Romney unveiled a blueprint to overhaul entitlement programs popular with seniors, saying he would gradually raise the retirement age for Medicare and Social Security. Under his plan, future retirees would have the option of staying on traditional Medicare or purchasing health insurance from private companies through ‘premium supports,’ or vouchers. Romney also said he would turn responsibility for Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, over to state governments, and cut about $100 billion in Medicaid spending. He also would cap federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product by the end of his first term. To do so, he would cut about $500 billion in annual spending and lower non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels.
Paul Ryan’s response to another go at vouchers for Medicare: “This is a great development!” For once, I agree with the guy. This is a great development, if you’re working to re-elect President Obama.
jonas
This will only completely screw over, you know, poor people, so who gives a shit? I’m sure all the Very Serious People will eat this right up.
DBrown
But guns (a over half a trillion a year) are more important than social programs – right? Ask Russia – since they stopped trying to be #2 they have been overrun by enemies … no, wait. What bullshit. We spend more than ALL f’ing major countries COMBINED and we need to cut medical coverage to the poor and old? These monsters that the thugs (or kocksuckers as a BJ writer has stated) are criminally insane – we could cut defense (really war making against harmless countries) by 40% and still overwhelm any opponent now or in the future. SICK! and asswipes vote for these monsters?
Hawes
OT (but I can’t control myself): Joe Lieberman shows up at a shelter in Farmington and decries the long wait for power to return to the state a week after voting against infrastructure spending.
I’m glad I wasn’t there. I don’t think there is internet in prison.
Baud
How is this different from Medicare Part C, which already allows individuals to go with private carriers.
PeakVT
Shorter any Republican budget plan: Soak the Poor and Elderly!
ornery
Hmmm. Why is our establishment so bent on increasing an outsized imperial military on the backs of its citizenry?
Never seen that in history before, probably. I wonder if it ends well.
capt
As the population grows older the GOP decides it’s a good idea to trash Social Security?
Thank you GOP – only 21% of voters identify as GOP – let’s cut that number in half! WOO HOO!
amk
So, how are the old ones gonna vote this time ? Will they still listen to the pox news, limpaugh, klannity and other such rwnj’s on talk radio or will they use their brains ?
arguingwithsignposts
points off for not going with the Violent Femmes in the title
Mino
How many middle class retired seniors out there have Medicaid supplemental policies? Doctors love those patients–they’re probably a steady, large percent of a practice’s income.
How many seniors still would be able to go to a doctor under a voucher system? MD’s, better watch out.
Amir Khalid
@DBrown: As to US military spending, I think it’s not quite more than the rest of the planet combined, but rather slightly less. It’s still way too much though, far out of proportion to actual need — no arguing with that. And given the Pentagon’s fondness for things like the F-22 Raptor, the Bugatti Veyron of military aviation (and it can’t be their only overpriced cool toy), there’s no way the taxpayer is getting good value for money. But they get more money than they can really use, and they can’t give it back. So what choice do they have but to squander it?
otto
Pandering suit of emptiness.
I cannot see these idiots as anything other than the last bits of phlegm being coughed up by a dying party.
jrg
So I get to finance the retirement of the “Silent Generation”, who continually votes to destroy the future of this country by voting against things like education spending, and for things like torture and trillion-dollar wars, all because they’re pissed off about interracial couples on the teevee, and gays kissing, and get off my lawn? Then I get to be shafted when I retire?
Wow. That’s really cool. No way I vote to return the favor by reducing Medicare and Social Security benefits for them. Morons.
Fulcanelli
The GOTP has been yammering and hammering about fucking with and even dismantling the third rail of Social Security, and they will come to regret it at the polls.
The Olds have nothing to do and all day to do it with and if my Mom’s attitude is any indication (she’s 73 and can’t afford to retire from her darn good job), in all but the most delusional regions of Wingnuttia, Republicans are sure to receive a rightous, bone dry assfucking in 2012 elections.
This issue will trump any and all suspicions and fears of the Kenyan Usurper. Fo’ sho’…
GregB
Has anyone thought of making guns out of butter?
harlana
Excuse me, but why on earth would anyone on Medicare take a gamble and opt out for private insurance? What am I missing here?
