Day: October 7, 2009

Medicare: Love It Or Cut It!

We have from decades heard those who want to gut Medicare for a variety of reasons, like costs or fraud or whatever the reason—-and for decades that possibility hgas been avoided and in some cases outright defeated.  Of course as part of the raging drama in Washington that is called the health debate Medicare will once again become a target for attack…and this time Dems may be the biggest attackers.

A couple of days ago the AP ran a story on this very subject:

THE POLITICS: Democrats are proposing to reduce the ballooning costs of Medicare to keep the program solvent. They want to root out waste to find the savings, and to reduce payments to some providers. Republicans have argued that the Democrats’ plan would slash Medicare benefits. Seniors on Medicare have been some of the most vocal opponents of the Democrats’ health care overhaul proposals. President Barack Obama says America’s elderly citizens won’t lose coverage. The AARP, which represents Americans 50 and over, backs Obama and says the reforms will lower drug costs for some seniors, protect access to doctors and strengthen Medicare.

WHAT IT MEANS: The House health care proposal would reduce projected increases in Medicare payments to some health care providers by more than $500 billion over 10 years. Some of that money would be put toward avoiding cuts in payments to doctors so seniors have better access to physicians. Democrats plan to reduce payments to private providers in programs such as Medicare Advantage, which is operated by private insurance companies and bought by seniors to fill gaps in coverage. Democrats propose to also reduce Medicare’s costs by targeting fraud and waste, such as overpayments to some home health providers. Some of the savings from Medicare would be used to cover uninsured workers who pay Medicare taxes.

Just the other day on MSNBC’s “Morning Meeting” Medicare was a hot topic:

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and health care provocateur Betsy McCaughey took their health care debate to MSNBC’s “Morning Meeting” hosted by Dylan Ratigan. In a heated exchange that lasted almost 15 minutes, the two sparred over Medicare cuts, the public option, and health care spending.

After repeatedly refusing to explain how she would reduce health care spending, McCaughey finally proposed “inching up the eligibility age [for Medicare] one month a year until 2043 when the eligibility age reaches 70.” That could “put Medicare on a firm footing without cutting care for Medicare recipients.”

“That was a solid answer to your question,” Weiner exclaimed facetiously. “Take away 100% of Medicare for people 65 to 70.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, which McCaughey credited with the idea, eliminating “younger beneficiaries” from the Medicare program would do little to control costs. “Outlays for Medicare would [still] rise to 7.7 percent of GDP by 2050,” the CBO concluded.

Weiner pounced on McCaughey’s solution, which could cut as many as 11.3 million seniors from Medicare. “You want to gut Medicare,” Weiner told McCaughey. “You just said on this show you wanted to cut Medicare for everyone 65 to 70, isn’t that right?”

(I would like to thank thinkprogress.org for the transcript….I watched the exchange on the tube but could not write fast enough to keep up….Dylan Ratigan should be commended for trying to get a straight answer on his questions.)

The whole debate was fascinating and as usual the righty could not come up with a plan to cut cost beyond screwing the seniors.

May I suggest that ALL seniors need to keep a close eye on the comings and goings of the people on the Right, eventually they will sell this whole Medicare cut thing to someone who will sign the crap into law.

Af-Pak Report

Lots of bitching in the news…will we or won’t we send more troops to Afghanistan?  Yesterday Obama said that “staying in Afghanistan is the only option.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that walking away isn’t a viable option to deal with a war that is about to enter its ninth year.

“I don’t think we have the option to leave. That’s quite clear,” Gibbs said.

Okay we have now heard all the hype….but there is a couple of stories that get very little play in a media that does not want the whole story of Afghanistan to be reported.

In an article written by Joseph Ditz:

Former US Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who was fired from his role as second ranking official at the UN Mission to Afghanistan last week, says he was ordered by mission chief Kai Eide to cover up the extent of the voter fraud by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Among the data was evidence that almost one in three votes for Karzai was actually fraudulent. Though ample evidence of widespread fraud has since come to light, the UN mission, which was charged by the Security Council to ensure the fairness of the elections, has been reluctant to press for more than cursory recounts and some from the mission have indicated a preference to not have a run-off between Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, a virtual certainty if the fraudulent votes were discounted.

Undaunted by the growing evidence against him, and likely bolstered by reports that the Obama Administration has decided he will remain in power regardless of what the investigations determine, Karzai attacked the continuation of the investigations, saying that the delay in declaring him winner harmed the nation.

And he went on to say about Pakistan:

According to top generals, of the $6.6 billion in American military aid to the nation between 2002 and 2008, only about $500 million of it actually ended up in the hands of the military.Exactly where the rest of that money went is unclear, but officials say much of it went to then-President Pervez Musharraf’s various subsidy programs to try to bolster his sagging domestic image.

