The problem with so many GOP presidential candidates in low single-digits is that occasionally one of them crawls out of the muck when America forgets why they were down there in the first place. I wonder how long Ben Carson will be leading in Iowa when the elderly FOX News crowd gets wind of the fact he wants to abolish their Medicare.
Carson, who now leads the GOP field in Iowa according to the latest Quinnipiac Poll, would eliminate the program that provides health care to 49 million senior citizens, as well as Medicaid, and replace it with a system of cradle-to-grave savings accounts which would be funded with $2,000 a year in government contributions. While rivals have been pummeled for proposing less radical changes, Carson hasn’t faced the same scrutiny — and his continued traction in polls has left GOP strategists and conservative health care wonks scratching their heads.
“This isn’t a borderline issue. The politics of this are horrific,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, head of the American Action Forum and health care adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Carson’s stance on the third-rail issue of Medicare is especially risky given his strength among elderly voters. In Iowa, Carson draws a quarter of the senior vote — more than double any other candidate except Donald Trump, with whom he’s statistically tied among seniors. Carson’s support is even higher among voters between the ages of 55 and 64, who are on the verge of Medicare eligibility. He draws 34 percent of that age group, double Trump’s level of support, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
Carson’s GOP rivals are largely holding their fire so far. Trump’s campaign declined to comment, as did the campaigns of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio. A spokeswoman for Bobby Jindal noted the Louisiana governor’s support for reforming — but preserving — Medicare and Medicaid.
“Without change, they will go bankrupt,” said the spokeswoman, Shannon Dirmann. “Abolishing them is bad policy.”
The answer of course is a combination of our Village betters have been letting Carson get away with it, and that nobody took him seriously enough to read the fine print. Carson doesn’t call it Medicare or Medicaid, he calls it “traditional health care”. He’s had this plan for more than a year now, but he’s gotten very, very good at selling it while not talking about it.
Now that he’s a threat in the GOP race to possibly win something maybe, the Village has suddenly re-discovered his plan to replace Medicare and Medicaid with medical savings accounts that wouldn’t cover the cost of more than one lifetime hospital visit and wouldn’t keep up with medical cost inflation.
We’ll see how much traction this gets, but I’m betting it’s not going to hurt him as much as people think. He’s had this position for over a year now, folks. Hasn’t hurt him so far. It’s been a stated position that he’s confirmed again and again and people just stopped asking him about it, which means of course the low-info sub-genius crowd had no chance of knowing.
Granted, in a world where journalism wasn’t run by the Chuck Todd/Jake Tapper/Luke Russert crowd, Carson’s actual policy positions would be irrelevant, because his toxic Islamophobia and astonishing lack of knowledge would have him laughed off the national stage in minutes, but for some reason, he’s still there and millions of people want him to be our next president.
And if it’s because “people didn’t know about Carson” then maybe we should ask why that is.
Anonymous At Work
Baudelaire, “The finest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.”
Way ahead of his time. The greatest trick the GOP ever pulled was convincing the media/public that they couldn’t really believe some of stuff they say.
Mike J
Getting rid of medicare will hurt him with sane people, but maybe not with Republicans. All you have to do is say we’re only going to screw over younger people and the elderly get to keep the good system.
More likely to hurt him is for a Republican like Huckabee to publicly call him an :”abortionist”. Remember when it came out he was involved in a fetal tissue study and his defense was that all he did was “collect the samples”?
Botsplainer
@Mike J:
I’ve enjoyed how every proposal so far has involved keeping it as is for those 55 and older, thus not alienating the major part of the base asshole demographic.
Gimlet
But.. But..
In the good ole days, we somehow managed to get by before Medicare and Medicaid existed.
Satby
A journalist and guest journalism lecturer at Northwestern University that I know stubbornly insists that there’s GREAT journalism being committed today, but that people just read only what they want so it’s their own fault if they are misinformed. As he shares inside the beltway process stories to stir up comments on FB. He’s a smart, liberal guy who cannot see the problem at all, and denies there is one. As long as people like him are teaching the next generation of journalists, we can look forward to 20 more years of the same non-informing “news”.
greennotGreen
So, how much good will that “cradle-to-grave” savings account do when a baby is diagnosed at four months with cystic fibrosis, like my nephew before the gene was identified? Conservatives love the fetus, not so much the troublesome and expensive actually born child.