Steve
I can’t tell you why, but there is no better way to ensure positive media coverage than to propose gutting the social safety net. Those who refuse to join the party by presenting their own plan to kill Social Security and Medicare will be savaged. It takes a lot of courage and conviction to stand up to this drumbeat.
On the Democratic side, Nancy Pelosi seems to be the only leader who truly gets that Democrats simply cannot agree to put these issues in play. If the Democratic brand becomes “we’ll cut Social Security and Medicare too, but we’ll do it in a more responsible way than the other guys,” then there isn’t much of a brand left.
Ksmiami
Hear that sound???? Smells like Obama victory in 2012
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@harlana:
Because KEEP YER GUBMINT HANDS OFF MY MEDCARE, THAT’S WHY!!!
It’s free market fetishism. Private enterprise can do know wrong, thus pulling public assents out and investing privately can never ever ever go wrong. And when it does, it’s the gubment’s fault because of rampant and exotic soshulisms.
Mike Lamb
I’m sure Hurley will be by shortly to explain how Obama can’t differentiate himself on healthcare…
agrippa
That is not a plan. It is empty words.
It is very unlikely that anything close to that is going to happen. Congress does not have political and moral will to take that up.
slippy
@Amir Khalid:
You’re only slightly correct but let’s not mince words here. We spend 7.3% less than the rest of the entire mother-fucking world on defense. That is, the US’ defense budget is 42% of the entire amount of money the whole world spends on guns. We could cut that by several billion and not miss it at all, except for the pathetic whining of out-of-work defense contractors.
And I love how I’m supposed to sacrifice my retirement so these suckflies can continue to wallow at the public’s teat. FUCK THAT with a rake.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: According to this chart (from realclearworld.com), you are correct, we spend slightly less than all other countries combined.
http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2011/04/us_military_spending_vs_the_world.html
But we do spend an awful lot more than any grouping of countries you want to make (the next 17 or next 10 combined). We can kill off the rest of the world many times over but we can’t — really won’t — provide healthcare for seniors or support the lives of seniors so they can live with dignity.
cleter
It’s like they don’t even WANT to win Florida.
barath
@Ksmiami:
The main challenge for Obama in 2012 is going to be the impending recession, which will probably be widely acknowledged by Spring 2012.
Peter
So the only candidate they have with a shred of electability is shooting
large sea-going birds and wearing them as jewelry.
Good to know.
ant
What about unemployment?
Where the fuck are the jobs assclowns?
Butch
Actually…turn anyone who would support Romney’s idea loose in the private insurance market and see how long it takes before reality rudely intrudes itself. Many of the seniors who would support this plan would find they can’t get insurance at all, voucher or no.
PurpleGirl
@ant: High unemployment is a feature for these “free market” fetishists. It’s how to ensure that the 1% stays the 1%.
Napoleon
@PurpleGirl:
And it is worth pointing out that a lot of the other high spenders are allies of the US.
Xenos
@barath: Business cycles mean that there is always an impending recession, at some point. The failure of double dip to present itself clearly by the spring is going to give Obama a pass on this one – it just takes too long for a recession to be verified so long as there is not a dramatic stock market crash.
And to the vulgar economists out there, stock market crash = recession. And if we get a crash and a ‘recession’ as a result of Euro problems (the most likely scenario) it will be pretty hard to blame the Kenyan sockialist for it.
cat48
amk
@cleter: You mean that FL which elected a convicted medicare felon as its govnor in 2010 ?
nucking futs all.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
FTFY. There are a lot of cases where the Pentagon asks to take an expensive but unnecessary weapon system out of the budget but Congress puts it back in because the contractor has carefully designed it to use parts made in every Congressional district. That’s not to say that the Pentagon never asks for unreasonably expensive stuff, but they’re not the worst offenders in the process.
