Two hundred thirty five Republicans just voted to end Medicare. I don’t know that many districts all that well, but I can tell you that, barring a major redraw of her district (I don’t know when the post-Census redraws begin in NYS), Ann Marie Buerkle will not be serving in Congress come 2013.
This is insanity. They should have at least let freshmen from swing districts vote “present” or “nay”. Control of the House is now in play in 2012.
Here’s the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner memo on how much voters hate the Ryan plan. Thank you, Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks, and Joe Klein for helping to convince these jack asses to sign their own pink slips.
Roger Moore
Now it’s just up to the Democrats to make them pay for it. I doubt the limp dicked DNC will manage much, but some fire-breathing Democratic challengers ought to be able to make hay on this.
Poopyman
HA! DAVID BROOKS PLAYING ELEVENTY DIMENSION CHESS PWNS REPUBLICANS!
OK, Maybe not.
IM
Underneath it all, you are quite the naive optimist after all.
JC
In a reasonable world, this would sound the warning bell for the beginning of the end of the Republican party. But voter apathy, tens or hundreds of millions funding the disinformation advertising campaigns for Rethugs, he said/she said journalism…
there should be a price paid. But what our side keeps forgetting, is that the Republicans paid no price for constant lying and obstruction in the 2007-2008 cycle. In fact, that obstruction won them 60 seats.
So I expect the ‘unforced error’ effect to be seriously diluted, especially if the economic recovery hasn’t gone into a higher gear, or worse, tanked again by election time next year.
Edit: Oh, and yes, DEMOCRATS NEED TO HANG THIS ANCHOR AROUND THE REPUBLICANS NECK.
Each and every day.
Xecky Gilchrist
Two hundred thirty five Republicans just voted to end Medicare.
And yet they can hoodwink their entire base by saying Nuh-uh, we voted for moar freedom.
cleek
@Roger Moore: points out the fatal flaw.
also, the current House has been in session less than 6 months. the election is still like 18 months away. a lot can change in that much time, as president Clinton can tell you.
Dave
If you can’t make Republicans pay for this, you should get out of politics altogether. This even has the added benefit of being true.
Violet
Yay! Campaign ads for Democrats!
Poopyman
@DougJ:
Naked hubris amongst your political enemies is a wondrous thing, no? The trick, of course, is getting the message out to the voters. Since we can count on the MSM to do the exact opposite, I suppose we should start saving our pennies now to fund political ads come summer of 2012.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
You forget. It’s not Tim Kaine’s DNC any more.
It’s Debbie “NancySMASH In Training” Wasserman Schultz. I have no doubt she spent the entire time it took for this to come down in the Chamber coming up with exactly how she plans to exploit it. She’s pretty awesome.
YoYosarian
Two hundred thirty five Republicans just voted to end Medicare.
We should hear this every day for the next 18 months.
Hobelhouse
Schadenfreude ist die beste Freude.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
And “Thank You!” Republican representatives for voting for a bill that cannot possibly hope to pass the Senate, but will still put you on record to end Medicare and replace it with vouchers.
You just know the GOPers were thinking, “This bill is great. Everyone knows old people love coupons!”
.
Dave
@cleek: I think the difference is that 2012 is a Presidential year, and so candidates will be asked about this going forward. That should help it live on.
cyntax
Well here’s the email that was waiting for me this morning:
So looks like there is going to be some follow up from this vote. Granted it’s the DCCC, but still…
kdaug
@JGabriel: And would be vetoed if it did.
Paint, corner, how does this fucking work?
Typical voter
Wait- my impression was that it was the democrats who voted to change medicare to make it more like Obamacare, not the republicans. I could be wrong, because I only half-listen to this stuff anyway.
Roger Moore
@cleek:
Yeah, the Republicans might vote for something the voters hate even more than abolishing Medicare, like privatizing Social Security. I’m pretty sure you could get most of the Republican caucus to vote in favor of repealing the 13th Amendment if you tried hard enough.
Violet
Almost-seniors who are looking forward to Medicare in a few years should be made aware of this in campaign ads.
Those same folks and even slightly younger folks should be asked how they plan to take care of Mom and Dad’s health needs once Medicare is ended by the Republicans.
And of course seniors should be reminded that Republicans voted to eliminate their Medicare.
All this should be done over and over again. I hope Debbie “Nancy-SMASH-in-training” Wasserman Schultz can find a way to do this.
