John McCain and the Republican senators want the proposed $400 billion in cuts, which would be mostly to Medicare, restored in the healthcare reform bill. In this respect, they are absolutely right - not that they really believe what they’re saying, of course.
The Republicans are interested in one thing, and one thing only, and that is scuttling any initiative brought forth by President Obama. Their eyes are not on solving the nation’s problems but rather on regaining the White House in 2012. But that has become patently obvious.
In the case of this crazy-quilt tableau called healthcare reform, many members of the GOP have previously voted for even steeper cuts to Medicare. Past leaders such as Gingrich and Bob Dole came out in absolute opposition to the program. And, McCain’s staff was talking of cutting Medicare during the campaign.
However, a recent comment by Senator McCain may be worth repeating. Even though, like most utterances in Washington, it was just part of the usual smoke and mirrors , it does just happen to hit the nail on the head.
What he said was this: “How many times have you heard from citizens in your state saying ‘I paid into this trust fund. I paid for Medicare all my life. Now it’s going to be cut. How is that fair? How is that fair to my generation, the greatest generation?'”
Aside from the questionable accuracy of that “greatest generation” comment, the truth that McCain was deceitfully uttering was that, if the proposed cuts survive, it will definitely hurt. And, it will particularly hurt the approximately 25% of all people on Medicare who belong to Medicare Advantage programs. Among other things, these particular senior citizens will lose essential services with respect to vision and dental, just when they may need them the most, and their drug costs will rise.
Statistics show that those on Medicare Advantage programs tend to be the seniors with lower incomes. Thus, in this jungle-gym piece of legislation, poor seniors would essentially be required to underwrite the premiums for younger people with greater earnings potential, but who don’t have insurance.
The insanity even gets a bit more intense. Every mention of this issue by our obedient and enslaved mainstream media repeats the mantra, over and over, that “the independent group, AARP, the nation’s leading advocate for seniors” praises the bill.
HELLO….AARP is not an advocate for seniors. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is a huge insurer and a huge pusher of prescription drugs. It is not seeking a solution to the problem. It is part of the problem!
Are we supposed to be so stupid that we can’t see that the AARP really loves the bill because it will eliminate its competition? In the long run, do we not know that this will surely add significantly to the healthcare costs to be borne by every senior citizen, not to mention the government itself? And, with the post-war baby boomers beginning to hit the age of 65 in about one year, this will impact on a rapidly growing segment of the population.
Perhaps the most ludicrous statement to come out of the GOP ranks was made by the turncoat who actually joined with the Democrats, Senator Olympia J. Snow (R-Maine). She said, and I quote: “There are going to be a lot of rewards for seniors in this and no reductions in their benefits.”
A $400 billion cut and no reduction in benefits? Houdini, himself, couldn’t accomplish that. Her inane comment will likely blow away in the Washington wind, just like Obama’s vacant promise, some six months ago. He said, then, that every senior citizen on Medicare would be given a check for $500 to make up for the reduction in benefits - a reduction that we are now told will not materialize.
Not surprisingly, as the past week came to a close, an amendment sponsored by McCain to restore the $400 billion in cuts was defeated by the Democrats.
The truth hasn’t escaped some groups, however. The second largest state medical association in the country, the California Medical Association, representing 35,000 physicians, is opposing the healthcare reform bill saying it will restrict access to care for elderly and low income patients. A spokesman for the group said that, under the Senate bill, Medicare reimbursements would decrease by 40% in coming years. Other similar associations in Florida, Georgia and Texas have also joined the opposition.
In the big picture, here, some might be confused that what we are seeing in Washington recently is a Democratic party that has not only failed to represent the interests of those it has historically gone to bat for, but one that has, also uncharacteristically, tripled our involvement in a foreign war.
The answer, of course, is that money - scads of money - has become the great equalizer. Our system of campaign finance, which actually boils down to money for votes, is rapidly turning our political machinery into a one-party system, with politicians on both sides of the aisle finding themselves on the same payrolls.
That is why healthcare in this country will inevitably continue to be the costliest in the world and why our average longevity, which currently compares unfavorably with other industrialized nations, may well be on the verge of getting even worse. And, more significantly, that is why this nation is broke, and yet continues to spend money like a drunken sailor.
And for all the John Q. Publics out there along Main Street, the Washington money machine is exactly why this Great Recession, with all its wrenching consequences, is about to enter its third year, with no light yet to be seen at the end of the tunnel.
Dave McGill, News Correspondent
Dave’s column, “The Contrarian,” generally published every Friday, to Gather Essential News and other groups will sometimes present a contrary view to various aspects of the news, or an alternate take on the conventional wisdom of the day. It will also often appear on other days of the week
Dave has been a senior officer of an eastern insurance company, involved in economic projections and investment strategy, president of a Midwestern mortgage banking company, and a financial consultant in Southern California, serving clients in the field of commercial real estate development.
You can find all of Dave’s “the contrarian” columns at: http://gather.com/thecontrarian. Keep up with Dave’s other postings and Gather activity by joining his Gather network at: http://atadaskew.gather.com. You’ll find Dave and other News correspondents, plus celebrity content and plenty of news experts at: news.gather.com.
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Comments: 35
What does AARP do anyway, besides try and sell me insurance to the point of driving me crazy? I agree they have missed the boat on this one, and other monetary motives are at hand.
Not only is AARP a wolf in sheep's clothing - Obama is too. HEY OBAMA - STOP SPENDING OUR MONEY AND LEAVE OUR PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS ALONE!