By the way, Zandar, thanks for the Thompson Twins reference. I loved them! I used to wear my hair like Tom Bailey.
msdc
If it’s any consolation, I don’t think millions of people actually want Ben Carson to be our next president.
Millions of Republicans want to say they want Ben Carson to be our next president. He is a lock to win the Thanksgiving dinner table primary, but that’s about it.
Elizabelle
@Mike J:
@Botsplainer:
I’m not impressed by the “Christian love” of Carson’s supporters, but putting in a word for the elderly (and not in that demographic — yet):
They have children and grandchildren too. They’ve got to see how much they counted on is not there for the kids. Except for your most rabid Tea Party maroons, I don’t see them wanting to endanger their own loved ones and younger neighbors.
It used to be so much easier to come by a job, in my lifetime. They are not out there, by the dozens, waiting to be fallen into. College costs so much more. These folks have got to notice their daughters working a fulltime job at home on top of whatever they do outside the home to support the family. It’s exhausting. You can only quip that the youngs are working for iPads and iPhones for so long. It’s a harder world, unless you’re a financial grifter.
Medicare and social spending means the elderly are less likely to end up in their kids’ bedroom or on the sofa. I doubt they want their middle-aged kids or grandkids living with them, out of desperation, either.
Hawes
It will hurt him if he’s attacked properly. And I don’t trust the GOP to do it properly. If you run a bunch of scare ads along the lines of “Ben Carson wants to end Medicare and give that money to Wall Street.” I think that plays.
Neither Carson nor Trump has anything like a coherent policy platform, and Beltway media have pointed this out. But no one listens to them. A Dem Super PAC needs to be flooding talk radio with ads about this in simple, scary terms.
Carson isn’t ready for prime time, but the Middle American Radicals don’t care too much. Until Carson’s idiocy starts to threaten their gravy train.
Baud
Kind of irrelevant. People focus on different things at different times. Managing the timing of things is one of the more important jobs of legitimate political consultants and campaign managers.
Baud
@Hawes:
Huh? Why should the Dems waste money on that unless he becomes the nominee?
Patrick
@Satby:
Wherever I looked in 2002-2003, pretty much every journalist in this country acted as a cheerleader to the disastrous war in Iraq. There was no journalism. It didn’t matter if it was NPR, NYT or whatever. Things are no different today.
Punchy
I cannot believe the medical establishment hasnt gone double-barrell on his ass. A plan this insane would crush the system, right? Wouldnt hospitals have to lower their fees by 10x or have ~70% of their patients default? $2K a year is only about one week in the hospital for a 60 yr old. In some cases, thats only 1 or 2 chemo treatments…
Peale
@Hawes: why waste Dem money now on Carson? Hillary and Bernie aren’t running against Carson yet. Unlimited Corporate Cash can do it. It’s not the Democrats job to make sure republicans adopt candidates with more popular policies.
Baud
@Satby:
There is good journalism out there, but the problem is not so much people only reading what they want (although that is an issue), but what the purveyers of media are marketing to people, which in turn affects how they spend their news dollars in generating content.
Poopyman
@Gimlet: Yeah, a two-word health care plan: “Die Quickly”.
h/t Alan Grayson
Peale
@Punchy: yeah. But if I’m reading this correctly, you’d be getting 2k per year for life. I don’t know if you could spend it earlier. So if the retirement age is raised to 75, you’d be starting retirement with 150k. Sure, one illness and you’d be done, but who really gets sick at that age. 75 is the new 30.
greennotGreen
@Patrick: Just yesterday I heard Kai Ryssdal say that Paul Ryan was a great “economic policy wonk” which, if you read Paul Krugman who is an actual economic policy wonk and doesn’t just play one in the House, you know is baloney. Again, where is this GREAT journalism being committed?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Elizabelle:
ask them and the reply will be “My kids will have their share once the illegals aren’t leeching off the systems. We should have been immigrants because they have it better than we do”
amk
Probably the brain man is tired already and wants to get out? Just playing devil’s advocate.
Patrick
All Carson has to do is to say that anybody at the age of 55 and over will be grandfathered in under the current plan. If he does this, his voters will totally go for it just like they did during the ACA debate. Most of them have shown themselves to be a bunch of very selfish people. “I got mine, sc**w you”.
Zandar
@Baud: That’s just it, the Turkey Day Primary position is a mess, and completely unrecognizable as an actual set of policies that don’t crumble into dust the second you put them together.
