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The GOP's Medicare Lies
Understandably, the public is now angry at Rep. Ryan and his Republican cohorts.
In an astonishing observation, Rep. Paul Ryan recently declared: "Washington has not been honest with you."
Gosh, Paul, that possibility never occurred to us! 
What makes the Wisconsin lawmaker's observation astonishing is the fact that he is Washington — a seven-term Republican insider, House budget chairman, and author of the GOP's ideologically contrived budget-whacking plan that kills America's enormously popular Medicare program.
But Ryan didn't mean to point his finger at himself. No, no. He meant those dastardly Democrats who've dared to tell the public about his proposal to replace Medicare with a privatized voucher scheme. Understandably, the public is now angry with Ryan and his Republican cohorts. Hence, he is scurrying around in a shamefully dishonest PR campaign to accuse the Democrats of — what else? — dishonesty. Ryan's plan, he asserts, would give seniors "the same kind of (health insurance) system members of Congress enjoy today."
Oh, Paul, pants on fire! We taxpayers cover 75 percent of the payments for the plan that you enjoy, but you would saddle older folks with vouchers that would cover only a third of their insurance costs, and that share would shrink with each passing year.
Apparently, Republicans think telling the truth is unfair in today's politics, so they're angry at Democrats for talking about Ryan's plan to kill Medicare. Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican whose sweeping white pompadour covers a totally empty head, recently ranted in feigned outrage that Democrats are trying to "scare the daylights" out of seniors. "I think that's irresponsible," he bellowed, oblivious to his own absurd scare tactics of only two years ago, when he assailed "Obamacare," direly warning that Obama was turning Medicare into "a health care gulag."
They can run, but on this one they can't hide.
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Show AllAnyone in their early 50s should be thoroughly incensed by the republicans plan to steal the Medicare investment that they have paid into for 1/3 of a century. There is such a glaringly different view here between repubs and dems. How can anyone not see this? Medicare costs have gone up 400% in the last 40 years. Private health insurance based programs have gone up 700% in the same time frame. The republicans are truly going with 'kill grandma' by their own vote. Here in America we have the 'freedom' to not care about this or anything else, but I hope enough people do care about their future and that of friends and family.
Anyone in their early 50s should be thoroughly incensed by Obama's plan to steal the Social Security investment that they have paid into for almost 1/2 of a century.
Anyone in their early 50s should be thoroughly incensed by the democrat's tepid response to the plan to steal the Medicare investment that they have paid into for 1/3 of a century.
Quit pretending there's a difference.
You are reading a lot into "Obama's plan." Yes, I'm far more than a little concerned about him too. The democrats did get virtually all republicans in Congress on the record as wanting to eliminate Medicare and change it into something far worse. That was a major accomplishment and not at all "tepid." And yes, I think the democrats suck, but they look pretty damn good compared to the only competition.
Yes, and the good cop always looks better than the bad cop.
Wake up.
Right. It's the same way the plutocrat's political machine and propaganda machine sold us on the horrid pseudo health care reform act that uses tax payer funds to subsidize the for profit health care corporations. You have one grifter make a lot of noise with something really radically bad and then you have the other grifter offer you a solution so you won't have to suffer as badly, then later they get together and divide the spoils, with most of it going to the money man/brains who was behind the scene. IF it was a film I'd cast Billy Bob Thornton to play the 'bad' grifter, John Cusack to play the 'good' grifter and Christopher Walken to play the money man/brains who was behind the scene.
In Greg R's viewpoint, getting raped gently by a good-looking rapist is better than being raped brutally by an ugly rapist.
Rape is rape, Mr. Lesser Evilism. Keep voting for the gentle rapist. Most of us here will defy being fucked regardless who is doing it.
Bang on, as the British would say.
How about being first lividly incensed with the Repubs for being such eternally self-serving dicks, and then pissed off with equally self-serving Dems for playing along with them.
Nice not to have the usually Hightower bashing crowd here today.
