”
It would be beautiful! Republicans and Blue Dogs would then have to either vote for eliminating health care for the old and poor. Or, vote against the largest single tax cut in history. Maybe they would be a little more open to negotiation at that point.
Martin
Chalk part of this up to failure on the part of Dems to clearly articulate their plan.
The GOP has been talking *only* about socialized medicine calling that government-run health care, where doctors are all government employees, and the Dems have been talking *only* about a Medicare-like program for non-seniors calling that a government-run plan, and it’s easy for people to overlook that they are two entirely different things.
And to be honest, what Obama proposes probably won’t help seniors one whit because they have their plan. It’s pretty much all risk for them personally, but it’s most likely it’ll come out a wash for them.
gopher2b
Finally to be fair to the Greatest Generation, many of them are passing away, and the over 65 cohort now includes the young baby boomers.
The Baby Boomer generation is the most selfish, self-centered generation in this history of man. So, I’m sure things will get better. I’m moving to Oz.
R-Jud
@Seebach:
Oh Seebach. Everyone knows white people don’t go on welfare! That’s unpossible: they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps!
Unless they’re the President’s mother.
Makewi
Why is the issue Republicans when it is clear that the Democrats have enough control of both houses to pass this without them? Is it just easier to demonize then to look at the actual issues?
JenJen
@Leelee for Obama: There are times when she frightens me! I mean that in the best possible way, but you should read the stuff she sends to these asshats who had the terrible misfortune of adding her to an email list. For very brief moments, I feel a little bit sorry for them. Don’t worry, it’s fleeting.
But, like she always tells me, “Hell, life is short, and at my age, I don’t even buy green bananas anymore.”
Words to live by.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
So the citizens of cognitive dissonance nation hate “government run health care”, but luv those Medicare benefits? What a revolting predicament this is!
Here’s the simple solution to this problem – forget trying to “reform healthcare” with a whole new complex system – just lower the age floor to qualify for Medicare, by a little bit each year. Drop it down by say 2-3 years every year – after a couple of decades of shifting the age downwards the Medicare age floor will meet the SCHIP age ceiling, and *voila*, problem solved.
At the rate this health care reform debate is moving, that would be a faster way to get to single payer than anything else likely to make it through Congress.
Max
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: OT – do you live in New Mexico? Wasn’t sure if the ABQ was literal. My parents have a ranch near Truth or Consequences, and I love the state. I’d live there in a heartbeat if there was any sort of economy.
Brachiator
@Seebach:
Somehow, I don’t think you’re doing a good job of selling health care reform by telling a senior, “You’ve lived long enough, granny! Time for you to move over and give it up for 5 year olds.”
Tsulagi
Higher probability of working with the teabaggers.
That’s pretty good.
Leelee for Obama
@JenJen: Yeah, that green bananas thing always cracks me up! I’ve used it myself! I’m 58, so like a self-hating Jew, I’m a self-hating Boomer. All I can say is-somebody changed the rules and never dropped a flag, KWIM?
SiubhanDuinne
@RareSanity: Wow, that is a thing of beauty there. Never happen . . . but it’s a pious thought.
John Hamilton Farr
Max @53: Well, *I* am in New Mexico, and the economy is just fine, thank you. That’s what keeps out the riff-raff. :-) If you let a little thing like making a living keep you away, you’re missing the whole point of the place. Jesus, if I had access to a ranch in T or C, I would be THERE. Good luck to you, and I hope you make it here soon!
As for Medicare, yes, my wife “got hers” this year, and this represents the first health insurance either of us has had in five years. I’m eligible next year, thank God. $96/mo. and lots better than basic BC/BS, with a deductible one can live with. It’s a f*cking lifesaver. Now she can hold her head up high and not be afraid.
The thing about seniors (a term I will never use to describe my wife and me) knocking reform is that the goddamn bastards in D.C. keep threatening to pay for this (fake) health reform by whittling back Medicare. That’s the long and the short of it. If health care reform wasn’t accompanied by this inherent threat, those poll numbers would be very different.
As for us, we’re all for universal coverage. Extend Medicare to everyone, why the hell not?
JenJen
Jon Stewart Rules.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-july-30-2009/healthraiser
Zifnab
@Seebach:
Maybe if the girl was a boy.
General Winfield Stuck
I’m not that worried having old folks tell pollsters and even their cong. reps they’re not thrilled with HC reform. In 1993 it was important, but we are well past that now. Repubs and dems know the health care castle is crumbling benieth our feets and the whole thing will soon collapse in a pile of debt.
Repubs don’t care because their plutocrat benefactors will get to squeeze the last nickel out before the end, and wingnuts are in full destructo mode across the board anyhow. IE. a possible new way to drown govment in bathtub, since the permanent majority thing went bellyup. And if worse comes to worse, maybe a homespun Red Dawn will give them the chance to realize the fantasies of some for eugenic driven health care plans, that will keep a whiter shade of pale populace in charge for the long term.
I am hoping that enough dems come to Jesus in understanding it’s now or never for grabbing the brass ring to moderate and eventually overcome profiteering in an area that shouldn’t be profiteered. Not to mention blowing up their base and making it more likely the wingnuts will take back they’re precious gavels sooner rather than later.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Max
Yes. My handle is taken from the classic Bugs Bunny line.
And contrary to popular opinion, we do have an economy here – in fact we are doing better than most of the nation right now (IIRC local unemployment was running around 4.5% earlier this year, not sure what it is now) and local housing missed both the up and the down of the housing bubble, which has proved to be a blessing in the long run.
On the flip side, just about everybody with a decent paying job outside of the art-culture sphere is separated by less than 6-degrees of Bacon from the military-industrial complex, so it isn’t the best place for people who like to keep themselves morally aloof from the MIC and still eat well or raise a family. Probably half the people I know are either in the DOE or the DOD or are contracting to them or otherwise affiliated with them in some fashion or another.
Seebach
Somehow, I don’t think you’re doing a good job of selling health care reform by telling a senior, “You’ve lived long enough, granny! Time for you to move over and give it up for 5 year olds.”
Yeah, but right now I’m not selling it. Right now I’m laying down judgement on some greedy bitch who grew up in the wealthiest nation in the world, benefitting from our largesse who can’t even try to care about somebody else. Not my salesman hat.
catclub
ThatlefturninABQ@52
I agree with your plan, it is simple and have wondered why it has
not been suggested. My conclusion, far too rational.