All the Republicans are that way. Every single one of them.
dedc79
Not sure if this has already come up in prior threads, but Carson also recently announced that he would like the Department of Education to “monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding if it exists.”
SFAW
@Peale:
If by “illness,” you mean a less-than-one-week, non-surgical hospital stay. And don’t include cancer treatment. Or pretty much anything else that is outside of the office-visit-to-see-your-doctor-for-a-checkup universe.
Outside of that, you’re golden.
Elizabelle
@Satby: I think you should do this journalist/lecturer a solid and identify this Pollyanna.
Baud
@dedc79:
As long as they’re not “targeting” people like the IRS supposedly did, it’s all good.
Baud
@SFAW:
“Mr. Carson, under your plan, how would the American people be able to afford your services?”
Satby
@Elizabelle: I can only say that in my experience this isn’t true. I constantly point out to my elderly mother that the policies of the people she supports would directly injure her children and grandchildren, but Fox told her that Dems are destroying the country, so I must be wrong, and lying about what the Republicans will do.
She’s developing Alzheimer’s, so I try not to agitate her, but she’s still able to vote, as does most of her age cohort. And a LOT of them think the way she does. They can’t conceive of depths of the current R party nuttiness, because their media of choice obscures it. And the rest of the media enables that.
SFAW
@dedc79:
Me, I’d like to have the AMA, HHS, and DHS monitor pediatric neurosurgeons – both currently practicing, and retired – to assess whether they make statements that could be construed as anti-science, anti-reality, or just fucking loony. Especially if any of those monitored is doing anything more consequential than sitting in a darkened room, in a straitjacket. Any if any of them has political aspirations – oh, lordy, lordy, then we got a problem.
oldgold
I know too many Iowa Republicans. For the most part, they have no intention of caucusing for Carson. For the moment, they see him as a safe harbor as Huricane Trump swirls menacingly around the Republican clown car. My guess is that late in the game they will coalesce around the clown they consider the best bet to beat HRC.
Dork
@dedc79: Wait a minute. I thought the DoEd was one of the GOP Boogeyman Departments, needing to be aborted and flushed. Now he wants to not only retain it, but massively empower it to snoop on schools?
I cant keep these memes straight. Just when you think they hate the DoEd, they profess their intent to covet it. Wow.
WJS
He will gain the enthusiastic support of people who either don’t need Medicare or who believe they won’t need Medicare. Neither of these two groups of people support government spending of any kind. They are William F. Buckley people, for whom decency, compassion, or even a modest understanding of providing for the less fortunate is exactly like blowing Satan in the back of a ’57 Chevy. Their religion is Christianity but their practice of it says otherwise.
Satby
@Elizabelle: He’s well known locally in Chicago, but maybe not outside of it. I won’t out him here, because he’s not around to defend himself. I shared this thread on FB though, and if he reads it and decides to play with the rest of us vitriolic jackals, I am confident he’d ID himself, and tell me where I’m wrong;)
SFAW
@Baud:
Don’t spend your money on frivolous things, like food, shelter, education, clothing.
SATSQ
Honus
Speaking of journalism, Kasich was on morning joke and said more than once that the federal budget hadn’t been balanced since “we walked on the moon” nobody corrected him, not eve joe who I believe was in congress during at least one or two of the five years that Clinton submitted surplus budgets.
Wag
It’ll all be ok because when this happens all Americans will have backyard chicken coops and can pay their doctors with fresh eggs and chickens. And doctors will be able to open food trucks serving the bounty to supplement their retirement incomes.
Gimlet
Not one who pretends to understand the conservative mind but Lindsay Graham is a case study.
A man who selfishly didn’t want to spend money on the northeast after Hurricane Sandy, but thought for sure there would be money for SC after another natural disaster.
Magical thinking, denial, selfish, mean-spirited, greedy…
gene108
This is just an other iteration of the voucher program Romney/Ryan tried to push in 2012. I’m not sure Carson can be attacked on this position, without other GOP candidates shedding light on their own voucher programs for Medicare and Medicaid.
Basically, the average GOP candidate is trying to con the rubes out of $1000, while Carson’s going for $10,000. Either way it’s a con and to expose Carson’s con you end up exposing your own and all people will notice is they are being conned.