In a recent column, Deroy Murdock, a card-carrying Republican pundit, suggested that Ryan's plan be called "MediChoice," so seniors will think gives them some control over their medical plan.
In fact, the only choice seniors will have will be whether to pay for medical care or food. Many seniors had to make that choice before Medicare was enacted. I don't know anyone who reminisces about those days.
That would be great.
Then we could label him the "Pro-Choice" candidate.
That would muddy the waters.
What scares me is the efficiency of the Republican Media propaganda machine. My degree is in Psychology with a background in Advertising. The Billionaires and Corporations and the Republicans are using propaganda to psychologically manipulate the American public. The media that was formed to entertain and inform the public, has now been twisted into a propaganda machine that the Cold War Russians would be proud of. The outrageous lies that are blatantly thrown out as fact, are repeated and repeated, with no counter arguments. The psychological theory is that Anything that is repeated enough will end up being believed. The Used Car Salesman used to be the epitome of a person who would lie with a straight face, now it is the Republicans. Actually it is, apparently, everyone in Congress, depending on their current agenda.
pooka47401 -- Good comment. I think the best way to attack the propaganda machine, which I refer to as the mainstream media, is to put forward progressive candidates, especially for president, and pit them against each other, and then, when the really effective ones prove their mettle, against Obama and the other Republicans. That's not happening; unless and until it does; we'll keep losing battle for the hearts and minds of our fellow benighted and propagandized citizens.
This is a long-standing and VERY well-funded effort by the right-wing. Yes, it is frightening in both its scope and its effectiveness. They have top advertising folks, psychologists working on this stuff. They pay attention to the latest neurobiological study results. They have invested in an extraordinary media infrastructure so that, once they get their "buzzword of the week", it goes out across millions of radio stations and newspapers and finally everyone is using the language of the oppressor. And of course advertisers don't care if you like or hate their ad
AS LONG AS YOU REMEMBER AND REPEAT IT. For example, at what point did we acquiesce and standardize the term "right-to-work" instead of "fire-at-will" to describe worker-busting employment policies. Dr. Drew Westen, working in neurobiology and linguistics has a book called The Political Brain which has fascinating information on the areas of the brain involved in political decision-making. The right-wing is all over this stuff!! You might be interested in a current project progressives have started to turn this around -- crowd-funded, open sourced. The Progressive Strategy Handbook. The first working draft put together by Cognitive Policy Works. www.cognitivepolicyworks.com. They are hosting working strategy sessions online as well. Don't overlook the footnote referenced articles. A wealth of info there. A project long overdue.
It is heartbreaking to sit down at a kitchen table with an elderly couple, their bank statement and bills to help them figure out if they should pay rent, utilities, medicines, groceries, gas or rent, but not all of the above. They are on a fixed income while all those costs rise....at least can we let them have good medical care with all that that involves without finacial worry? To expect them to have to
shop around for the cheapest care in a rural area with only one hosptital and a handful of primary care physicians is just immoral. The whole notion of vouchers is just wrong on so many levels.
Thank you for doing that with those couples. It must be worse with those fixed incomes that the heartbreak I see counseling young families that have a little more flexibility but the same problems. Pray and keep the powder dry.
More smoke and mirrors, more theatrics for the masses, as the Washington Generals act like they are really trying to beat the Harlem Globetrotters, putting up a great, concerted offense but just not able to get down the court. Yada yada yada. When a Republican points his finger accusingly at a Democrat, or vice versa, it is nothing but bread and circuses for the masses. They are both on the same effing team, just with slightly different ideas about how to privatize social programs to further enrich their corporate masters. The Globetrotters want "vouchers," the Generals want legislation requiring citizens to pay insurance companies directly, or vice versa, or what-the-hell-ever. It's all the same end-goal - enrich the corporations at the expense of the serfs. All of the back-and-forth and fake rivalry is no more that a masquerade intended to keep the serfs locked into their belief that the 2-party system isn't really a 1-party system. And it works.