Hungry Joe
“Down with Medicare!” as a campaign slogan? This is where failure of empathy kicks in: I have absolutely no idea what these people are thinking.* I try to walk a mile in their Guccis and pull up lame before I can make it out the door.
*Much less FEELING.
David in NY
@cyntax: My view is you can’t believe anything any politician says, or credit the strength with which they say it, when they’re asking you for money.
Sloegin
@Xecky Gilchrist: ‘We had to destroy the Medicare village in order to save it’, or something equally repulsive will be the meme they’ll try to push.
cyntax
@David in NY:
Well, they’re pretty much always asking for money so I’m not sure where that leaves you.
mistermix
Bingo. The math is going to demand that Buerkle’s district have even more Democrats than it has now, if they’re going to salvage one Republican district in WNY.
jibeaux
I went to the actual polling, which reveals that when they ask whether or not the voters favor or oppose the Ryan plan, they get:
48% favor, 33% oppose
But then after they read a paragraph about what the plan is, they get:
36% favor, 56% oppose
Leaving aside for the moment the unanswerable question of why people have opinions about things they know jack about, this strongly suggests beating the Medicare / Medicaid + cuts taxes for corporations and people earning over $370k a year drum. That is quite a big sway in opinion from just a few sentences about the plan. I know, that’s not exactly rocket surgery, but damn, they made it so easy! They really are killing off Medicare and Medicaid. I think people are not quite dumb enough to think that when they’re 70 they’re going to be affordably insurable on the competitive market.
The Dangerman
So, they piss off the Unions…
…followed up by pissing off Seniors.
I don’t get their tactics.
BombIranForChrist
As long as Blue Dog dems don’t take the bait, this is an easy, easy win.
Bokonon
The GOP’s thinking is probably something along the lines of “don’t worry … the visuals on this are inconvenient, but it is a long time until the election, and people’s attention spans are short, and this nothing some slick advertising can’t fix. Worked for us in the last election.”
I mean, seriously. It did. It worked. The GOP did things like running for and against Medicare at the same time. And people voted for the GOP in droves over a confused (but angry) jumble of gay marriage, Obama’s birth certificate, job losses, Nancy Pelosi, policy czars, ACORN, phantom tax increases, and bogus government healthcare takeovers.
And thanks to the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, plus their dominance of talk radio, the GOP is clearly feeling fat and happy and sassy about their control of the airwaves.
So … plainly, the GOP believes that it can wage the agenda demanded by its ideologues and major donors on one track, while campaigning on something different. And the discontinuity of results in the middle can always be blamed on “Washington” and the Democrats – damn them and their big spending socialist Medicare cuts!
R. Johnston
@Roger Moore:
Every time Republicans vote to make women’s uteri the property of the state–or, depending on how you look at it, the property of a zygote–they vote to repeal the 13th Amendment. This is sadly not something that ends their political viability.
Zifnab
@JC:
This.
I need to know what the Democrat attack strategy is, because when 2012 rolls around and its wall-to-wall “WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE / SWIFTBOAT / WOLVES IN THE WOODS / ARGLE BLARGLE!” are voters going to be listening?
I have a damn hard time convincing your average redditor that George Bush and Barack Obama aren’t stem-cell clones, some days. Other days its nothing but “We’re going bankrupt! We can’t afford it!” nonsense.
I just don’t know how 2012 is going to turn. But I feel like there’s a whole lot of disillusionment on the liberal side. This isn’t going to be ’06 and ’08 all over again.
BGK
Tonight I will be at a function where about 80% of the attendees will be on Medicare, and about 95% of them are teatards in all but formal declaration. (I’m in the minority on both counts.) I’ve been in the presence of this group about four times in the last two months, and their affection for Republican slash-and-burn is beyond robust. It will be very interesting to hear their reactions, and I may have to provoke something, albeit politely.
I wish I could hold out more hope, but I expect they’ll all be giddy. The marginally brighter ones might’ve figured out they’re old enough to not be subject to death by voucher. The rest will naively think their Medicare premiums are so much lower than $15000 that there will be no problem in getting private insurance within the coupon limits.
j
TPM has run a few stories that one problem with the Ryan plan will be whether the private insurance industry will want to issue any policies at all, if the policies require funding some reasonable minimum standard of care.
talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/04/ryans_biggest_foe_private_insurers.php?ref=fpblg
A competitive equilibrium in a market with full information and low cost contracting can do wonderful magical things. But where full information does not exist, and writing and enforcing contracts is expensive, it may do not so wonderful things. In financial markets, particularly insurance markets, the competitive equilibrium may do nothing it at all because it may not exist.