Bobby Thomson
Don’t blame journalists. This is who Republicans are. This is what they want.
Elizabelle
@Satby: I am so grateful my now deceased, but once elderly and lightly demented mother never watched Fox. She parked herself in front of MSNBC all day, and that got her plenty riled up. She could see how mean they were to Obama and other Democrats.
I knew a very cool elderly woman in California (85 going on 50). She and her friends did not seem to be Fox watchers, because they were still out and about, meeting to play cards, do exercise and arts classes, go out to eat and see the latest movies. One of them, an elderly widow who lived alone in this enormous McMansion done up pastel colors gone to die (ashes of roses, etc.), watched Fox. She stood out for that, and I didn’t hear the group discuss politics much.
I mentioned to my friend, “Anna, all your friends are so fun.” She said that was because, at that age, if they weren’t fun, they got dropped. She and “the ladies” had no time for gloom and complaints.
Might be why your mom, and my mom, were home in front of the telly. It’s deadly. Social skills start to go, and you end up isolated and a sedentary audience for televised company, some of it toxic and even more isolating.
SFAW
@Dork:
Just have DHS do the monitoring. Problem solved!
I’m guessing there may be some former Stasi and SAVAK officers who may currently be underemployed, DHS could probably get them for pennies-on-the-dollar. Plus the added benefit of those guys being able to “coax” certain statements from non-right-thinking educators.
Iowa Old Lady
@Gimlet: We had chickens.
Elizabelle
@oldgold: Yeah. I agree the GOP voters will coalesce around the person they deem most likely to beat Hillary.
All the rest of this is just gasbaggery and filling airtime and content. Could be talking more about issues but — look! could this be another horse?
Gimlet
@Iowa Old Lady:
And leeches, and very few ways to evaluate and treat.
Satby
@Elizabelle: Sounds right. But she’s a Florida resident now, she gets out with her friends and most of them are Foxhounds. All fearful and deluded about politics now.
SFAW
@Dork:
Have the DHS do it. Problem solved!
gvg
I remember the NYT and others published plenty of stories on the fraudulent Bush evidence leading up to the war. Problem was they also published the cheer leading stuff and published it more prominently such as on the front page. I read the evidence against weapons of mass destruction and phony yellowcake, phony Chalabi and all the rest because at the time I was reading a Gator sports blog called Virtual Swamp which was linked to an Auburn site and both of them had people who found those articals and posted them. I repeat these stories were in the most prominent newspapers out there, however often on page 32 or something. My parents who have always followed the news more closely than I do who were retired and watching and reading a lot, still say that nothing was published. They didn’t know. I did due to a fluke and luck. Important info like that should not depend on luck.
I am having no luck finding the stories because google prefers more recent vintage stories.
By the way the new webpage is displaying tiny font for me.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Thank FSM my mom is not a Foxhound. She and her friends go to all the concerts and take courses. They traveled to take a course on Frances Perkins taught by the son of her long time assistant and counsel. My mom is also the ultimate Obot. We were out shopping and she ran into someone she had worked with years ago. Well he made the mistake of saying something disparaging about our president (out of the fucking blue-what is wrong with these people?!) and she corrected him with precision. The dems should have her on all the news shows because she is fierce-and has that grandmother thing going for her, too.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Must disagree with a different slant. Not go after Carson on this, go after the GOP on this 24/7 and not just during Presidential elections. Saying they want to take away your health care-social security dollars has the advantage of being true and central to damn near every policy proposal they come up with.
boatboy_srq
@Punchy: Mr. Mayhew may know better, but it strikes me that there are three prongs here: 1) the physicians themselves, 2) the hospital and clinic administrators, and 3) the health insurers. They break down as 1) largely for it because once you get past the PCPs and OBGYNs physicians aren’t exactly sympathetic; c) horrified, but since they’re largely detested by the other two groups they’re less relevant to this question; and 3) all set to make a bundle off their new customer base. AMA may have something nasty to say, but there’s a huge percentage of that market segment that would be on board with Carson’s wingnutsery.
