Media Needs To Confront Medicare Distortions, GOP Continues Attacks on Health Care Reform, The Republican Safety Net

Telling the WHOLE Medicare Story

From NCPSSM:  "While Presidential candidates and Washington politicians continue to claim 'we can’t afford Social Security and Medicare', few --  if any -- want to talk about what their proposals will actually mean for millions of middle-class Americans who depend on these programs.  Columbia Journalism Review’s Trudy Lieberman wrote a memo to political journalists urging them to start asking some tough questions so that voters can understand what their plans to cut benefits will actually mean for our nation."

Thanks to NCPSSM for bringing this to everyone's attention.  READ ON.

MORE:  A Medicare Memo to Campaign Reporters -- "Dear Colleagues:  I have just returned from a reporting trip to Southeast Arkansas, where the folks I visited have very little.  They certainly don’t have good health.  Some are crippled by bad knees messed up from on-their-feet jobs.  Most have diabetes.  Some have had strokes.  They are lucky, though, that they have Medicare.  Without it, they probably would have died ages ago."

"Last week, speaking to business leaders in Detroit, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney mentioned that Medicare-eligible Americans ought to wait longer for their benefits.  The media glossed over Romney’s remarks; but I kept thinking about them as I was chatting with a woman who had one leg, amputated because of complications from diabetes.  And they stayed in my mind as I talked to another woman -- a 67-year-old who had a stroke last year, and had had to quit working as a presser for a local dry cleaner ten years ago, when she was 57.  She had a seizure, and a hot press fell on her hand.  A long scar shows how her work life ended.  She qualified for a Social Security disability check --all of $795 a month that’s been her only income ever since.  How on earth could someone like her pay for medical care if she had had to wait a few more years?"

Maybe Mr. Romney could lose a $10,000 bet with all of them (he wouldn't lose much by his standards), and that would help them out a great deal.

Republicans Criticize Health Reform

From Kaiser Health News:  "Mary Agnes Carey talks with Jackie Judd about HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee.  She defended the health care law and the president's fiscal 2013 budget request.  The hearing had all the hallmarks of a partisan political event."  Transcript and audio.

I can never say enough about the good work of KHN.  Good sense, unbiased, on point.  Must listening.

GOP: Safety Net, Safety Not

"Republican presidential candidates recently have found themselves battling over who cares most for the poor.  But their demonstrations of empathy sometimes collide with their plans to cut back the programs on which many of the poor depend.  After he appeared to dismiss the very poor, Mitt Romney was forced to backpedal from his politically perilous remarks.  But he and other candidates stand by bedrock conservative principles of cutting entitlement programs and government spending."

For Your Information

"A Texas doctor was accused Tuesday in the largest Medicare fraud case in US history, with federal prosecutors charging him with scamming the government with $375 million in phony billings.  Justice Department officials announced that Dr. Jacques Roy was arrested in Texas and faces life in prison as well as fines of more than $250,000 if convicted."

Texas Medicaid Director: 91 Percent Of Texans Will Have Insurance If State Implements Obamacare

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Utah Medicare Experiment, A Little Health Care History

Utah Plays Politics With Medicaid, Medicare

"Disguised by the ornate language of a bill that would wrest Medicare from the federal government and put it under Utah’s control is the law of untended consequences.  The bill, SB208, would adopt the interstate Health Care Compact, which backers say would use the money far more efficiently than the feds’ Affordable Care Act.  Now, the federal government runs Medicare and the state runs Medicaid."

"However, the math doesn’t work out that way, according to the Utah Health Care Policy Project, which estimates Medicare would lose $217 million by 2014.  Add in the loss that year of about $132 million for Medicaid, and joining the compact makes no sense at all. "

Healthcare History: How the Patchwork Coverage Came To Be

"Workers swarmed through Henry J. Kaiser's Richmond, Calif., shipyard in World War II, building 747 ships for the Navy.  The war 'had siphoned off the most hardy specimens,' a newspaper reported, so Kaiser was left with many workers too young, old or infirm to be drafted.  The workers needed to be in good health to be effective on the job, and Kaiser offered them care from doctors in company clinics and at company hospitals.  The workers paid 50 cents a week for the benefit."

"It was something new in industrial America -- a bonus offered to attract scarce labor while wages were frozen during the war."

Medicare Expansion Riled Affluent Seniors in 1988

"President Reagan, the great apostle of modern conservatism, persuaded a Democratic Congress in 1988 to enact the biggest expansion of Medicare since the program's creation in 1965.  For the first time, there would be financial protection against catastrophic illness, with a limit on out-of-pocket payments.  To avoid worsening the federal deficit, the expansion would be paid for by the people benefiting from it: the Medicare beneficiaries themselves.  Poor people would pay little or nothing, and seniors making $35,000 a year or more would pay $800 a year for this new protection."

"An enthusiastic Congress delivered the legislation with huge majorities.  But affluent seniors were outraged."

For Your Information

From NSPSSM:  Chained CPI Doesn’t Cut It  "Normally we see eye to eye with the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities on Social Security and Medicare policy.  However, we respectfully disagree with their recent position that the Chained CPI formula should be used to calculate Cost of Living Adjustments for Social Security recipients as part of a larger deficit reduction package."

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Santorum Dis-Respects Medicare, Romney Still Against Medicare

Santorum Blasts Medicare

You must read this from NCPSSM:  Santorum Describes Social Security & Medicare Beneficiaries as Drug Addicts Needing a “Dime Bag”  --  "As we have said before, it’s long past time that primary voters start asking Presidential candidates very specific questions about their plans for Social Security and Medicare.  So far, voters have been treated to a lot of Orwellian double-speak offered by candidates who say 'reform' when they mean 'cut' and 'preserve' when they mean 'privatize.'”

"While GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has made his views on Social Security and Medicare clearer than most -- he wants to slash both -- we found a video this week that offers a terrifying view of what Santorum really thinks about America’s seniors, the disabled, survivors and their families.  He sees them as nothing more than drug addicts."

This is perhaps one of the worst assaults against American values that you'll ever see.  Medicare and Social Security are not addicting; they are pre-paid public benefits.  We can't help but ask how someone becomes so misguided.  Maybe the most conservative of Republicans are simply paranoid who see sinister motives behind every government program , or maybe they are home grown terrorists.

Desperate Romney Attacks Medicare

OPINION:  "Now that the Republican candidates have agreed on setting back women's health care to the 1950s, Mitt Romney is breaking out of the pack by announcing he'd raise the eligibility age for Medicare.  All the Republican candidates want to eliminate Medicare as we know it and replace it with vouchers for inadequate private insurance.  But now Romney, in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, kicked it up a notch:  He wants people to wait a few more years before they can get GOP's lousy coverage."

"The GOP plan eliminates the Medicare guarantee of affordable coverage and shifts thousands of dollars in medical costs to seniors.  In the first year alone, seniors would be responsible for $6,400 in added out-of-pocket costs."

MORE:  "Romney said his proposals for Medicare and Social Security would begin in 2022, meaning no current or near-retirees would be affected. He also said he favors adjustments to curtail the growth of future benefits for the relatively well-to-do, so 'lower-income seniors would receive the most generous benefits.'"

It's discouraging to see candidates for the office of President make all kinds of ignorant claims about Medicare.  Where's the leadership?  Where's the interest in helping Americans understand their government?  Unfortunately, it's the politics of election or re-election (the craving for power, whether one's own for others who are driving the system) that gets in the way.

The Republican Reality-Free Zone

Georgia Senate Majority Leader & President Pro Tempore Introduce Unconstitutional Nullification Bill

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