The thing is your "masquerade" has real consequences. If and when you need Medicare and the republicans give you a tiny portion of the cash you need, and you end up on your deathbed, perhaps then you'll think, "Oh, I guess there was a difference."
Oh, please. Democrats would give you the same tiny portion (see Obama's Catfood Commission, for example), only they'd look "concerned" while they're giving it to you.
That's right, Greg. I should be grateful for whatever meager bones the D/R's are willing to throw me and my fellow serfs. Better than nothing, right?
Democrats = Washington Generals
Republicans = Harlem Globetrotters
The game is rigged, the season tickets are unaffordable, the seats all have obstructed views, the PA system is full of static, the concession food is indigestible, the arena violates the building codes, the players are grossly overpaid, the owners are avaricious and malevolent, there’s no free parking, and the basketballs, uniforms and shoes are all manufactured overseas in child labor sweatshops. What’s not to like?
When you are the "designated loser" in a two-party system, the most frightening thing of all is to find that you are in a "can't lose position" on some issue. This is the position Democratic Party leaders find themselves in on Medicare.
With public opinion solidly behind support for Medicare (80 percent in some recent polls), all Democrats have to do is support this highly successful program and ride the momentum to victory in 2012.
However, to win on this issue puts them at odds with their corporate financial backers. So they have to find a way to lose on the Medicare issue.
The White House, especially, is working overtime to try to find a way to circumvent the will of the people and lose on the Medicare issue. Their loyalties are not with the American people. Their loyalties are with their corporate sponsors, and their corporate sponsors despise Medicare because it is a government program that works. That in itself threatens the "private is always better" ideology that has already done so much damage to our country.
Democrats want those corporate dollars, and they will find a way to lose on the Medicare issue. Count on it.
Bingo.
Most likely, the budget "compromise" will call for Democrats to back Republican positions, and Obama will back it. Republicans know that if that occurs, the people will blame the Democrats for selling out, not the Republicans for attacking to begin with. Indeed, Republicans are already planning to run against the Democratic sellout ...
Wow, now that's insight. And well spoken.
Write in Manning in 2012.
OLD GUY: Well said. It helps to back up. In order to write a play, one must construct a necessary plot line. Although a few twists and turns in that device are always welcome, the plot line is what ultimately drives the climax, as well as conclusion. So if we view American politics as that play, it's important to look to where the money went. I'd call that the plot-line. Both parties, for all the reasons you related, with the exception of a handful of principled politicians (this designation is now largely an oxymoron) reinforced NAFTA, the gutting of Steagall-Glass (making it possible for banks to speculate on Wall Street), the deregulation of media, the ending of "welfare as we know it," while beefing up the budget for war, war, and more war. Oh, and let's not forget the tax cuts to the rich, year after year until the Gini co-efficient was on a par with Zambia.
So the stage was ALREADY set with the pretext being, there IS no money left, for the so-called "entitlement" programs to be cut. The frame is all about the money, and so long as ONLY that rubric is taken into account (i.e. allowed to drive the plot-line), then decisions can remain cold, conformed merely to the logic of an illusory balance sheet.
With the media under capture to the same interests that are writing & running the agenda, the public is NOT able to connect the dots between the vast sums wasted on unnecessary wars, including the war at home (via Homeland Security's labyrinth, designed to suppress citizens' rights) and the lack of funds for the programs that matter; ones I might add, that better fit the designation of national security. I mean, consider this frame: would the cancer person be more interested in national security, as some guard at the border, or in access to medical care? Which merits security to that individual? Ultimately that individual is each and all of us.
The problem is being put to the masses in a way that The Chicago School endorses. It precisely fits the M.O. of Disaster Capitalism. With all the funds PREVIOUSLY stolen to create lax tax burdens on the rich, along with business speculation, added to a tradition of implausible subisidies provided to such horrors as Big Oil and Big Pharma, the tightened economy is a virtual certainty. Therefore the elites now are positioned to put the squeeze on all the "little people." Powerless, they are expected to pick up the slack. Notice the lackeys who just backed the human exrement running things in Wisconsin!