Even for the money that did get to Pakistan’s military, much of it was spent on equipment to fight India as opposed to fighting the assorted insurgencies the US was hoping to target. As one Pentagon spokesman put it “we don’t have a mechanism for tracking the money after we have given it to them.”

The lack of accountability is bound to raise concerns, particularly with the Senate having approved a bill to triple non-military aid to Pakistan late last month. The same bill also authorized military aid to whatever level necessary to defeat al-Qaeda: which could potentially be an enormous black hole from which US aid pours, never to be seen again.

Just a couple of stories that were not played here in the US, if it was it wasn’t played to a wide audience.  Americans need to know there is more to the Af-Pak situation than is being reported.

There is more going on than the debate in Washington over what to do…there is more that needs attention than just the begging of generals….there is more abuse of the taxpayers and their money than some petty name calling with political parties……if a decision is truly going to be made weighing all the facts then maybe we should hear more of the cover-ups than we get now.

How About A New Reality Show?

We have Kate +8, we have Survivor, we have Dancing with the morons, we have ……….you pick it we have it.  And the thing is that they have millions upon millions watching the crap……since Americans have the attention span of a horny titmouse, why not another?

Have I peeked your interest?  Good……why not, since Americans cannot live without the drama of the Reality TV, put a political one on air?  One day it will be the major issues in the House and then the Senate.  We would eliminate all the BS lawyer speak and put it in simple terms that even a hillbilly in Mississippi can understand then at the end of the episode two phone numbers would be displayed, one for pass and one for reject, whatever the issue is.

This would give all the drama queens in Congress a chance to perform for the camera and we, the people, would vote on the issue.  All the yo-yos in Congress are playing to the media anyway and this would just give them a better venue.

Not only would it be entertaining but the people, the viewers, would actually learn something about the major issues and not depend on idiots like Beck, Limbaugh, etc.  We could finally have a semi-informed public, something the Founding Fathers said was necessary for the democracy to work.

Since we cannot seem to educate the people while they attend school, I was hoping to find another way of helping them learn…..I know yet another pipe dream…..oh well……

Could It Get Any Worse?

Markets are a yo-yo……foreclosures are rising quicker than the dead in a zombie movie….jobs are flying out of the economy….and manufacturing is at a stand still….so….could things get worse?

The quick answer is ….you bet your ass it can!

Remember all the urgency of the TARP, TALF and ARRA?  If we did not do something we would be in a sad place in the economy…….would the government, the Treasury to be exact, ever lie to the people to get their way or their money, as it were?

Want another quick answer?  Oh, you betcha ass they would!

Now I know someone somewhere, most likely in “Stumpville, Arkansas will dispute that….but I hate to be a buzz kill, but the WSJ is reporting …they did just that….

The US Treasury misled the public over the health of struggling Wall Street banks receiving emergency funds at the height of the financial crisis, creating unrealistic expectations and undermining popular trust in bailout efforts, according to an official audit.

An inspector general appointed to oversee the US government’s banking bailout has singled out president Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, for painting an excessively rosy picture of the condition of institutions such as Bank of America, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch when the government pumped $125bn (£70bn) into America’s ten top banks in September last year.

At the time, Paulson described the banks as “healthy institutions” and said that an injection of government cash would kick-start lending in the economy. But officials in both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve had private concerns that some of them were teetering close to a financial collapse.

“The Treasury may have created unrealistic expectations about the institutions’ condition and their ability to increase lending,” says a report today by the inspector general, Neil Barofsky, who adds that the Treasury and the bail-out program “lost credibility when lending at those institutions did not in fact increase”.

He continues: “Accuracy and transparency will enhance the credibility of government programs like TARP [the troubled asset repurchase plan] and restore taxpayer confidence in the policy makers who manage them; inaccurate statements, on the other hand, could have unintended long-term consequences that could damage the trust that the American people have in their government.”

The Federal Reserve’s chairman, Ben Bernanke, and the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair, are criticised for similarly optimistic remarks in the findings, which will add to a vigorous debate about the handling of the credit crunch in the final months of Bush administration.

Paulson and Bernanke opted to pump funds into all ten of the country’s top banks to avoid creating “haves” and “have nots” that would highlight those considered to be in a more perilous state. In doing so, they tried to talk up the condition of every big institution.

Even though a couple of the big banks have repaid, at least some, of the money….they are still NOT stable and the lies of the past could very well come back to bite them in the ass.

I really hate to pee on the parade….but all the “good” news, economic good news, is made up…nothing is making Main Street feel optimistic about the chances of the economy recovering.

The final word is that the banks have done NOTHING to change the way they do business….so the conditions that caused the crash, as it were, are still in place and surviving well.

YES…things could still get worse……….