@Elizabelle: If the extended family were still a thing – that is, if multiple generations lived in close proximity and took care of each other – I would agree. One of the artifacts of the “nuclear family” mess that came out of the postwar period, and of the increasingly difficult path one has to pursue in eldercare, is that today’s olds aren’t the least bit in touch with their younger relations, and experience a profound detachment thanks to their lifestyle and living conditions. Mum knew a bunch of seniors in her ALFs that never saw their kids or grandkids; they were among the most wingnutty people I’ve ever met. The kind of familial bond you describe has disappeared from the middle class lexicon, and is now the realm of the very poor (who can’t afford care so keep Grandma at home) and the very wealthy (whose kids can either keep them in their own wing of the McMansion or take time away to see them regularly); the very poor can’t shape policy, and the very wealthy no doubt like Carson’s drivel because it won’t ever affect them beyond lowering their tax obligation.
Elizabelle
@Satby: So sorry to hear about that.
What does she think about your young housemates? At least she raised a daughter with good values and sense.
Hoodie
Carson might be the subject Mencken had in mind in his “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” The Republican Party, having the core demographic problem that, once they ceased being the party of small farmers and merchants, were left with a true base that is limited to the rich (less than 1% of the population) and assorted pathological assholes (racists, homophobes, nativists), adding up to about 27%. They have to cobble together a coalition of assorted other clueless morons to get them up to a competitive 40-50%. The one demographic of morons that was out there for the taking was the group of post WWII folks who missed the Depression and the war but enjoyed all of the benefits of the New Deal, the rise of the US as a superpower and the expansion of the New Deal by the Great Society, state-funded universities, etc., and are oblivious as to how that bounty was delivered to their doorstep (other than, of course, their own inherent exceptionalism). Now they’re at the point of stepping on their own dicks. Lately I’ve been wondering whether the rise of candidates like Carson and Trump indicates that we are approaching a tipping point somewhat like the one that just passed in Canada, i.e., Carson and Trump as frontrunners may be a bellwether analogous to Harper getting chummy with the Ford clan.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: Love to hear.
I cannot get over people who step up to disparage Obama, in person, to another. Had two geezer males walking through my neighborhood early morning a few weekends ago. One saw the Obama-Biden sticker on my car and kind of sneered “How’s that Obama working for you?”
I told them he was great, that I loved Obamacare and enrolled in it, and that it was really important to middle-aged people because of all the cherry-picking on pre-existing conditions. (FYI, I don’t have any, but it was scary to have the insurance companies poring over paperwork to look for any reason to jettison you…)
Shut them right up. Don’t know if they’ve trod our sidewalks since. Look like Medicare-receiving probably federal retirees (the local business) and maybe military vets too. None of that socialized medicine sh*t for them.
Elizabelle
@boatboy_srq: Hey there, good morning.
Which was the chicken and which was the egg there? Next generation might have been avoiding the nasty old parents. Some people end up isolated due to their own failings. Some by misfortune, illness, or sheer bad luck.
Not sure I buy the “no nuclear family” business. See concern and care for the elderly among my cousins and siblings. One BIL has a mother and sister in dire financial straits; he and his brother offer all the assistance they can.
Some of these wingnuts are wingnuts because they’re assholes. Some are wealthy and oblivious; some are just without empathy or curiosity or good observational skills.
They want it simple, simple, simple.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle: Because of course they think they earned everything they have through hard work, not like a moocher who needs a handout. Ugh, white people.
Patrick
@Elizabelle:
That’s what was so amusing about the ACA debate. Whenever somebody of Medicare age said derogatory things about the ACA, I always responded that if we are not going to have ACA, then we should also eliminate Medicare. That would always shut them up. Selfish, selfish people.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle: Exactly. Some people are just assholes. Many are unfixable lifelong assholes.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Oh yeah, love those people who ask me about the “hopey-changey thing”. I always make sure to give them a thorough reply.
msdc
@Hoodie:
I can think of a couple of candidates who might qualify. Some of them got elected president.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: My maternal grandmother seemed to get more and more liberal as she got older (particularly after her husband died), but she was old enough to remember the Great Depression and FDR. I think part of what’s fueling the Fox News Geezer phenomenon is that those people are dead; these are Silent Generation types whose political memories were formed during the early Cold War.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: And then their mouth makes an “O”. They don’t seem used to comebacks or an alternate view.
O for our superb lithe-ducking president.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah. My bud Anna remembers the Depression and WW2 very well.
Her own son was a deficit hawk, all worried about inflation. She pretty much ignored him.
gene108
@Satby:
I think all points of view stated above are correct.
1. There is good journalism being done, but digging out all the info and investigating leads takes time. So you do not get ground breaking reports every day.