barath
@Xenos:
Yeah, the saving grace is that most folks don’t follow ECRI’s work, so the generic nightly-news analysis of why the recession in 2012 occurred will be that it was due to fallout from the Eurozone (and maybe the debt ceiling mess). That’s hard to blame on Obama, though there’s also the question of whether the average voter cares why the economy is bad.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@cat48:
This is my impression too. We’ve gone from Roe v. Wade being sacrosanct to the near eradication of abortion by loophole in what….a year? Couple of years? If they get the full trifecta, we’re fucked, and I’m scared to fucking death that it’s almost an inevitability. I mean, people are recognizing that the GOP is sabotaging everything…but they’re still begging to kicked Obama out apparently because FUCK YOU YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE, GOP GETS 15 YEARS IN CHARGE NOW!
jrg
LULZ. Yep, Obama’s a secret Muslim who wasn’t born in the U.S… And thuh libruls are trying to turn your kids gay… And “Darwinism” is a religion… And “God did it” is a scientific theory… And “both sides” were “equally at fault” for the debt ceiling goat rodeo… And Republicans are “fiscally responsible”… And placing panty-sniffing morality police in charge is “small government”.
…But no one could possibly be dumb enough to believe that Obama is somehow responsible for the overseas fallout from the Eurozone. Riiiiiight.
Gex
@slippy: My brother in law works for Lockheed on the JSF. He’s one of those assholes. Best part though is as his brother is lying in the hospital recovering from a stroke and getting pretty decent care because he is rich, BIL #1 asks, “what do poor people do?” My girl and I answered, “well, they’re fucked.” But rest assured when he goes to vote he will feel like his taxes are too high and our social safety net is too extravagant. All his concern for the less fortunate will be forgotten.
Also, he doesn’t make enough money to build planes that fall out of the sky. So there is one area where government could increase spending in a way he won’t complain about.
Waynski
@slippy:
I think you’re probably referring to the defense contract companies, but will nevertheless point out that we need to remember that jobs are jobs, as Barney Frank pointed out when he referred to military spending as “weaponized Keynesianism”. Laying off a line worker or engineer at Boieng isn’t any less of a problem than laying off a line worker or engineer at GM. That said, we could divert sick amount of money and human resources from places like defense contractors to teach, house and retrain our workforce.
El Cid
@ant:
Hard-working people with good moral values don’t need other people to just ‘give’ them jobs. They make their own jobs, out of thin air, by willpower and concentration. A magic alien ring helps, too.
Judas Escargot
@jrg:
Yep. Bush tried it too in 2004 with Social Security. But the Silents, as it turns out, give something of a shit for their kids and grandkids– so it failed.
They’ll keep trying this tack until they eventually get a crop of seniors selfish enough to play along. The Boomers are a toss-up. The GenXers, though, who suckled at the teat of Reagan? (Shiver).
Suffern ACE
@cat48: You can bet that the rep Senators won’t let the dems have that filibuster power either.
Redshift
@Judas Escargot:
And have been told all their lives that Social Security won’t be there for them… (Shiver, indeed!)
Redshift
@El Cid:
Wait — they get given jobs by “job creators,” right? But only if they have low enough taxes and regulation.
Gex
@Waynski: Fair point. But some of those job holders need to be reminded that when they wail about government spending, they are in fact wailing about their salary. They won’t change their tune until government stops paying them for unnecessary work and they need to find employment from our Galtian job creators. Maybe then they will realize that tax cuts for the wealthy don’t actually create jobs or strengthen the economy.
ETA: Aw, who am I kidding. These guys would just blame their inability to find a job on affirmative action. Because they are deserving and no one else is.
MikeJ
@Waynski:
Wind turbines and jet turbines share a lot of tech. Weapons dealers could make something of value if the government wanted to buy it instead of more boom boom.
jrg
@Judas Escargot:
It’s not really that simple.
Compare the number of Silents who think it’s more important to reduce the budget deficit than to provide SS and Medicare, vs. Millennials.
For a group of people that vote “conservative” as heavily as the Silents do, they sure don’t want to make any sacrifices themselves.