This pattern is not just served in Amerika, either. It's going on all over Europe as there, too, benefits are being cut. And what is the common denominator? That elites bet on Wall Street, played high stakes casino capitalism, and when the market came apart, and the derivatives and other frauds began to be exposed for the crap that they are... then suddenly the perception of lost revenue streams had to be directed somewhere. The elites, drunk on their power, corrupted by their riches, remind me of Scrooge... they'd rather purchase politicians to do their dirty work, than provide our elders with sound care. Could a plot be more heinous or more sickening? I sure hope there's a twist ending in store. Much depends on who the ultimate author (of the doctrine in use) turns out to be...
There will be a global revolution, yet it's plausible that portions of the electronic web, international trade, and many of the comforts of modern life will cease to exist, or at least become intermittent... like tattered threads in a garment (of fabric) that's coming apart in too many places. Who said it? Nature bats last. Indeed.
"Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican whose sweeping white pompadour covers a totally empty head, recently ranted in feigned outrage that Democrats are trying to 'scare the daylights' out of seniors."
This is the John Cornyn who when he was Attorney General of Texas, with the duty of protecting Texas consumers from unscrupulous tactics of insurers, actually got into a fistfight with one of the attorneys working under him because the attorney realized that Cornyn was selling out the consumers to get the support of the insurers in his run for the U.S. Senate and he called Cornyn on it. This diseased creature is as pathetic as they come, well, that is if you don't count Rick Perry.
Maybe Cornyn thinks the right approach is to convince seniors that they should not be afraid to die. That way they won't be afraid when they lose their Medicare coverage.
kivals, Got more details on that fistfight?
My wife worked at the AG's office at the time and some of her colleagues were witnesses to it. The tempers of the two flared at some meeting and they went at it even though other people were present. It was never reported in the media. The main reason for the anger of the subordinate, if I remember correctly, was that Cornyn was going to accept a lowball settlement offer by Farmers in a state suit at the time, and all the other attorneys thought the offer was ridiculous, and that they had Farmers, and other companies in the suit, over a barrel and could get much better terms. And the attorneys also knew about Cornyn's cozy relationship with the insurance companies and suspected he was engaged in quid pro quo -- throwing the Texas consumers under the bus in return for insurance company support in his run for the U.S. Senate.
According to the scuttlebut regarding the actual fight, it was brief and there was no clear winner.
Umm, to those defending the Democrats. Think again.
Obamacare took $500 billion dollars from Medicare. Medicare doesn't really go to seniors. It goes to hospitals and doctors to take care of seniors.
I am a nurse, employed by a hospital. The cuts to Medicare, including $400 billion more suggested by Obama next year, are threatening my job. The hospital administration is threatening my job, that is, due to budget cuts.
It incenses me that clueless Democrats believe that the bill which Obama embraced as his own, the one that the insurance companies couldn't get through with the Republicans, so switched to the Democrats, is somehow progressive.
No. It takes money that used to go to hospitals and doctors to take care of the elderly, and gives it to the private insurance companies.
Thanks a lot, Democrats! You suck!
We have to reduce health care costs one way or another. The best way is with "death panels." That is experts saying some expensive procedures are not worth the costs to our society as a whole. Medicare costs, after inflation, are up 400% in the last 40 years. This is unsustainable. (Private health insurance costs are up 700%!) Obamacare cuts are important and mostly good. I'm sure they need plenty of fine tuning.
Obamacare is a turd, intended to enrich the useless as tits on a boar insurance companies.
The best way is to save 30% by cutting out the private insurance companies. Let's see how we do then.
Right Single payer is the only way to go.Big government ain't the problem here it is ineficient government and big business. To parafrase a sound bite,GET BIG BUSINESS OUT OF MY HEALTH CARE.