BTW, one reason that you see odd results in economic theory is because (it being a privileged science), it is often allowed to base its whole analysis and results on things that might not exist, or may not be even approximately calculated.
It would be an interesting (though tragic and very immoral) experiment to adopt the Ryan plan and see if the private market would want to come and even try to provide its market magic.
Of course, if we had the Ryan plan with no regulation at all, and the elderly relied on those cheap flakey mystery meat and usually out of state ‘workingman’s and farmer’s’ health insurance policies you see in little ads in blue collar trade mags, then we would have market magic.
There is no information problem there, since those policies almost always get cancelled, or change rates so that they are effectively cancelled, or never manage to get the bills paid, so there will no information problem in that market.
Steve
By the way, once we get rid of Medicare pursuant to the Ryan plan… what happens to all the payroll taxes you and I pay in order to fund Medicare right now? Does Ryan get rid of the payroll tax (other than the Social Security component), does he just dump all the money in the general fund, or what?
maya
Republicans have replaced Medicare with Kochcare
cyntax
@The Dangerman:
Sure you do, just look for the one group they never piss off: the wealthy.
Catperson
Buerkle is my rep. She’ll definitely go down. The leg seems to be dragging its feet on redestricting (and they’re Dem majorities in name at least), so I doubt that’ll be a factor.
I haven’t seen anything about Maffei running again, but it’d be nice if he did.
Social outcast
@Steve: By not having the new plan apply to 55 and older voters, the republicans are proposing running a parallel Medicare system for about 30-40 years. So those taxes will still need to be paid to fund the old system as well as the new one.
Legalize
I just had a pleasant conversation with Congressman Chabot’s office about his vote today.
Bob Loblaw
The Democrats were always likely to retake the House. Our elections no longer make any sense, on a year to year basis. That’s the price of radicalism on one side mixing with inconsistent turn out.
ET
What I find totally weird is that they – the GOP – used the Dems want to take away your Medicare during the healthcare fight to whip up fear so that people would support them and now they flat out vote to pretty much do away with it? What is even more unfathomable is that Very Serious People in the MSM won’t call them on it.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Roger Moore:
Fixed.
I’m not nearly as sanguine as many of y’all about the Dems ability to pound this as a campaign issue between now and 2012. The Villagers will find a gazillion shiny new objects to follow between now and then and this lil’ ‘ole vote will be long forgotten.
And any Repub voting for this can probably count on their home state legislature to keep them safely entrenched via redisctricting.
Comrade DougJ
@cleek:
Regardless, this is a big unforced error. Buerkle really is a goner. She probably was one anyway, but now she really is.
Bulworth
And none dare call it radical.
Also, too, since the Ryan budget basically came out about three days ago, how is that they decided to vote on it all of a sudden without the months and months MORE of debate the Media Class told us was needed for the House to vote on ACA?
I mean, “what’s the rush”? Why are they trying to “ram this bill down our throats” so fast?
Roger Moore
@R. Johnston:
No, I’m not talking about that, which is an end run around the 13th Amendment. I’m saying you could get them to vote for a proposed 28th Amendment that would repeal the 13th straight up. It would be even easier to get them to vote for a repeal of the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th. The would vote for a repeal of the 20th Century if they thought it would be binding.
Comrade DougJ
@Catperson:
I’m sure he will now.
nanute
What a lovely legacy to leave the grandchildren; generational warfare.
jibeaux
Years ago, I bought health insurance on the individual market. As a thirty-ish nonsmoking no-pre-existing-condition female, there were two tiers available: with maternity coverage (not very affordable), and without maternity coverage (fairly affordable). You could go right on the website and check the radio buttons and get an estimate for your coverage right away.
Seems to me you could make a pretty decent ad consisting of nothing more than real senior citizens’ results from obtaining estimates from private insurers for coverage on the competitive market and comparing that to what you would receive in Ryan vouchers. Then you could even track that through the years…
Let’s see, 65 year old female with history of thyroid disease 15 years ago — $1117 per month (I am making this up. NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement.)
value of voucher under Ryan plan — $1250 per month
68 year old female with history of thyroid disease 18 years ago and diabetes, onset 8 months ago — $1423 per month
value of voucher — $1250 per month
70 year old female with hx of thyroid disease 18 years ago, diabetes, and ovarian cancer, onset 3 months ago — uninsurable after applications with four insurers
You know, something like that.
cyntax
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I’ll give you that, but you gotta admit the chances have improved, if only a little. Certainly a lot can happen between here and there but take the good with the bad.