Waynski
@Redshift: Let’s get something straight here. I’m a GenXer and by most accounts one of the oldest ones. The first vote I was allowed to cast was for Dukakis. The Boomers elected Reagan, so if you are one, stop trying to shift your responsibility for him to us, and more importantly, whatever generation you come from, knock off the generational slagging. It’s stupid and not helpful.
harlana
@El Cid:
How many times have we read about or heard about “reinventing yourself” when you lose your job and cannot find another in your field, over the last 10 years or so? So it IS your fault if you don’t have a job because you’re just not smart enough to “reinvent” yourself and thus, MAKE YOUR OWN JOB, as you say. Everyone should be able to do this! You’re being snarky, here, but actually, that’s exactly what we have been expected to believe. At least until very recently.
Women most definitely have been receiving this message for a long time now. I blame, in small measure, Oprahesque sort of thinking that pervades women’s magazines and talk shows, etc. But not everybody is Oprah, we’re not all born exceptional material, some of us, unfortunately, were born just ordinary and after 2 years of job-hunting, you don’t have the energy or the focus to “reinvent” yourself.
daveNYC
@Judas Escargot:
I’m in that demographic and graduated high school in 91 and college in 95. Grew up during Reagan, but the initial adult experience came during Clinton, and the pretty good economic conditions during his terms.
Judas Escargot
@jrg:
That’s a damned good link. But I’m still puzzled as to how anyone with a functioning brain could take the ‘private accounts’ idea seriously after 2008.
Even now, if the topic comes up (in meatspace) and you point out that someone who was about to retire when the shite hit the rotating blades in 2008 would be fvcked, and would either have to be bailed out, or left to starve, they shut up pretty quickly.
I think it’s another case of rampant “me smart them stupid” individualism. The go-go Bush years seemed to convince every damned fool with a little extra money to invest that he was a Super Duper Genius Power Investor, so private accounts were an easier sell back then.
You’d think those same folks, after taking a beating in 2008, would have learned. Guess not.
harlana
@Waynski: Don’t blame me, I voted
for Carter.
Also, too, I had the good sense not to reproduce myself.
O.-
Judas Escargot
@Waynski:
I’m the one who brought up the generational aspect, so perhaps you should be yelling at me instead. I was speaking in terms of aggregate behavior, not individual.
I’m a pretty liberal Xer myself, but anecdotal experience (and poll data) has shown me that Glibertarian is the default political posture for our generation. We’re the first generation that got to bathe in the Randian/Reaganite bathwater as political infants, and it shows.
Don’t take it personally. Instead, maybe help try to convince the rest of our cohort not to be such glib, selfish morons.
harlana
They truly must be idiots – I’m just not seeing seniors switching from convenient Medicare to some unknown insurance company out of ideology – NAH GAH HAPPUN. And I don’t see how it’s going to benefit private insurers all that much if nobody wants their product.
jrg
@Judas Escargot:
I agree. This is the reason Wall Street exists. If people could grasp the concept of efficient markets, 80% of the parasite class would disappear overnight.
WRT millennials, there might be something else at play, as well: even if they think the markets won’t do well between now and when they retire, they’re still likely to believe that they are better off than with SS if they think that money won’t be there when they retire.
Waynski
@harlana: Fair enough. I guess that places you in the “not responsible” as opposed to the “not possibly responsible” for Reagan category. My larger point was the last one. BTW – I didn’t reproduce myself either.
mikeyes
Excuse me, when did the United States become a totalitarian dictatorship?
The President of the United States can do none of the the things Romney has promised. If he could we’d be living in a completely different social structure now. This is the same Romney who promised to allow all the states to opt out of the Affordable Care Act when the president doesn’t have that power either.
PurpleGirl
@Waynski: I’m a Boomer and I can assure you I DID NOT vote for Reagan. The only Republican I have ever voted for was one guy (and I don’t remember his name) who ran for something in NYC because the Democrat was just that bad.
ETA: Although I do agree with you about generational slagging. I won’t do it to you (a general “you”), if you don’t do it to me or other Boomers.
LongHairedWeirdo
This is what I don’t understand. See, we know that retired people are one of the most steady voting blocs, period. So, we know they won’t screw people once they’re old. It doesn’t matter if the Ryan or Romney plan *says* they will shift costs to old people… we know it won’t happen.
So, what is the real plan? Just to make a big payoff to the insurance companies, while trying to create a wedge issue?