I.e. no one can be paid off for implementing it.
I would add: accelerating the age downward in later years.
Anyone whose child is covered can join as well.
Seebach
Maybe if the girl was a boy.
Crap. Got the pedophilia right, but not the right gender.
John Hamilton Farr
And for those saying “screw Medicare,” if you had any idea how good it is, you would all be SCREAMING for it. NINETY-SIX BUCKS PER MONTH, gang.
I have a large lump on the back of my neck. Probably not cancer, as it’s been there a while. Went to a surgeon, who told me to get an MRI. No health insurance for the last five years, remember. The hospital said the MRI would cost $2,400 (!!!), or “just” $1,850-something if I paid cash on the day of the scan. I don’t have that kind of money, so I’ve had to postpone having this looked at again and again. Just imagine the frigging worry. I could be YOU however many years from now. Next year I’ll have Medicare and will not only get my MRI, but have the first physical I’ve had in 12 years. Medicare is a godsend.
So please, enough with this puerile snarking about “old people.” I’m 64, play in a surf/punk band, with politics left of Che. My wife and I are scraping by on Social Security, a tiny teacher’s pension for her, and my writing & Web work income. By no true definition do we “have ours.” No insurance, no equity (we rent), no savings. This is IT, boys and girls. Now leave Medicare the hell ALONE and get the fuck off my lawn.
General Winfield Stuck
@Max:
We live on Sunshine, lots of sunshine, and mucho Enchantment.
Zifnab
@JenJen: Your link is bad, and you are bad.
Max
@General Winfield Stuck: And green chilies! (I don’t like the red ones)
Silver
@John Hamilton Farr
And for those saying “screw Medicare,” if you had any idea how good it is, you would all be SCREAMING for it. NINETY-SIX BUCKS PER MONTH, gang.
You missed the point perfectly. You want to leave Medicare alone, because you’re just about to get it.
I want it, but I can’t have it because a bunch of old fucks don’t think I deserve it. If that’s the way you want to play the game, don’t be surprised when I work to destroy what you have. And I promise that I will. Like I said before, if you want to damn me to insurance hell for the next 35 years, I’m going to work to make sure that the people who advocate putting me there are sitting beside me.
ellaesther
Honestly, the two things that bother me the most with all of this are:
1) Lies, lies, and damn lies, every single damn where I look (Really, Rep. Virginia Foxx? “..put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government” — REALLY?!)
and 2) the repurposing of the dictionary, to wit: “bureaucrats” will be between me and my doctor if this passes — because no one in the insurance companies, currently in charge of keeping me from getting whatever healthcare I need, IS A BUREAUCRAT!!!
Yes, I know I’ve said this before — both here and at my own place! — but the world has yet to be improved by my righteous fury, so I’m going to keep spewing it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Max:
Yup, those too.
ellaesther
Honestly, the two things that bother me the most with all of this are:
1) Lies, lies, and damn lies, every single damn where I look (Really, Rep. Virginia Foxx? “…put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government” — REALLY?!)
and 2) the repurposing of the dictionary, to wit: “bureaucrats” will be between me and my doctor if this passes — because no one in the insurance companies, currently in charge of keeping me from getting whatever healthcare I need, IS A BUREAUCRAT!!!
Yes, I know I’ve said this before — both here and at my own place! — but the world has yet to be improved by my righteous fury, so I’m going to keep spewing it.
Walker
It was interesting reading the housing blogs in 2005. The intergenerational war was brutal. The X-ers really hated the Boomers. Some of them would talk Logan’s Run style solutions.
DonkeyKong
Oh c’mon, time for the reverse lied/scare tactics.
“Hey old people, if you DON”T vote for health care, not only will we KILL you, we won’t even have the common courtesy to eat you afterwards!
I smell a Fox News Alert….
JenJen
@Zifnab: I am so very sorry. :-( But only on one count. :-)
B-J 2.0 used to let us edit. Remember, the good old days?
adamchaz
@John Hamilton Farr:
Respect!!!!
Maude
@John Hamilton Farr:
I have Medicare and it is something I am grateful for. I’m disabled, not yet a senior. I ride the bus with a lot of seniors and they know Medicare is Federal.
Obama did state that there won’t be cuts, but got drowned out by the beer story.
Medicare for all would work and that’s why the Repubs are against it. Can’t have the lower orders having good anything.
Leelee for Obama
@John Hamilton Farr: I think you might have misunderstood my post. I think we need to force the truth about that socialized, government-run health care program, Medicare, down the throats of the assholes in Congress! I don’t really want to do away with it-it’s a parable or a metaphor or an object lesson or something else elevated like that. Also. Hell man, I’m praying to live to 65 just to use me some….
JenJen
@John Hamilton Farr:
Just to cover the bases, my sweet, dear father often says you can pry the Medicare from his cold, dead hands. He thinks it’s like a goose that shits golden eggs.
You’ll never get senior citizens to believe that Medicare sucks, obvs. So we’re only left with the fear tactic aimed toward younger people. I actually believe POTUS could do a much better job at persuasion on this front, and wish he’d hit it a little harder.
JasonF
RareSanity @47 — something like that did happen yesterday, though not iwth the high profile of a combined Obama/Pelosi/Reid piush. Leelee for Obama alluded to this upthread — see here for details, but basically, Rep. Weiner of New York introduced a bill abolishing Medicare on the grounds that it is socialized medicine. Shockingly, no Republicans voted for it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
That is, as we say, a solvable problem – the red ones are yummy if you put enough green chile on top of them. [Of course the same thing could be said of a telephone book. Or a brick].
Don’t even get me started on the aroma it makes in August when all the grocery stores are firing up the chile roasters out in their parking lots. If it doesn’t smell like that in Heaven, I don’t want to go.
ellaesther
@DonkeyKong: Ok, you made me Laugh Out Loud.
(But, just, you know, for the record: Won’t the old people be kinda tough and stringy? I’m not sure I’m going to eat mine no matter what the government promises).
tomboy
It is time for a sarah silverman type effort, commercials, etc.
Grandparents should be encouraged to support universal healthcare for their grandkids.
Kathy in St. Louis
I’m on Medicare and have written and e-mailed and called lots of people advocating health care reform, including a public option. Not all seniors are selfish. We’ve had a really good run here. If it does end up costing us a little extra, so be it. I’ve got kids and grandkids who need the help and don’t need to be turned down for pre-existing conditions.
slippytoad
@ericvsthem:
I would have had a very hard time not using a four-letter word starting with C.