I find it interesting and alarming that we always assume that cutting costs means cutting services. The bloated prices charged to these programs by private for-profit health industries ought to be the first place we look to cut program costs. Go to Taxpayers Against Fraud www.taf.org and see who tops the list year after year of the major defrauders of taxpayers/the government, much of it through defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The "top ten" list for 2010 were ALL private for profit health industries, and the majority of those pharmaceutical companies. Many of them are repeat offenders. Tackle THEM first, and lets start assessing some jail time with that before we start cutting services to the people. Right now they just consider fines "cost of doing business".
Ok people, let's review. This same GOP promised to repeal Obamacare, voters bought into it, and now the GOP is only adding to it. Hightower may not like this but he'll have to answer the simple question of where Ryan would be without Obamacare passing last year? Ryan would be in bigger trouble had single payer passed last year and he were here trying to kill it so fast.
They need to expand medicare. This would insure people at a reasonable rate and it would put younger people into the program that would not need as much medical service as the elderly is using. What do you expect when you have a system that is full of the disabled and the elderly only? They are going to give seniors a voucher with out controlling cost, killing the whole health care bill. What about the preexisting illness , what about controlling premiums what a lot of people now are complaining about. This will led to a whole lot a seniors unable to afford health care and nursing care. They are on fixed income and health care will go up and up. Remember they want to cut medicaid too with helps with health care costs. This will burden the hospitals too. Oh that's right the Republicans want to change the law that the hospitals can reject care to people.
Whether Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Communist, Capitalist, etc., authoritarians are either sociopathic criminals, or cowards who vote democracy-killing conservatives into office.
I give this column by ex comissioner hightower a grade of C-
He has one fact, unsourced - that Paul Ryan said his plan would be like congress's own plan, when in fact ryan covers 1/3 of costs and congress's plan covers 3/4.
And even this fact isn't quite accurate - congress' plan stays constant at 75%, while the ryan plan stays constant at the cpi, rather then the medical inflation rate; so the 1/3 difference is a guess about the future,
And, this column doesn't mention that ryan does, in a backhanded wya, address this by saying his plan will lower costs
Don't get me wrong; ryan is a scumbag and his plan is part of hte gop/koch view that "full employement" means we work as butlers and maids on their estates (the immigrants work as field hands)
But this doesn't excuse lazy, unsourced half accurate journalism from mr hightower
Hightower is a humorist. Ryan's plan is shit. Why belabor the point?
Start putting back the money stolen from the trust funds.
SSA and Medicare are not your personnel piggy banks.
Obama is going to kill SSI by cutting the tax and calling it a tax holiday , the GOP will never let the holiday end by calling it a tax increase if the Dems. dare to try and return the rate. then when they get back into the WH they'll cut the tax again till SSI starves. They'll use the same death of a thousand cuts strategy they're using on Abortion . In the end SSI will still exist but it will be defunded and become essentially hollow. Since this will be done over 3 or 4 admins. nobody will take much notice. We have Obama to thank for this just as we have Billy Clinton to thank for the death of financial regulation and welfare.
Gee don't cut Slick Willy short, what about don't ask don't tell and NAFTA?
Jim Hightower continues to disappoint with his pathetic attempts to not see reality.
Yeah, it's a bitch when reality keeps gettin' in yo face!
There should be a Wheelchair "March" on Washington.
Rep. Paul Ryan has been waiting to whack the Medicare pinata for a long time and all his private medical insurance and Wall Street buddies are just aiting to steal all the candy that falls out.
Oh belive me, He will get his share. Let's just make sure that it is of unemployment compensation. Oh since he hasn't paid any that should be zip.
The day that Republicans began calling the new healthcare bill "Obamacare" their game was clear. Having worked obsessively to demonize the President himself, they would now try to extend the same mindless hostility toward his most significant contribution to public policy. With typical Luntzian cynicism they portray themselves as defenders of Medicare, while simultaneously trying to destroy it. Some things never change. We should not be fooled.