2. People are more and more self selecting, where they get their news. This trend has been been going on for decades, as far as I can tell. When Republicans convinced their voters, at least as far back as the 1980’s, about the “liberal” media, i.e. MSM, those folks have been flocking to right-wing news rags and now right-wing T.V. It is just more pronounced in the internet age, with the concept of “trusted” news source becoming more and more subjective and/or subject to more scrutiny, for bad framing or errors of omission.
3. The cable news industry has blurred the lines between news and commentary, so much so that if you only listened to cable news it would be hard to figure out where news shows ended and opinion shows began, so you have shoddy “journalism” because we’re getting infotainment as news by major news outlets.
The issue is how to bring the good reporting from print journalism (and this includes work by bloggers, who are knowledgable about a subject) into the broader media markets, such as cable T.V. news.
Applejinx
@Peale: Oh my god this. THIS.
Please proceed, Doctor.
satby
@FlipYrWhig: @Elizabelle: Sure some are selfish assholes. But my mom was known far and wide for her generosity and was a lifelong Dem. Then she moved south, fell in with a wrong crowd and started watching BillO and her dementia began.
I hope some day there’s a study done in induced dementia due to Foxwatching, because I think it’s a real thing.
Felonius Monk
@Honus: Kasich should know better than Joe. Kasich was chairman of the House Budget Committee during that time.
satby
@gene108: Good journalism is wasted if it’s buried in favor of whatever Caitlyn Jenner and the Kardashians are doing this week, Bengahhhziii! and counterfactual discussions of “some say climate change a hoax”: all offered up as if they were equally important news by the MSM.
Context used to be provided in stories, facts called out, as were untruths; and it wasn’t all buried on page 32 as gvg @49 said.
I get that people have an obligation to be better informed… but the 4th estate has an obligation to CLEARLY inform people that they have almost wholly abdicated. And then they’re annoyed when we show them no respect for their “dangerous” jobs.
PurpleGirl
@Peale: No, you could get that sick at 35 or 40 or at any age and end up with huge medical bills. I was in my late 30s when I experienced a herniated disk; that surgery was some $10,000. Luckily I was insured at the time because I sure as hell didn’t have that kind of money to pay medical bills. A girlfriend developed breast cancer and went several rounds of treatments and died at 51. You never know when something medical or involving your health will happen.
rikyrah
He’s not talking in Frank Luntz-approved language.
They aren’t worried about Uncle Ben. Now, they have what they need to destroy him.
Paul in KY
A whole 2 grand a year!!! Wow! That will go far when you have a serious medical problem.
Paul in KY
@greennotGreen: That baby will have $500 to deal with the cystic fibrosis.
Paul in KY
@Hawes: I’m thinking Trump will hit him with some yuge & classy attack ads here in a month or so.
Riley's Enabler
@satby: I think it is a real thing, too. My mother has chosen a life inside her home with no company except 24/7 Foxnews blaring at 11. She is angry, fearful and self-medicates with abandon – and is getting worse each month. It’s incredibly disheartening to watch.
She used to be smart, reasonable and brave. I pin at least 50% of her slide into nastiness on Fox and their constant barrage of fearful lies.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: There’s a huge industry in FL (and other places) geared expressly to (warehoused) eldercare. ALFs are a major part of the economy, and DCF seems to be a feeder vector for them: one of the chief troubles I had with Mum was convincing DCF that keeping her home was a good idea, and fighting off “move her to a facility” was a regular battle with them. Home-based eldercare is ridiculously expensive, and ALFs offer (on the surface) a more manageable approach. The net result, though, is elderly isolated from family and surrounded instead by underpaid staff and similarly isolated peers.
The last decade or so has given me hope that the nuclear family is a passing thing, and that the extended family is durable. I just know too many people from my circle growing up that saw their grandparents once every other month, and I still know people who aren’t close enough to their relations to keep up with them. Consider how many Red States are marketing themselves as retirement locales: “move two thousand miles from the family so you can live for cheap” seems to be a not unsuccessful marketing ploy, with the added plus that you can twist the olds who are suckered into moving also into voting to keep the scheme going.
Good to know some of us at least aren’t falling prey to the isolation-by-generation malaise.