RSA
I’d like to see a poll some time: I think that U.S. health care programs, funded by taxes, should guarantee coverage of…
a. All American citizens.
b. All American citizens over the age of 65.
c. All right-thinking American citizens.
d. All American citizens with non-Spanish surnames.
e. All Christian Americans.
f. All white Americans.
g. Me and my family.
mai naem
I work with these people and a lot of them are just incredibly selfish. There’s a real cognitive disconnect here. A lot of them didn’t pay enough into medicare for what it’s costing to pay for them now but they don’t care. They truly don’t care as long as they got theirs. What they don’t realize is that people could sit there and pull a big FU to medicare too because it’s the current working who are working for medicare. They can’t even connect the dots with the people who work/help them all the time who are uninsured. And don’t even get me started on the Boomers. Selfish and unprepared for the future with an incredible want for instant gratification.
Leelee for Obama
@mai naem: Not all of us, mai. Some of us aren’t selfish at all. Remember that some of us Boomers were the very ones who stopped Vietnam and pushed for Civil Rights and lots of us voted for Barack.
gex
@RSA: Clearly there are some trick answers in your multiple choice. The only real answers are e, f, and g.
John S.
This is the most insidious thing about for-profit health insurance IMHO.
My dear, sweet little boy – age 2 – had the misfortune of requiring a double orchiopexy last year (fancy surgeon talk for repairing the fact that both his testicles were not descended). Guess who now is branded for the rest of his life with a pre-existing condition?
I suppose Blue Cross would have preferred that this were Sparta and I just threw him off a fucking cliff for being born ‘imperfect’.
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
It’s always the case that rights and social change brought about by one generation is quickly forgotten by their children and grandchildren. For the Gen X’ers and after, you have no real idea the degree of social stricture and bigotry boomers took to the street to confront, a lot of split heads and social blackballing from the Victorian Agers wasn’t always all that fun.
Nor was receiving a letter AS, Greetings From the Presnit, requesting your presence to kill and die in a foreign steamy jungle on the other side of the world.
Not to mention the civil rights struggles Leelee states and just saying no to the warmongers, by giving up their citizenship and what was thought eternal banishment from their homeland. That, or go to prison.
No need to say thanks, because Boomers have since made more than a few mistakes. But please don’t slam them for being born all at once, now needing retirement all at once. There was no choice in this matter.
mai naem
Well, I did say “a lot” not “all.” As far as Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement – some of you guys then turned into Joe Lieberman and David Horowitz.
Calouste
@gopher2b:
Baby boomers are the most selfish, parasitic, self-centered generation in any western country. So moving to Oz won’t help. (Unless of course you meant by Oz the place Dorothy goes and not Down Under.)
Kathy in St. Louis
mai naem: Some turned into Teddy Kennedy too. Some turned into Dick Cheney. Some turned into Walter Cronkite. That’s the point.
A lot of seniors could not or did not prepare for retirement as they should have. Others, and this is the one that make me utterly ill, cry about how little they have and spend their declining years sitting in some casino pumping quarters into machines. Those seniors could afford a higher copay if they weren’t sitting in these last stops before the cemetery blowing their cash. There are all stripes, but rather than have age warfare over all this, let’s keep the pressure on our representatives to get a decent health care bill that will help all of us.
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: Hey, Stuck! just a quick story-about three months into Iraq, I’m standing on line here in sunny Floriduh, and bitching about the statement by Rumsfeld that “we” wouldn’t let Iraq become an Islamic Republic like Iran. Gu behind me says something like-“you probably marched against the Vietnam War and made us leave, what do have to say about that?” To which I replied,”You’re welcome.” Shut him right the hell up! It’s not mine, someone else said it first, but it was perfect in the instance.
inkadu
@Zifnab: You win the thread.
Leelee for Obama
@mai naem: And some of us voted for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Al Gore and Barack Obama. Some of us raised our kids to be human beings-though I will grant you, my generation did not govern well at the top-TOO much baggage, I’m thinking.
Kyle
“bureaucrats” will be between me and my doctor if this passes—because no one in the insurance companies, currently in charge of keeping me from getting whatever healthcare I need, IS A BUREAUCRAT
Conservatard definitions:
Government bureaucrat – evul, librul soshulizm
Corporate bureaucrat denying health care to fatten profits – brave warrior for Murkan capitalism
I’m fucking suck of this “Private enterprise=Jesus, government = Satan” Reaganist bullshit. I’ve worked for private corps absolutely choking on Dilbert levels of bureaucracy and mediocrity, and right now I work for a state university that leaves in the dust any of the private corps I’ve worked for, in performance and responsiveness.
CynDee
@gopher2b and everyone:
My dad was 21 when WWII started. He was a child laborer in the Depression and was half starved when he joined the Army Air Corps, He went into constant danger and helped win the war in the Pacific. He returned physically whole, but broken in spirit. He went directly to work, not at a job he wanted, but what he could get. He was proud that he gave his family a better life. He was one of the people in the three decades following the war whose productivity built the massive U.S. economy.
In his entire working life he had three vacations of 1 week each. He paid local and federal taxes and into Social Security and Medicare during most of those programs’ history. His very small business provided healthcare to his staff of five to ten employees and their families. He died worn out at 58, not owing anybody anything, without ever claiming any public benefits himself. Please think twice when you call people who have been through that and lived honestly “selfish.” Now go look in the mirror.
I am 65. I struggled years to earn what men do, and endured being minimized and sidelined and finally made a living wage by age 43. I started working at age 13 babysitting most weekends. I had my first paying job at 15. By age 35 I had been paying into Social Security for 20 years. In 1979 my Social Security earnings statement came and the total was $20,000. I broke down and cried.
It was another eight years before I earned a living wage. I had to move out of my beloved small town and go to a city. By age 57 I was finally getting ahead, I was highly productive and at the top of my profession, but jobs were being outsourced and corporate corruption was everywhere. I have struggled to stay employed, and have been able to find work only about half time since 2000. During my entire work life I had full health insurance only a few years, and the premiums and deductibles were very high. I had to drop COBRA. Meantime, job stress eroded my health.