Violet
@jibeaux:
To make this hit home, you should show insurance rates for 64-year olds. That’s the year before they are eligible for Medicare, so those rates are actually available. Show people what it costs to insure someone who is actually in the almost-Medicare bracket. Most people don’t know.
Then ask people how that might get more expensive as people get older and more health problems appear. Get people thinking about the realities.
But start with what’s real right now. Rates for 64-year olds.
Resident Firebagger
I hope you’re right about the Republicans in ’12, but I think it’s way too early to make this claim. With media complicity and our further descent into FUBAR, odds all this will all be forgotten soon…
MCA
@Bulworth – don’t forget “They haven’t even read what they’re voting for!!!”
jibeaux
@Violet:
Sure. Pointing out repeatedly that with the repeal of ACA, the best you’re going to get is a one-year policy with that insurer having, every year, the option to drop you depending on whether you cost them any money that year.
Do the insurance companies not calculate rates available for 65 and up? Like if a wealthy older immigrant came here and wanted to buy a policy or something, do they not even write those at the present time?
Tractarian
@Catperson:
I see what you did there!
Mouse Tolliver
@Violet:
Well, Tweety likes her, so that’s a start. She should be a regular on Hardball.
PS — Wasserman Schultz looks an awful lot like Mrs. Tweety to me. I think that’s part of the reason he likes her so much.
Spaghetti Lee
If Democrats over the next two years are as pessimistic as y’all are being in this thread, then damn straight it won’t mean a thing. The Republicans didn’t get so powerful by means of dark sorcery, they got there because they’re willing to put the legwork in that will lets them do this shit and think there won’t be consequences. We need to tell them that there will.
joe from Lowell
On the flip side, they seem to have realized what a mistake they made, and have come up with a foolproof strategy for undoing the damage: launching a high-profile, coordinated media campaign to personally insult Barack Obama.
Because of how bad the economy was in 2010, people forget just how awful these people proved themselves to be at politics between 2005 and 2009.
joe from Lowell
@Roger Moore:
Tim Kaine’s out. The DNC wasn’t limp under Howard Dean, and it’s not going to be limp under Debbie W-S, either.
Violet
@jibeaux:
Older people who visit here get health care policies before they leave. I personally know older British citizens who were unable to visit their kids who lived in the US because they, the older people, had health problems that precluded them getting an insurance policy at an affordable rate. Of course, if their kids lived in Europe or Australia or Canada they wouldn’t need to get those policies because those countries have health care reciprocity. Sad situation.
I doubt there’s much market for older people and health insurance policies. All US citizens are covered by Medicare. So it would probably be extremely expensive as the pool would be very small.
cleek
@Comrade DougJ:
i agree with that. mostly. but i think it’s too early to give it any electoral significance.
because, people are easily distracted, the GOP is good at distracting them, and will have 18 months to come up with a nice, simple, bullshit story to explain this particular vote.
i do hope you’re right, tho!
joe from Lowell
@The Dangerman:
You left out pissing off women.
@BombIranForChrist:
The silver lining of the 2010 elections is that there are a lot fewer blue dogs in Congress.
Stillwater
@j: It would be an interesting (though tragic and very immoral) experiment to adopt the Ryan plan and see if the private market would want to come and even try to provide its market magic.
Done and done. Isn’t the result of the experiment more or less, you know, exactly why we have Medicare?
joe from Lowell
@cleek:
The Republicans rolled out Social Security privatization earlier in the 2006 election cycle than they rolled out Medicare voucherization in the 2012 cycle.
The Bobs
So now we’re in for 18 months of Republican congresscritters explaining that their vote to abolish Medicare was “Not intended to be a factual statement.”
batgirl
I think Democrats should suggest to Republicans that if Ryan’s plan to replace Medicare with vouchers is such a great plan why are they waiting ten years? Heck, they should give this great plan to current Medicare recipients and to those 55+ who will be eligible in the next ten years! Vouchers for all!
gypsy howell
@Violet:
And then make sure you point out that under Ryan’s plan, the vouchers wouldn’t actually kick in until you’re 67, two years later than current medicare coverage.
daveNYC
@Social outcast: That’s one thing that won’t be an issue. If Ryan’s plan goes in as planned, then the taxes paid in will cover the cost of the vouchers. Of course that’s because the vouchers won’t come close to covering the cost of the health care, but eggs and omelettes.
gypsy howell
@batgirl:
Ryan’s plan kicks in at age 67, so to be fair to today’s seniors, we should allow everyone who is currently between 65 and 67 to go on traditional medicare for two years, and then switch over to the Ryan voucher plan. That would be hugely popular.