I know there’s a lot of cynicism. They want 20somethings to think Medicare is going away, no questions asked, and therefore think of Republicans as saving Medicare by having the 20somethings think that they’ll get *something* instead of *nothing*. But are 20somethings both cynical enough *and* thoughtful enough, to follow through?
(Dear god, help me – I just called rightwing bloggers “thoughtful”. Well, it *is* thinking, however poor the quality.)
What also bothers me a bit here is that I don’t see their endgame. We really – really really really! – can’t keep shuffling money off to big business. Sure, there’s still military contracts, and so forth, but medical care is what is projected to crush the US economy. So, what do they see, twenty years down the line, after making this big shuffle? Or, have they really, honestly, just never thought about that?
harlana
@Waynski: I guess I can’t take much credit, since I was so young, my mom and dad have always been Dems so I was just following my parents. Anyway, I have always cared about the future generations, even though, as I said, I have no reason to care one whit because I have no children, but that was one of these reasons I was running around with my head on fire when we invaded Iraq, people, including kids, were going to die or be maimed for life for no reason. Nobody listened to me and everybody that was protesting the war was basically spit on, but I really, really tried, as if I could make a difference somehow. I was one more idealistic fool. (In addition, I knew billions of $ would be wasted and added to our deficit, as well) But, yeh, for the most part, my generation is a selfish, materialistic lot indeed – there’s no way around it – they’re pretty spoiled
harlana
However, now their kids can’t find jobs. Fancy that.
Redshift
@Waynski: I didn’t mean to be making a specific generational point either, just that I’ve met way too many people slightly to significantly younger than me (I voted for Carter in my first presidential election in ’80, too) who aren’t conservative, but are casually certain that Social Security is running out of money and will be gone long before they retire. It’s because of unrelenting propaganda, but I live in fear of there ever being a combination of enough of those people and enough retirees (possibly those Boomers you mention) who are immersed enough in FYIGM to shoot themselves in the foot by buying the idea that you can take working people out of Social Security and still have money to pay for retirees.
(FWIW, I am technically a tail-end Boomer by some calculations, but really am part of that in-between group that never gets talked about. That is, all that “Boomer culture” stuff that gets talked about is something people my age saw on TV sometimes, not something we experienced.)
Redshift
@mikeyes:
Well, to be fair, presidential candidates promise to do lots of things that really amount to “I will have Congress do this.” It’s the fundamental fiction of presidential elections.
Kathy in St. Louis
So, those who worried about his Mormon religion really didn’t need to worry at all. He’s soulless, has no convictions whatsoever. Whatever it takes to get the nomination is his only religion.
PurpleGirl
@Redshift: It’s those 30 or so years of propaganda that Social Security won’t be there when (some age group) retires, pressed by the GOP and corporate media. I’m always taken aback by the number of people who believe this. That SS might not be enough to retire comfortably, I don’t doubt that but I’ve always believed it would still be there. (That’s supposedly why we increased in the FICA rate during Reagan’s reign.) And I’ve lived through the change from defined benefit pensions to ESOPs and then defined contributions to 401(K)s and other IRA plans. And all those investment-based “Savings” plans just meant that you could end up with nothing depending on what happened to your investments.
Waynski
@PurpleGirl: Truce accepted and apology offered. I shouldn’t have painted all the boomers with one brush. Just a pet peeve of mine having had many a college professor suggest that my generation was responsible for Reagan when none of us (or perhaps a 22 month cohort from 1960-62, depending on who presents the timeline) were ever old enough to vote for the guy. Yes, we grew up while he was POTUS, but I’m pretty sure most of us were a little more concerned about who had the highest Pac-Man score and who to take to the prom than Reagan’s and the conservatives’ relentless campaign against the New Deal.
smintheus
@Baud: That’s a good question.
Romney’s proposal is deliberately vague, but I think there are several key things he’s implying. The first – unstated, but it’s a dogwhistle to the Ryanbaggers’ ears – is that the vouchers will be inadequate and thus shift more costs to the elderly. The idea is to keep something you can call traditional Medicare, but make it a much worse deal that encourages people to look for a cheaper private insurance plan.