This year I was eligible for Medicare, and is the first time I have had decent coverage. I am on regular Medicare. I stayed away from the hyped and shady “Advantage” plans. If you are in your late 40s or 50s, unemployment is your next risk. I am telling you that everyone should have the option for Medicare. If they want something else, fine, but beware of tying your healthcare to a job.
Don’t let them start gutting Medicare, because it won’t be that long before you need to be on it. If they make one program worse they will make any other government health program worse. I worry that they will start denying certain claims based on age. Then my son, who is 20 years younger than I, will be frantic to find me some care, and put his own future at risk, and he will likely not have Medicare to count on.
Already in England they declined to save a 79-year-old man’s eye from macular degeneration because he “has another eye” and if anything starts happening to that one they’ll try to save it. A 79-year-old man (or anyone) with one eye is likely to fall, and is subject to heatless people in the government who have gold-plated care, and will never have to give up an eye. How do you think his family feels about that?
How will you feel when one health solution that could prolong your productive life is denied to you because you’re getting closer to the statistical age of death?
It’s true that many older people and people of all ages are clueless about the nature of Medicare, and hypocrites about taking what they would deny others access to.
The point should not be how should we cut this and that from whose health care. The point is, WHY in God’s name are we not cutting out foreign invasions and keeping our money at home to support life and health and build a strong population. NO ONE complained about the cost of Iraq and killing hundreds of thousands of foreign citizens. No one complains about the bottomless pit of Afghanistan. Now we have to divy up pennies among the generations of our own citizens who need to go to the doctor and the dentist?
I worry all the time about the needs of growing children and families. Any unstable part of the population destabilizes the rest.
What is wrong with some of the hateful commenters here who, like the pompous 20th Century male autocrats whose companies I worked so hard to enrich, now minimize me and my mind and my achievements and my contributions to the system and my desire for a good future for everyone, and call “old people” selfish and crazy. Some are some aren’t, in every age group. Even, guess what, yours.
The point is, every human life should be fully supported in health by its society, or that society will sicken and fail, as it is doing now. The greedy corporate thieves want the different generations to try to steal the benefits of the others, and keep us all weak.
It would take a minute fraction of the Pentagon’s wasted dollars or the bailouts scandalous looting to give everyone in the country decent care.
I worked painfully hard most of my life and “built value for investors.” If I want to make quilts in my old age, and the system doesn’t want to pay for me to keep my sight, that makes me selfish for wanting to keep seeing while I still live?
You will be like me in not such a long while. Stop acting so damn mean and support care for all; otherwise yours is the care that could be eliminated. Have your mothers taught you nothing?
merrily
The problem isn’t with seniors, it’s with the media. I’ve seen nothing to suggest any of the healthcare plans will improve medicare, and one or two of them do talk about cutting back on it in some ways. So you shouldn’t expect higher numbers on the approval side.
Here are the exact same numbers shown a slightly different way: 64% of seniors believe that healthcare reform will NOT reduce their access to healthcare, and 61% believe their care will not worsen.
That sounds a little different, doesn’t it?
Meg
just found out the other day that my own grandmother thinks that obama will take away her medicare. i’m kind of stunned on this one, seeing as she’s the only one in our family with “insurance.” so you’re worried about your benefits when your own son, who is 60 with mitral valve prolapse, lives in that perilous age before medicare kicks in? now here comes obama who wants to extend coverage to the self-employed roofers out there, but you’re gonna stop it because you’re worried about the end of medicare? she can only be listening to fox with this kind of logic. maybe next time i can just say “my generation doesn’t wanna pay for your health care no more.” tough love for grandma. for realz…
JenJen
@General Winfield Stuck: I’m one Gen-Xer that would like to thank your generation for the music. That’s the first thing I recognized; it took me awhile to come around to all that was sacrificed.
Don’t give up on us anymore than we’ve given up on you guys. :-)
DonkeyKong
I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half. -Jay Gould (Rail Baron)
Just replace class with generations and it fits for the 21st century.
inkadu
Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick. Would people stop taking their demographic so seriously? We love everyone here and we all know old people we wouldn’t feed into the Piggly Wiggly meat grinder, not even for an order of small fries.
DonkeyKong
I always thought Wilford Brimley looked far more appetizing than the oatmeal he was pitching. But that’s just me.
DonkeyKong
Like an old grandfatherly ham hock……
General Winfield Stuck
Tru dat. But we will keep mum on Obama’s secret plan to mulch aborted white fetuses into protein wafers to feed a starving Africa. Will give a whole new meaning to Furrin Aid.
inkadu
@General Winfield Stuck: And Obama’s gonna use the placentas to make con-doms to hand out to CHIRRENZ.
Irony Abounds
I got the “Obama is going to destroy my healthcare” from my mom last night. She said all her elderly friends are screaming about it. I realize now that the biggest fear I have about growing old isn’t dying, it is becoming an old fart. As every day passes I become more pessimistic about this country.
chrome agnomen
this is my favorite blog and i like many of the commenters, but there’s a persistent theme among you that really pisses me off. “the baby boomer generation is the worst….(your favorite epithet)…” well fuck you, those who qualify. maybe it slipped your mind; WE ARE the DFHs!!! we had a lot to do with stopping the last big war that you maybe read about back in the 60s. peace and love wasn’t just a bumper sticker for a lot of us. yeah, we’re getting toward medicare age, but that doesn’t signal that we lost the values we forged back then. i still fight against all the inequalities that i see, i’m still the cut man in the underdog’s corner. you want to generalize? go do it on a right wing blog–that’s their MO. do you forget what liberal means? all my life i have heard the same chant about every generation; self-absorbed, narcissistic, materialistic. i dismiss it all since i know that there are people from the whole spectrum in every bunch that comes along.
this probably condemns me as a concern troll, but i’ll shrug that off too, and continue to hope for and work for universal health care, and all the other things that a civilized and advanced people strive for, because that’s what it means to be a human being: to want the same for everybody that you want for yourself. just a little plea to think about what you’re doing when you want to paint with a broad brush.
/end of rant.
General Winfield Stuck
@Irony Abounds:
The wingnuts know all the fear buttons to push. The only time dems were able to get things like social security and medicare done was after landslide victories and to get it done quickly before the wingers fire up the mighty wurlitzer to full tilt. In 64, Johnson, I think had a senate majority of 67 dems with only 33 repubs, if I remember right. But even then he said we have to move fast on civil rights, and his Great Society legislation. Of course, Vietnam turned into his biggest foil, but he got some things thru before that went south..