[bwahahahha]
NonyNony
@The Bobs:
And yet somehow convincing Tea Partiers that they’re sincere about abolishing Medicare. Except for the Tea Partiers that don’t want to see Medicare abolished.
Fun times ahead for Republicans. The only thing that helps them out is that they’re going to control redistricting in a helluva lot of states.
(And, not to be a downer to the conversation, but just keep in mind that Republican redistricting probably means that the kind of Democrat we’re going to get from these states is going to be the same kind of timid conservative or outright corporate assholes who just got thrown out. Unless some rabble-rousing labor Democrats manage to win a victory in a few of those states – which I think is possible but the Dems are usually too timid to recruit folks like that.)
batgirl
@NonyNony: Except for the Tea Partiers that don’t want to see Medicare abolished.
daveNYC
@jibeaux: They might, but at that age you can get the medicare action, so I’d guess what policies they write for people over 65 are supplimental type stuff, maybe some gold plated items if someone wants to go to the Mayo Clinic and it’s not completely covered.
To be honest, if I were an insurance exec, I’d be more than happy to write off any and all business from the senior citizen brigade. Too much risk of having to pay for a lot of expensive care, and any policy that would let you weasel out of it would be total lawyer bait. Just not worth the effort.
bemused
My rep Cravaack was one of the 235 who voted to end Medicare. Excellent. Keep it up Chip and we’ll see how District 8 senior citizens and younger who aren’t complete wingnuts feel about you supporting wiping out your safety net.
Allan
Dan Lungren (CA-03, Forced Birther, Fetus Fetishist, All-Around Asshole) only beat Dr. Ami Bera by seven points in 2010.
Dr. Bera’s already announced for a rematch in 2012. We have no idea what the district lines will look like after the state commission gets done, but this is one of the most absurdly gerrymandered pro-GOP districts in the state.
Bill Arnold
@Spaghetti Lee:
That, and Fox News. Unless by legwork you mean capitalists building a partisan media empire.
gene108
@BombIranForChrist:
A quick glance through the Yays and Nays and even the Blue Dogs voted Nay on this one. They may not vote the way you want 100% of the time, but they aren’t Republicans and until we turn the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina into a DFH commune, you aren’t going to get much more liberal than Heath Shuler.
Martin
@gene108: Well, the tea party really changes the variables with the blue dogs. The blue dogs were vulnerable to a particular subset of conservative voters that aren’t really reflected in the tea party.
So long as the tea party is steering the GOP ship, I don’t think they’re going to find any really support from conservadems. Further, their ability to pick up those conservative independent voters gets a LOT easier without them having to support Republican bills.
Mike
@gene108: Heath Shuler’s conservative tendencies don’t bother me. His obnoxious assholishness does. The general hatred towards the blue dogs has little to do with their politics, more how they compose themselves in public.
S. cerevisiae
@bemused: It hurts me to see my old district in the hands of a wingnut. I hope Don Ness runs against him in 2012.
Chris G
May I suggest, given the number of suggestions about useful data about insurance rates for the 64-year-old crowd, etc., that we think about crowdsourcing that information into one central location? Insurance rates, population about to be in Medicare in various congressional districts, etc.?
Nancyboy
@gene108: I noticed that too. Two hundred thirty five Republicans (and Zero Democrats) voted to end Medicare.
Observer
It’s not an “Unforced error”.
It’s an Overton Window move. Push the limits etc. They’ve made the (apparently correct) judgement that they’re better than Dems at messaging and even if they fail on the vote, 5 or 6 years from now the idea that Medicare needs cuts will be in the mix and no doubt some hapless “serious” Dem will want to compromise on some legislation and will offer them up and get it passed.
Just like the Bush tax cuts, the freeze on Fed salaries, abortion funding in D.C., and countless other pieces of legislation or fiat.
It’s becoming really annoying to see you folks over here insist the GOP is making mistakes and are “dumb” or “stupid” when it’s usually the opposite.
walizonia
Already called Cong Yoder here in KS-03 to ask how much private insurance will be for me when I’m a geezer and got to talk to two different 20-something staffers that think insurance comes from the insurance fairy. They haven’t got a clue how to explain this vote.