The second thing Romney mentioned, which nobody is picking up on, is that people will be allowed to pocket the remainder of the voucher if they select a private plan that costs less than the voucher.
It’s hard to imagine why the government would offer to do that unless the idea is to draw relatively healthy people out of Medicare…leaving it with the least healthy, forcing Medicare rates upward, and repeat until Medicare is doomed.
Waynski
@Redshift: I agree with your point on the propaganda, which I’ve been subject to, and it’s certainly in the Republicans’ interest to tell younger people the system won’t be there for them, but I think after 2008 there’s probably been a pretty big rethink by people of all ages about the viability of a privatized system. That said, there are probably also hoopleheads of all ages willing to vote against their own interests and the FYIGM contingent will always be there, we just need to keep getting the word out. Generations unite!
cleek
@mikeyes:
real Presidents have this power whereby they can pound the podium with just the right amount of attitude and things magically happen. for a demonstration of this power, though he was not a President, Fonzie.
burnspbesq
The spectacular irony here, as Ezra Klein pointed out in his “Wonkbook” email this morning, is that the notion that private health care providers will be forced to become more efficient as a result of having to compete with Medicare … is exactly the same justification that was put forth for the public option.
Which leads to a fairly obvious question: if this deal is so fucking good, why can’t everyone have it, regardless of age?
Yutsano
@smintheus:
And then a pony, because there will be no such thing as a cheaper insurance plan for the elderly. It’s like they think Medicare was created by sociallist underpants gnomes without realizing there was a whole HISTORY behind its creation.
@burnspbesq:
Becuz SOCIALLISM!! and stuff. And we can’t ever do anything sociallist. Pay no attention to the VA system behind the curtain!
Waynski
@PurpleGirl: Wall Street at work. Why should just a few firms collect management fees from a large pension fund (i.e., pre-Reagan private pension schema)when they can break it up into thousands or hundreds of thousands of individual accounts (401(k)s)and collect fees on every single one of them (i.e., Romney and the boys pension schema). It shouldn’t be surprising that these sharks are circling the Social Security motherlode, which would mean hundreds of millions of individual accounts with individual fees. We should understand that until we stuff these greedy leeches back into the pre-Reagan regulatory structure, they will never cease to be a threat to Social Security.
harlana
@Yutsano: aahh, I get it now, everybody pardon my naivete – that’s how you “preserve” Medicare!
PurpleGirl
@smintheus: Yeah, they want people to think there will be excess money in those “vouches”. Reality is that there won’t be. We needed Medicare precisely because people were unable to get private insurance based on age and pre-existing conditions.
Besides in the Ryan plan, the person wasn’t going to get the money directly or the doctor/hospital as happens with Medicare. The idea was to provide “premium support” which the government would pay to the insurance company you told them you were buying a policy from.
PurpleGirl
@Waynski: Yes. The 1% certainly want every penny they can get from us.
harlana
@PurpleGirl: Well, I was going to say that basically they just want us all to die. They can get cheap immigrant labor to do their lawns and toilets, so really, what good are we? So, I guess Alan Grayson was half right, they do actually want us to die, but slowly. It’s more profitable that way.
PurpleGirl
@harlana: That too.
Maude
@PurpleGirl:
There are seniors that do believe that Medicare and SS are going to be taken away from them. The repetition has worked. You can’t reason with them and say it isn’t so. Thank you Ronald Reagan.
The Moar You Know
Fuck Mitt Romney. It’s bad enough that he’s attached himself to the most destructive political party ever seen, but what’s worse is his absolute lack of any human decency whatsoever. He wants what he wants, and fuck you if you get in his way.
RSA
This just pisses me off, because the only reason he’s treating Medicaid this way and not SS/Medicare is because beneficiaries of the latter vote in higher numbers. From Romney’s Web site:
But can you imagine Romney saying that he’ll reduce SS/Medicare spending by 25% (that’s the Medicare cut he’s proposing) and turn over control to the states? What a coward and moral cripple.
gnomedad
Bachmann thinks Mittens is a “frugal socia list”.