Kathy in St. Louis
Irony Abounds: As an “old fart”, I would love to hear that some of the other people my age AREN”T being taken in by this BS that the insurance industry is putting out to scare the crap out of us. I am saddened by the number of seniors who, like McCain, seem to be under the impression that they are going to live forever, and deserve to.
Tell your Mom and her friends that the way the government works, it would take them years and years to get their Sh** together enough to start knocking old people off. She’ll probably die of something else long before that day comes.
Mike in NC
Yeah, and then he admitted that passing civil rights legislation was the moral thing to do but would screw the Democrats at the polls for roughly the next couple of generations.
Ecks
It’s ok, I’ve gotten used to being called nobody a long time ago.
But CynDee, worthy as much of your rant in, it does underlie the basic problem with health care, which is that as we get better at delivering it the costs inevitably go up, and at some points we are forced to start making hard choices about those costs. If it costs $20,000 to save someone’s eye do you do it? Well how can you not? But what if it cost $20 million? or $20 billion? At some point we don’t have an infinite amount of money, and have to make hard choices about what we will do. Engineers face this same choice every day when they decide what safety features to build into roads and such – if you could save an average of 10 lives a year by spending $30 million installing guard rails, do you do it, keeping in mind that makes 30 million less for feeding starving homeless people? To solve these problems they typically have to decide that a human life is “worth” a couple of million dollars so that they have a hard number to plug into their equations. It’s ugly, but true.
In America we make those hard choices by paying twice as much as the rest of the developed world NOT to make those choices – we spend double the percent of GDP as anybody else for health outcomes that are no better. And we still end up making them anyway, because insurance companies do it for us (charging out the nose for the privilege).
In the rest of the world they have medical experts negotiating what will be paid for and what won’t. In practical terms that means everyone gets pretty good care (health outcomes there are no worse than they are here on average, and sometimes are better), because the bottom line is that health is collectively very important to us and we’re willing to spend an awful lot on it. But, yes, sometimes they make very hard choices like not saving one eye because it is too expensive, given that the person still has another eye so won’t be blind. Nobody LIKES making that choice, but the reality is that somebody has to, or sooner or later we all go bankrupt (and increasingly, it’s sooner). It’s heart wrenching, because you are forced into the impossibly ugly position of putting a dollar value on human life. But so long as doctors and drugs and MRI machines are not available in infinite supply, they have to be paid for, and that requires money to be spent… At the end of the day there’s no getting around the fact that life is a terminal condition, and that spending money can only spin it out so far.
/counter-rant
Mike in NC
We live in an area largely made up of (1) low-income southern yahoo bigots, and (2) well-to-do retirees from the Rustbelt who love to piss and moan about government and taxes. It’s depressing to be in a room with these schmucks.
Ryan Cunningham
On the bright side, they’ll all be dead soon enough…
inkadu
I remember being in school choir when I was 15… This was probably 1986. Time Magazine had just come out with another scintillating essay on, “The Me Generation” or something like that. A lot of the students had started to skip choir, and the baritones weren’t pulling their weight. The choir director finally gave us a harangue, and concluded with, “And if this is the me generation, I want to have no part of it,” before storming out the room.
General Winfield Stuck
@Ryan Cunningham:
Yes, but we’re gonna haunt your bratty asses.
Ailuridae
@Max:
I haven’t read through the rest of the thread so I don’t know if anyone has responded to you but something you wrote needs to be addressed.
You wrote:
As a Gen X’er, I have my doubts that the Boomers, who are about to bankrupt social security and medicare, are too concerned about the future generations either.
There is no risk, whatsoever of Social Security going bankrupt. Additionally, with minor adjustments on the maximum one has to contribute it can be fully funded indefinitely with the possibility of expansion. The Social Security funding question is unmitigated bullshit.
Silver
That’s great that you guys stopped the Vietnam war.
(Pause for a golf clap…)
You also started the fucking thing. It took throwing 60,000 young kids into the meat grinder (and you managed to miss Tom Delay, nice work there!) along with 3 million or so of the yellow people before you figured out it was a bad idea. You protested a few things, took huge amounts of drugs, and then went to work for corporate America planning the next rape of the planet. As as group, you’re up there with members of the White Rose society…
We might as well give white people a high five for stopping slavery…after all, it wasn’t one of them damn Negroes in chains that issued the Emancipation proclamation, was it?
General Winfield Stuck
@Mike in NC:
Yes, he did say that, . And for a short time, it did, that and Vietnam. But then a funny thing happened as racist southern dems became wingnuts, and drove out socially liberally NE and upper MW republicans and other moderate repubs.
Took awhile for the worm to turn, but what goes around, comes around, and the wingularity got hit with a giant electoral boomerang for their deals with the devil. And we have what we have today. DEm favored demographics far as the eye can see. Notwithstanding center left grand efforts to sabotage their own good fortunes with neverending circular firing squads.
Leelee for Obama
@Silver: In 1961, I was 10 years old, so fuck you, I didn’t start the fucking war. I just did what I could to stop it. I still haven’t smoked pot, let alone anything else, so fuck you again. And you should be lucky enough to know someone as brave as those kids in the White Rose, you cretin, They were beheaded. They knew it could happen and they fought the Nazis anyway. As I used to say, back in the 60s, BITE ME!
inkadu
@Ecks: This is the most horrifically ignorant thing I have ever read on this blog:
No. We make those hard choices by denying care, not covering preexisting conditions and dropping people off the insurance rolls, if they can even get on them to start with.
Most people never get the opportunity to be faced with the hard choices — they just wait until their cancer takes them to the ER and they die there.
I am sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying.
inkadu
@Leelee for Obama: In 1961, I was 10 years old, so fuck you, I didn’t start the fucking war. I just did what I could to stop it. I still haven’t smoked pot, let alone anything else, so fuck you again.
I recommend you start.
Leelee for Obama
@inkadu: Too much vitriol in my post, or just in general? It’s been a shitty day here at Alzheimer Acres, and Silver just pushed a few buttons too many.
General Winfield Stuck
@Silver:
Wait a minute numbnut. Boomers didn’t start Vietnam, they were the ones dying. Their parents did, TGG. Get your history right. NOt every Boomer was liberal, that is true. The Boomer wingnuts were still aplenty and by and large did most of the planet raping later on. We (liberal boomers) started the environmental movement and have fought fought against them from day one to present.