Paul in KY
@Baud: They could maybe afford it once, if the operation wasn’t too complicated, and they happened to be 83 years old or older…
Elizabelle
@satby: Class Action suit against Murdoch et al!
boatboy_srq
@satby: sNoozecorp is very good at telling people what to think and about whom to think it: there’s no intellectual challenge there, only propaganda. Dementia can be treated with thinking and reasoning exercises: there is some good medical info on how keeping engaged and challenged can minimize the damage. That study may be closer than any of us think.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: You tell em, Elizabelle!!
boatboy_srq
@satby: Just a reminder: Red States are also places where gummint is convinced that fluoridated water is for brainwashing not oral health, and that the lead paint thing is just to oppress good upstanding landlords. “The wrong crowd” might be that way for environmental reasons as well as the propagandization.
Paul in KY
@Riley’s Enabler: Need to try & get her out of that cocoon of doom. Can the TV be ‘disabled’ in some manner? Does she have anyone who can get her out doing something?
Elizabelle
@boatboy_srq: We’ve all heard the anecdotes that nursing homes don’t allow Fox because it upsets the residents.
Sad that CNN and MSNBC are following the Fox pattern, although not with such hardcore lies in their programming. It’s controversy that sells, manufactured or otherwise.
I think all the crime reporting is too much. It probably isolates the elderly more than it informs the greater community. Money is what is doing this to our seniors. And all of us.
Pharma money, as Kay informed in the morning thread. All those extra pills, and opening a market for powerful pain meds among the economically insecure and then leaving the addiction probs to the community.
Broadcast money. Keep that Citizens United pipeline coming. Our shareholders need those negative political ads. Citizens, who cares. They’re on their own.
MomSense
@satby:
I remember reading here a few years ago about a kickstarter campaign for a movie called something like ‘The Brainwashing of My Dad’. I think it is about what happened to her dad after he started listening to right wing talk radio and watching Fox.
sherparick
@Mike J: Yes, that is how he & his handlers will spin it. “We are keeping Government out of your Medicare Social Security & taking it away from those people.”
Ian
It’s particularly odd when you consider that $2,000 (or $50,000) wouldn’t have covered any one of the procedures Carson performed during his medical career, isn’t it? I mean, brain surgery isn’t exactly the cheap end of medicine.
misterpuff
@Satby: National Television Journos: “Its not my to report on and assess policy issues. Its my job to report who is leading. Its the voters job to figure who represents their views.
Although sometimes, I will try to get one candidate attack another, because Ratings and Twtter popularity.”
FlipYrWhig
@Riley’s Enabler: @satby: I think what happens is that older people who were accustomed to trusting The News don’t realize that they’re being duped by Fox, because Fox looks just enough like The News that it’s easy to confuse the two. Classic elder-scam. I’m curious to see what happens when people who came of age politically without ever really trusting The News get older themselves, and if Fox will be such a malevolent influence then.
Betty Cracker
Goddamnit, Zandar! I’ve had the Thompson Twins stuck in my head for the last three hours, thanks to you. I need 10 ccs of Florence and the Machine stat!
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: the DAHHAHOOOWG days are ovaHAHHAHHHHHAH. Hate that song. Would rather have the Thompsons in my head.
Riley's Enabler
@Paul in KY: I wish. We’ve been trying for 4 years now, but there’s a morass of “pain” and “sickness”, mixed with callous (or harried? Hard to say) healthcare providers that see the easy way out is to write another scrip. The latest push is to try to get her in rehab (pain meds addiction, no surprise) and then into skilled nursing care. Unfortunately it looks like the only way that will happen is by trickery. We are working with an elder-care specialist to suss out the red-button options.
I had to tell her bluntly that I would stop coming over if she didn’t stop yelling Fox politics at me. It’s working so far.
trollhattan
@SFAW:
Fundraisers, you know, car washes and the like.
Brachiator
@Satby:
It’s also a question of whether or not there will even be a next generation of journalists, and where they will be able to find work.
The Village, msm, whatever you want to label everyone’s favorite whipping boy, is crumbling, and it’s unclear what, if anything, will replace it.
And the golden age of great journalism was brief and narrow. Reporters have always been more hacks than crusaders.
Brachiator
This doesn’t really make sense. It is not journalism’s responsibility to vet a candidate or to do anything to ensure that he or she is laughed off the national stage.