Already wrote and emailed my LTE saying Cong Yoder wants to replace Medicare with private insurance. Let’s make sure everyone understands what these guys just voted for.
JC
Observer,
Your observations kindle my fears, about what could happen. But 2006 and 2008 did happen, because of Republican idiocy and overreach, and people waking up saying ‘what the eff!?”, and kicking the idiot rethugs out. ‘Messaging’ didn’t outweight ‘reality’.
And 2010, the rethugs kept being idiots – but because they weren’t in charge of anything, and because the economy didn’t improve, they flooded back in, and yes – won on messaging.
2012? Will the reality of what the Rethugs are doing, in Wisconsin, in the House, in Florida, etc, have an effect, in that, in reality, they have overreached?
We don’t know, we can just make guesses, somewhere between ‘educated’, and throwing a dart randomly at a dartboard.
Roger Moore
@Observer:
It’s an attempt to move the Overton window, but there’s no guarantee that it will be successful. It’s much safer to move the window by moving to the edge than beyond the edge. If you move beyond the edge of the Overton window, you may find you’ve defenestrated yourself. That’s not good if the whole party does it at once.
mclaren
Now you’re getting it.
That’s America in 2011.
Pure, raw, wild, rampant purple-faced apoplectic lunacy.
As one of the BJ front-pagers remarked years ago, the dividing line in American politics in the 2000s is no longer between the right and the left: now it’s between the sane and the crazy.
JC
Krugman gets at the nub of it.
By any method of polling, this is a suicidal move for the Republicans.
However, based on economic issues, will only economic issue matter come 2012?
See, that also doesn’t make *perfect* sense, because the economy was okay in 2006, right? And yet, other issues intruded to send the House to the democrats. I would argue, one of the main being Katrina. I’d also like to think the continuing unpopular war in iraq. But that might be wrong, since even after no weapons of mass destruction, Bush was re-elected.
What explained the Democratic House takeover in 2006?
2008 is explained by economic concerns.
2010 is mainly explained by economic concerns (and turnout demographics)
but why 2006?
Roger Moore
@JC:
Iraq.
maus
@Mouse Tolliver:
Ungh, a shame that for ANY woman in politics to get attention from the chattering class, they have to give the rest starbursts. At least she’s smart :(
doofus
@Roger Moore: @Roger Moore: I’d be more inclined to believe the explanation that 2006 was more likely due to the 6 year itch than Iraq. online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html. Or you can talk about midterm results throughout history. freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1738236/posts
Tom Q
@JC: Iraq was CONSIDERABLY more unpopular in ’06 than it had been in ’04. Plus a number of attempts to push that Overton window (Schiavo & privatization) persuaded people like our host here that the time for giving incumbent-president-in-time-of-war-who’d led-us-through-a-crisis had passed. On top of that, the six-year out-election has often had big turnover in one house or other — something even more likely given the 9/11-driven freak gains the GOP had made in ’02.
Jim, Once
@Observer: Don’t like to read this. Can’t disagree.
slightly_peeved
5 or 6 years from now, health insurance will be subject to the regulations of the ACA – no recission, no discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.
If the Republicans propose abolishing Medicare then, the insurance companies will completely lose their shit. Having to insure seniors under those restrictions would be a nightmare for them.
OzoneR
@gene108:
who, might I add, takes the progressive side on energy and wars.
Triassic Sands
I’m not sure any of these votes will really matter…because they won’t become law, so nothing will change. That’s precisely why Republicans never make these kinds of changes applicable to the current crop of elderly.
My next door neighbor is a perfect example of why this won’t matter. She lives in a delusional world (really a world of profound, self-satisfied ignorance) in which the Republican Party today is the same as the Republican Party of 1960. She is enrolled in Medicare and is very pleased with her coverage. It’s entirely possible that she will never even learn about this vote, since her main source for news is Fox. But even if she does, the changes wouldn’t apply to her, so she doesn’t need to respond. She can go on voting for the party of Ike and Rockefeller and Nixon and continue to sleep well at night.
And no amount of “information” will change her mind. She’s just barely intelligent enough to believe that’s she’s a lot more intelligent than she really is. And stupid enough that nothing is ever going to change her mind.
Allan
@Triassic Sands: I see you live next door to Mrs. Dunning-Kruger. As do many of us.