Comrade Kevin
< Golf Clap >
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
Sophie Scholl should be mandatory viewing for those wondering what real courage is like.
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: Glad to know someone else saw that film. I couldn’t breathe through most of it, it broke my heart. Their parents were so brave, and the kids! There aren’t enough words to describe them!
@Comrade Kevin:You can bite me, too. Also.
Common Sense
It is absolutely true that Boomers didn’t start Vietnam.
They just started Iraq.
Leelee for Obama
@Common Sense: And not all of us supported that either. It’s remarkable, the level of pissed-off here tonite against Boomers. Unlike our parents’ generation, lots of us knew when the government was full of crap, and said so. That there wasn’t more of us earlier is certainly not our fault.
General Winfield Stuck
@Common Sense:
Don’t lump dude. George Bush is a wingnut boomer. We didn’t hippify them all back in the day, some got away and got to be presnit. Just as there are plenty wingnuts in your gen as well, who would love to start a war if they could.
Just like not all genx ers are shallow brats.
Quackers
Kryptik: Seriously, that’s the most vile thing to come out of this debate.
That’s not the half of it. I’ve belonged to the AARP forum for a couple of years and this last week the wingnuts have swarmed on there in droves and have hijacked every political and health group and are spreading the most outrageous garbage imaginable. Euthanasia for grandma, taking over your bank accounts, Health Care as reparations, just whatever they can think of. Beyond disgusting.
Silver
I’m not talking about Boomers starting Vietnam, I’m talking about 50-70 year olds. Not everything is about you and your wretched generation, you know. So we give you a pass on Vietnam…you still have to explain Reagan.
@ Leelee: 10 years old in 1961, eh? That makes you 20 in 1971, and you still had your head on your shoulders. Thanks for making my point for me. You’re not a fucking hero. Stop pretending I should kiss your ass like one.
You want to atone for a few of the sins of the past? Give George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rusmfeld, and Colin Powell a cell in the Hague and start cutting commericials about how if Medicare is good enough for us, it’s good enough for everyone.
Or you can keep bitching and scraping around Medicare like Gollum with his ring…
General Winfield Stuck
@Silver:
Go fuck yourself Silver. You lying stack of shit. That is all.
Leelee for Obama
@Silver: 10 yo in 1961 makes me 58 yo now, Silver. At 20, with my head on my shoulders,I was marching against the war, helping friends get college deferments and burying friends who went to war. I also couldn’t eat a meal at a table with my family, because I disagreed with the war and my Father and Brother wouldn’t allow a meal to go un-ruined. I didn’t vote for Ray-Gun, or either Bush, and certainly not McCain, obviously. Others have to answer for them. Never said I was a hero, or told you to kiss my ass-but it’s obvious your chip is so big you can’t see around it, so, I’m done with you now.
Anne Laurie
Can you say ratfvckers? The Cheney/Rumsfeld generation of Rethuglicans had such a good time teaching the Atwater/Rove generation to manipulate the Alzheimers-ridden shell of Ronald Reagan as a puppet for whatever criminal insanity they could spin at the PNAC meetings, they’re hoping a whole demographic of confused elderly “low information voters” will make up in bulk what it lacks in charisma.
inkadu
Why does the older generation have to lord it over the younger generation? It used to be, “We fought the Great War while you were in diapers.” Then it was, “We got tear gassed in the streets of Chicago, we withstood the fire houses in Selma, so that you could live free.” I guess in the future it will be, “We were coding the javascript that now runs your pacemaker.”
Thank you to all the generations that went before for struggling to improve the present. Now could you please shut up and let us enjoy it? Thanks.
inkadu
This may be Malbec talking: But has anyone considered that maybe the older generation is against healthcare reform partly because they are more conservative in general? They tend to be more racists to. And when I say “tend to,” I mean everyone but LeeLee and her humorless non-pot smoking hippie friends who thought protesting was more than just an awesome way to meet easy chicks.
I will let you know what the Syrah has to say later this evening.
That is all.
Also.
General Winfield Stuck
@inkadu:
Hey man , This was started by non-boomers telling us we were the cause of their problems. Not the other way around. And not the first time this has come up on this blog. I reserve the right to defend myself and my generation when attacked.
inkadu
@General Winfield Stuck: There is just something so wonderfully hilarious about an intergenerational flame war. First, I think generational arguments are just overly-broad to the point of ridiculousness; every generation has different groups in it, and there is a lot of continuity among the groups between generations — like the beats to the hippies (for one); and every generation has its squares, its creative geniuses, etc… Second, shit, it’s the internet. And every body is here! Where else do we get the opportunity to hang out and chat with people who are 20 years younger or older than us? We are a very highly stratified society generationally, and it just absolutely thrills me that we are spitting prune juice and Mountain Dew at each other.
General Winfield Stuck
Not ready for the prune juice just yet. I’m more of a Korean War baby myself,anyways. I got my pappy out of going there by getting conceived. But your point is correct, and I made it myself in my comments. Some assholes however, just don’t know when to give it a rest, and a spanking is in order.
inkadu
@General Winfield Stuck: This next round of grape knee-highs is on me. Send my best to Col. Potter and Radar O’Reilly.
And Mountain Dew is undrinkable. I would like to sincerely apologize on behalf of my g-g-g-g-degeneration.
kay
@inkadu:
It is hard though. The generation currently entering Medicare eligibility benefitted from the lowest marginal federal tax rates of any generation in the modern era during the majority of their working lives, and at the same time are worried there will be some scarcity of resources now that they’re at or near the end of their working lives.
I’m not sure they can collect on one end with historically low tax rates and also collect on the other.
It’s hard to be sympathetic. I mean, something had to give here, and it probably shouldn’t be the generation(s) that follow them.
inkadu
And this kind of argument just doesn’t end. Sure they benefited from low tax rates, but you could also say they developed a lot of the infrastructure and primacy of the United States that we enjoy today. And they probably helped pass and fund the Medicare they enjoy today, and that we hopefully will enjoy tomorrow, if something better doesn’t come along.
And, anyway, class warfare is much more sporting than intergenerational warfare. How about we go after the rich geezers and call it a draw?
RareSanity
I always love a good flame war. Especially a Boomer/Gen X one!
One thing I always like to throw in, mostly to piss Boomers that whine about Gen X’ers being shallow brats is…
Who raised that generation of shallow brats?