This also foolishly attempts to endow journalists with more power than they have ever had. Sarah Palin was clearly a numbskull, who demonstrated an absolute lack of knowledge about national issues. Her woeful past record was explored and duly laid out in front of the citizens. And while a huge chunk of the nation ran screaming in horror away from her and her inanities, she still was able to attract a loyal following.
boatboy_srq
@Riley’s Enabler: Does she have any pet charities? Any useful causes? Mum was into Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club – that crystallizing moment for her came when I asked if she realised she was contributing to those causes simply to fight off the depredations of the people she was electing. Sometimes it’s the other things people care about that provide the lever: if your mum has any of those that could be the path.
Paul in KY
@Riley’s Enabler: Wish you best of luck!
Bill
@Elizabelle:
You’re badly underestimating the Boomer ability to say “I got mine…”
Betty Cracker
@Riley’s Enabler: I’m sorry. That sucks. We actually blocked channels on my grandma’s TV — including the channels that broadcast Fox and religious hucksters who specialize in bilking old people. It felt patronizing to do it; she’s still a pretty sharp old lady, but she’s happier watching sports and Animal Planet.
Bill
@Hawes:
Not yet.
Ella in NM
Uh, he hasn’t faced ANY FUCKING SCRUTINY. I’m looking forward to the side-by-side of him not being able to keep his eyes open for more than 30 seconds in an interview, juxtaposed with Hilary Clinton’s 11-hour marathon of awesomeness.
At least we’re getting to that stage of the Republican Primary where we start watching the “Biweekly Superstar Candidate Rockets to the Top of the Polls Only to be Shot Down in Flames in the Barren Desert of Their Own Vacousness”.
Other wise known as the “9,9,9 Phenomenon”.
Elie
Its always interesting to see how ignorant people are of programs that affect them greatly. Without Medicare, medical care expenditures when you have a fixed income (provided by another program, social security), are catastrophic to many middle class people — not rich of course, but well into the middle class. Why? No one (or at least a significant number of people), has savings and most private retirement programs run by businesses or even government, have collapsed. These people also have families — children, nephews, etc and given the increasing stress from stagnant wages and marginal employment rates, their outlook and future will not allow the oldsters to ignore this proposal. This is a third rail that I believe would explode the GOP off the tracks and while Carson may have delusions of grandeur, he will wake up to what life was like during the auto da fe if he, or any of the other GOP Klowns keep singing this song. Did I also mention that 50% of Medicaid expenditures are for long term care for largely middle class people who unfortunately had to spend down what assets they had to fund Granny in a nursing home (estimated to cost 100K per year)? These are not rich people of course, but many were self sufficient middle and working class folks who got old and disabled and had family who could not afford to care for them, or had no family. BTW, single and divorced women without children are a growing percentage of the elderly population. Most will not need comprehensive services, but all will need Medicare and possibly other supports as well.
Ruckus
@Gimlet:
Who’s this we shit?
Said just as tongue in cheek.
History can look and sound real good when you don’t actually spend any time studying it.
Elizabelle
@Riley’s Enabler: Very sorry about your mom’s deterioration. She sounds like a wonderful person who’s lost now.
Best wishes to you both. Fingers crossed.
sherifffruitfly
he’ll be at the top in iowa forever as long as he talks about nonwhite folks mooching off medicare
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
Mrs J graduated from a classic school of journalism, and was taught reporting, news photography, editing, the whole schmear.
Now it is a School of Media Arts, with design classes, webinar classes, page design art classes, video presentation classes, etc, etc. And they are “Award Winning” in that space.
But old fashioned digging up facts to prove who is correct in what they claim? not so much… not at all.
She took friends’ daughters to “take your daughters to work” days, as we have no kids, and they were interested in journalism. Those kids went to the J School, got intro jobs at small town papers. Now they are all ALL going back to school to get teaching certs.
They can read the writing on the wall. No real career path for real reporting of facts. The will be good teachers, tho, so there is that. Critical thinking may sneak in there among the factoids.
TriassicSands
Carson’s supporters are stupid and ignorant. He can probably sell them anything he wants to, just so long as he makes sure the GOP base knows he’s against abortion and Obamacare.
glory b
@Betty Cracker: OMG, my deceased-in-March Dad loved the animal planet!
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
This is very sad, and accelerated by the death of newspapers and magazines.
Even attempts to move journalism and criticism to the Web is failing, at least for now (e.g., the collapse of Grantland and the shift of sites like Screen Rant from arts criticism to overt puff pieces and marketing tie-ins).