Waynski
@Judas Escargot: Missed your reply earlier. Point taken and appreciated. However, if anyone has data on X-er voting patterns, I’d love to see it.
rikyrah
this is who they are. period
Triassic Sands
It’s worth remembering that Medicaid is the orphan among the safety net programs. Support for it is the lowest even though its recipients have the greatest need and no resources available to absorb program cuts. In general, cuts to Medicare and Social Security will create some hardship for some people. Cuts to Medicaid are likely to translate directly into deaths. Yet, when concern is raised about cuts to the safety net, more often than not, Social Security and Medicare are mentioned, but Medicaid is not. True to form, in the previous 79 or so comments, the word Medicaid appears only once, while many commenters referred to Medicare.
When I get messages from my senators, both of whom are Democrats, they frequently discuss protecting Medicare and Social Security. Medicaid is mentioned much less often and then only as an afterthought.
Whatever is done with Social Security and Medicare (I already receive SS and Medicare is just around the corner), Medicaid must be protected. When writing to political representatives, I urge people to stress the need to protect Medicaid.
NR
Obama wants to cut Medicare, too. So people who like the program have no one to vote for.
ksmiami
Goddamit – take away the health benefits for every fucking member of congress right now. See how they like it.
And fuck that entitled plastic piece of shit Romney a-hole with a rusty pitchfork
xian
@Waynski: I was born in 1964, sometimes called the end of baby boom (actually the trough of the baby bust) and lately, but not originally, considered part of Gen X, and I cast my first vote for president against Reagan in 1984 (for all the good it did).
Edo
And excessive regulation. you can’t forget their fixation on that straw man.
Edo
Programs for the poor are poorly funded.
That’s why we can’t allow means testing for SS. Because then it becomes a program for the poor.
Steeplejack
@Waynski:
Nice of you to condemn the generational slagging after indulging in a little of your own.
You say the boomers elected Reagan? In the 1980 election, people born after 1951 split evenly between Carter and Reagan. Only the cohort of boomers born between 1946 and 1950 went for Reagan (54% to 37%), and they’re lumped in with pre-boomers born since 1936. People older than that voted overwhelmingly for Reagan.
And, by the way, Reagan won in a landslide. Carter didn’t carry any age group. So it seems like “generational slagging” to blame the boomers for Reagan.
Source.
mclaren
Just to dot the i’s and cross the t’s…
I’m sure everyone already knows this, but running the numbers shows clearly that raising the Social Security retirement age will NOT save any money.
What it will mean is that people with health problems will delay seeing a doctor for several years until they qualify for Medicare. At which point their health problems will have worsened to the point where their illness will cost a lot more to treat.
This is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. It’s saving a penny this week by costing yourself ten dollars next year. This is grotesquely stupid, pure and simple. If you want to drive already out-of-control Medicare costs way wayyyyy up, then raising the retirement age for Social Security is the way to do it, people.
“Why raising the retirement age is a terrible idea,” John Amato, Crooks and Liars, 24 August 2011.
In fact, we ought to be going in the opposite direction. If we really want to save money on our entitlement programs (and Medicare is where the real cost explosion is occurring in entitlements), then we ought to extend medicare for cheap preventive care to people at ages lower than 65. People who start to get chronic health problems at, say, age 60 ought to be eligible for simple cheap preventive care. Not expensive open-heart surgery. But if people start to suffer from, let’s say, type II diabetes, or renal disease, or heart problems, then we ought to lower the age at which people qualify for simple inexpensive preventive care — discounts on blood sugar monitoring gear and cheaper insulin (one hell of a lot cheaper than amputating limbs or doing eye surgery 10 years from now), Medicare-funded kidney drugs (one hell of a lot cheaper than a kidney transplant 10 years from now), Medicare-funded heart drugs like beta blockers (one hell of a lot cheaper than a heart transplant 10 years down the road).
America is already terrible at preoviding preventive care. We offer far too little, preferring heroic medical intervention in critical cases where the patient is at the edge of death — lifeflight helicopter flights to a trauma room at the local hospital after a car crash, surgical separation of siamese twins, that kind of crazy shit. America loves to waste money on that crazy shit. But cheap simple preventive care that would save millions on medical treaments down the road?
Nahhhhhh. Americans don’t want that.