So, if we Gen X’ers are a little bratty, smug and shallow, we are only following the example of our parents. But, of course, you (Boomers) had nothing to do with that, right?
Boomer parenting. Fail.
That is all.
Ecks
@inkadu: You indeed misunderstood what I was saying. But that’s because I wasn’t entirely clear. When I said “we pay twice as much not to make these choices,” by “we” I meant by “the american government”.
I *thought* this was relatively clear given the context of the rest of the post, but if not then *I* apologize.
inkadu
@Ecks: Ah. Apologies. All is forgiven.
I used to work at an insurance company and I got to sneak a look at their top 20 most expensive claims for that year. They were all ridiculously expensive, and they all had the same outcome: death.
I think rationing has to come, and we should not be so afraid of it, because someone needs to step in and give families an excuse to say, “ok. it’s over.” Nobody wants to pull the plug on someone they love; jesus, I couldn’t even put my CAT to sleep; but half a million to buy your wife an extra two weeks unconscious and bloated on the heart lung machine just isn’t worth it.
I think we could save a lot of money by making peace with end-of-life care.
General Winfield Stuck
@RareSanity:
No doubt our biggest failure.
inkadu
@RareSanity: The spanish word for someone with bad manners and no social grace is malcriado — literally “poorly raised.” But the literal meaning is secondary for most Spanish speakers, but not for me. So I always chortle when I hear parents call their children malcriados.
Ecks
@inkadu:
See! Them lie-bruls just wannar go killin’ all thems ole’ ‘uns! I telled youz all!
/wingnut.
You’re right of course, but smart and reasonable have a history going back millenia of turning batshit insane crazy when all of these reasonable principles and ideals they hold mean that they (or their loved ones) are going to die. It’s endearing and infuriating by turns.
And maybe I’ll ruffle some feathers here, but having lived in both the UK and the US, I think Americans as a group are particularly poor at coping with death. Maybe it’s because it’s such a young country, but it seems like there’s no cultural scripts for it as an inevitable part of life, and so they just avoid it almost completely until absolutely forced on them, and then it takes on this… I guess slightly extra histrionic quality…
I don’t know, just one person’s observation.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
As a proud member of the 26 year old set, I hope none of the people complaining about the Boomers are GenXers. I can regale you all with the fantastic, burning hatred some of my cohorts have for the most Republican generation ;-)
Zuzu's Petals
@JenJen:
Funny you should ask:
kay
@inkadu:
I would argue that they didn’t build a lot of the infrastructure that was necessary though. They didn’t. From at or around 1980 to at or around 2006 the group currently next in line for Medicare were enjoying historically low tax rates and benefiting from the public investment that was in place when they began their working lives, and putting off the public investment that should or could have been done during that period.
That isn’t true of the “greatest generation”, who actually funded massive public investment during their working lives, because it all was created and put in place in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.
They can’t have it both ways. They (and I know it’s not all of them) can’t argue cost/benefit, that the cost to them won’t be balanced with a benefit, without expecting a cost/benefit response. They want to talk about who pays and who benefits? Okay. Let’s have that discussion. I’m happy to do that.
I would argue in response to the cost/benefit argument they have chosen that they have actually enjoyed enormous benefit from costs incurred prior to the start of their working lives, with very little cost to them, and now it might be time for them to contribute.
I don’t think they’re in a strong position to make this argument, but they chose it, and I’m not going to give them a pass on it.
kay
@inkadu:
Maybe a concrete example. When I went to a land-grant university on a Pell grant, I never once kidded myself that the college or the benefits appeared out of thin air. Someone built the university system and someone created and funded the grant system, and it wasn’t me, because I was 20. I just showed up and went.
I’ve paid state and federal income taxes since, but I don’t object to expanding Pell grants, or adding a dorm or whatever to the state university, because I knew even at 20 the idea was I was supposed to keep this good thing going.
Elizabelle
From the WaPo article linked in Zuzu’s post 155:
Talk Radio Campaign Frightening Seniors
Provision for End-of-Life Counseling Is Described by Right as ‘Death Care’
” … The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills.
“… Democratic strategists privately acknowledged that they were hesitant to give extra attention to the issue by refuting the inaccuracies, but they worry that it will further agitate already-skeptical seniors.”
I think the Dems need to refute this NOW and vigorously. Learn from the birth certificate controversy: blow it up before it takes on a life of its own.
Elizabelle
CynDee: thank you for laying your situation out for us with your 7:10 p post, and reminding us that labels are often merely that.
Glad John raised this topic. It needs discussion.
(Forgot to post this last night.)
inkadu
kay – ah, yeah, concrete examples are very helpful. it was the eighties that gave us reagan, tax cuts, and sharp cuts in government programs not at least indirectly involved with killing people. it was also a time on the local level when anybody who didn’t have children was trying like hell to make sure none of their tax dollars wen to pay for schools. screw those bastards. like my parents.
elizabelle – any time democrats have to defend their policies, they feed the debate. Here is a basic script for what will be pumped out on the news channels if the Dems push back on this:
Fear is a very effective; if you have someone telling you that you’re going to be killed, and someone saying, “No. That’s not true. Nobody is going to kill you,” your brain is going to choose to believe the first person, just by a cost-benefit analysis. If the media is not going to step in and say, “One side is full of shit,” and if they can’t present all the benefits of the other side, and have a calm discussion about what it means to be alive (that is to die eventually) then it’s better NOT to talk about it. And I hate that that is the truth.
Ecks – Absolutely right. Death in America is way too clean. I was at a funeral a few years ago, at the grave site, waiting for the casket to be laid in the ground. And then everyone just started drifting away. “Time to go back to the house,” they told me. I looked back at the casket, suspended over the grave by straps attached to the metal frame. “But, but …” I eventually joined everybody else, but I thought the entire point of having a funeral had completely been missed. The point is to honor the dead and hammer into your psyche that they are well and truly fucking dead. And you can’t do that until you’re throwing some dirt on ’em.
If Americans felt the same way about sex as they do about death, all the porno’s would end right before the money shot.
FlipYrWhig
Why are so many older people so fucking gullible? Why do they believe idiotic chain emails and even more idiotic talk-radio rants? Use your goddamn brains. Jesus Christ. That’s the most astonishing generation gap phenomenon, and I see it ALL THE TIME. Too many older people just believe nonsense because it was on TV, or on the radio, or on the computer, and they have no bullshit-detecting capability. What’s the overlap between people who believe Nigerian princes want to share their fortunes with them and people who believe Obama wants to slaughter the elderly?
FlipYrWhig
And when they talk about not wanting to wait in lines, they mean not wanting to wait in lines with black and/or poor people. _Those_ people would obviously be freeloaders. They think they paid for Medicare, but expanding access for black and/or poor people is welfare, i.e., free stuff for the undeserving. It’s really fucking maddening. Politically engaged, bullshit-detection-capable older people need to talk some sense into their credulous friends and neighbors.
kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m with you. If you’re 55 and you honestly do not know that Medicare is a government subsidized program, that’s a sort of willful ignorance.
That’s not being “uninformed” that’s deliberate not knowing.
I want to ask this: why are they so susceptible to THIS particular argument, over and over and over? The “they’re going to take something away from me” argument? Is it me being ungenerous or does this particular group of voters fall for this crap again and again?
Jesus. We never would have built an interstate highway system if we’d had a country full of people who said ” someone else might get some benefit after I’m gone, so put me down as knee-jerk opposed”.
Leelee for Obama
@kay: The interstate highway system was sold by the guy who managed D-Day as a national security, move the troops in case of a nuclear attack necessity. Easy pickins, I’d say.
Why older people are likely to buy into this euthanize the old folks scenario is a mystery to me. They know damned well that older Americans are living much older than a lot of them want to, and yet there is no concerted effort to get a Kevorkian style exit assured in Federal policy, only a few states. I still think it’s low-information, Fox-viewing, rag-reading stupidity. Or maybe their kids hate them?
kay
@inkadu:
I deal with this with school levies all the time. Older people who don’t want to pay for schools. We have a property tax carve-out for old people who genuinely can’t afford a property tax increase, so that’s not it.
They don’t want to pay because “they’re done”. That’s nice. You’re “done”. It’s as if they think the school goes “poof” and disappears the moment their children walk out with a diploma. I mean, it was there when they ARRIVED, right? How did it get there? Who paid for that?
I’m not asking for some sweeping historical sense of intergenerational duty here. I’m asking them to recognize what existed when they arrived at adulthood and make the obvious admission that someone else paid for that.
Leelee for Obama
@kay: Yeah, that’s an argument I have down here in Florida all the f’ing time. They march their retired asses down here with windfall prices on their northern homes, and then think the neighbors kids should find boot-straps of their own. They wanted a penny sales tax increase to cover the school budget short-fall this past fiscal year, and people were ballistic. SICK OF IT!
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
We have them in Ohio. They live here in the summer, live there in the winter, and don’t want to pay for anything in either place.
My father is as ornery as a person can possibly be. He’s combative, essentially, and is not by any measure weepy or sentimental. Yet, he has a clear idea of what exactly he “earned” and what was here and up and running without his contribution. He knows he benefitted from that. He recognizes a debt.
Leelee for Obama
@kay:Can we clone him, quickly? Or perhaps make a commercial with him as a star? I think he’d reach people better than Harry and Louise, amirite?
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
He’s not well-liked. I like him, but I may be it. He thinks the interstate highway system was a way to destroy train travel and freight, and he loves trains. He thinks they’re efficient. He’s still pissed about it.
Leelee for Obama
@kay: He’s not wrong, Kay! But, w/o the interstate, how could Dinah Shore sing, “See the USA in your Chevrolet!”? If they hadn’t made train travel redundant (and underfunded), we’d be in better shape viv-a-vis the Middle East. And, if the Malaise speech had remained as well-received as it was before the Iranian Revolution, we wouldn’t know the Middle East was there. Also.
God, sometimes being informed makes my head hurt!
Molly
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: “none of the people complaining about the Boomers are GenXers.”
We gave you Green Day, whippersnapper. :)
FlipYrWhig
@ Leelee:
Why older people are likely to buy into this euthanize the old folks scenario is a mystery to me.
I don’t remember it being a talking point in the Clinton healthcare plan fiasco. Anyone else? I feel like it’s emerging from the same dark place as birtherism and the Sarah Palin rallies: that Obama, he’s Not Like Us and Up To No Good.
And to add to the weird cross between gullibility and suspicion, it’s the generation that learned about politics at the height of the Cold War, so they see stark divisions between The Free World and that other way where the ruthless government forces you to do things.
I’m stabbing in the dark here, but I don’t think it’s the WWII generation. It’s probably more like the Korean War/Cuban Missile Crisis generation. Paranoid and apocalyptic.
ruemara
nothing like a little divide and conquer to keep the opposition in check. If you think that this whole “boomers did it”, “not-so-greatest-generation” kerfuffle isn’t part of the strategy, you’re not paying attention. Seniors, and I don’t mean the active, engaged persons currently posting or lurking on this site, but those with much less education, information sources tend to believe authority figures. Pitiable and frankly, sometimes irredeemable, but by no means is it all seniors everywhere.
Leelee for Obama
@FlipYrWhig: I think you’re right about the WW2 generation-most of them are more informed or already going or gone. The New Seniors, from The Cold War Times, tend to be more conservative and conspiracy gullible. Like Kay mentioned, they had it the easiest financially, missed the Depression, reaped the benefits of the New Deal, took it as their due. Not all their fault, I remember how politicians fed the lies. If you read the history of the home-front in WW2, you see how much conservation and re-cycling was not just encouraged, it was a patriotic duty. When the war was over, people believed we ruled by Divine Right, were unbeatable at war, business, childbearing, child-rearing. Perfect. Too bad that sense of shared sacrifice and purpose was strangled in it’s cradle. We’d be better off if conspicuous consumption was still a dirty concept, best left to more decadent nations.
FlipYrWhig
@ ruemara:
Seniors […] with much less education, information sources tend to believe authority figures.
Except the President, apparently!
Y.D. Dandy
I would like to mention that most of the “Greatest Generation” have already passed on. Many of those now on Medicare are from the ‘spoiled generation’. Not that it has anything to do with anything…
Anywho, the disgusting lies and ugly rumors being bantered around by the parrots on the right, which is being delivered by the lobbyests paid for by insurance industry giants is what really must be fought. Getting heard is the struggle of the people unfortunately. Most of our so called representatives don’t represent anything but their own selfish self-interests. (I think that might even be one definition of conservatisim – “the modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”