Face it, the GOP is reading the tea leaves more closely on this issue than the Dems. By every measure usable to tap into public opinion, this ObamaCare is deeply unpopular. Even disregarding both sides lies and shady presentations, many Americans can do math and have some basic understanding of economics. This mess will do little or nothing promised but at a huge cost and an increase in government control of the economy.
If this bill was so great and the GOP that wrong, it would have flown through. It didn't and the answer why is obvious, it's not addressing the problems and at the same time its resulting effects are being ignored by its supporters. That line its not perfect but once passed can be fixed highlights that insanity, look at our record of entitlement "improvements" the last 40 years.
Of course, big money does not stop with health care reform. It applies to all the other significant legislation before Congress. I hope you can also see that.
Given these truths, can you now recognize that it is the nature of our money which makes it possible for the wealthy to control so much of our lives? Can you now consider investigating whether a change in the nature of our money is possible with a hope of making such unpleasant things as millions of people suffering and dieing from a broken health care system?
Or are you going to stop at complaining about the evils of money and refuse to even consider what might be done to fix the problem.
www.nopom.info has solutions and explanations if it is worth your time to you to seek solutions and understanding.
THere are other things much more important than this suicidal bill that are needed done, and Pelosi is not paying any attention to them. Obama is only going to do what he is told to by Pelosi, so he is of no real count here.
I knew that he had some health issues, but this is a surprise. I'm left wondering what the heck happened.
Off the comment threads we were friends who had been communicating regularly for years. So, for you, jJack....here's one last.........."ROFL"......
I'm sure he appreciates that in his after life.
The people on Main Street need to agree what choices they want for their people, then suspend the suspension in anti-trust that was allowed to go through to protect too-big-to-fail, of all kinds. The too-bigs may be headed for failure anyway.
Bust up the too-bigs, and use the parts in new operations that are small enough to be accountable to real people.
If an admin supervises 10 people, nobody is going to want to let him have $1,000,000 per year, plus bonus stuff.
I want my primary care to be funky with tea and volunteers and recliners while I get my acupuncture. This works for me. It's in my neighborhood.
I don't begrudge the people who want to go to the big concrete parking lots, with the marble reception areas. I go there too if I fall on my head and get taken there knocked out.
I've used all kinds of consultation, including the low-cost clinic.
To get the corruption out, we have to have diverse choices that are small enough that patrons will notice the stink if it's corrupt.
We need them to specialize at what they are good at, and refer people out when they know others do a particular thing better.
We are also in dire need of re-enacting freedom of speech, which is sort of happening anyway as people turn away from the media wired in to what is huge. The MM is still stuck in transmit-only mode, in an on-line search world.
To come up with what we want, in the grassroots, we have to be disciplined about not calling each other names.
Wince, make a face, whatever, but skip over the he-hit-me-first stuff. It leads down a blind alley with corruption triumphing at the end, as they look on while the combatants beat on each other.
I'm not sure how we are going to do this, but my experience with AARP is that it's a great deal like writing to a congressperson. Communication comes out from them, but they are stuck on transmit-only. This is one of my definitions of too big.
The federal government is making itself irrelevant. We are already getting different experiments in different states.
In addition, we have hopeful guys wanting to set up ways to endow things, as the Shriners have in some cities, for children, although that model also has issues. As a social worker, I saw some issues on that.
Smaller operations often start up, during challenging times. Imagine if the receptionist gave you tea and knew your name, even if eventually you were going to have to be trundled off to the concrete place, for cutting.
I often think of that TV show, Northern Exposure, where the native healer was underpaid, while the young doc thought he'd been sent to Siberia for not enough money.
Somehow we have got to get accountability (brain) and care (heart) on the same page regarding health and care.
They will blabber for months or years spewing out high minded ideals to each side that has nothing to do with what is going on under the table, or behind closed doors.
America has become a facade behind which criminals operate paying off just the mininum number of people they think they have to to keep their evil franchise operating, and hiding or ridiculing anything else that is generated by real human beings.
The artery though which the American people get sustenance from each other has been co-opted and usurped by people with all the money and shut down to a trickle, while the pressures on people have been ratched up year after year, and the people themselves are blamed for it and told they deserve it.
I wonder what an America like we have now would look like in full-bloom ... but we already went through the 60's in reaction to that vision of empire and police state. Apparently citizens just did not see it though to completion and chop the had off the nasty beast. Now that nasty beast has so much money it can sprout multiple new heads every time one that the people recognize is even attacked, let along cut off.
I'm afraid the only thing that will kill this beast is its own unsustainability, but that will take decades, but that time all of us who have had to live through this facist bullshit will long since be dead and villanized and impotent idiots who did nothing to save ourselves or the world.
And, Lisa Bouzan....you sparkle...I like the new look...
That question nails the signature problem in our political system. The answer, of course, is the disgusting amounts of money flooding Washington.
The true winners in the health reform bill are the insurance companies, who are about to be flooded with new, young, largely healthy customers. The villains, it seems, are rewarded in our topsy-turvy system.
The Democrats had better beware, however. They are trading the money they are raking in for the support they are losing. Rasmussen's latest poll reveals a 5% drop in the number of Americans who call themselves Democrats while the slightly lagging Republicans scored a 1.2% increase. And like many presidents before him, Obama's approval rating has fallen below 50% as his first year wanes...
* Obama and his Democrat supporters have touted the AARP endorsement of Obamacare as they have lied through their teeth about the benefits of the plan.
* The GOP can't block anything if the Democrats hang together. But, thinking Democrat Senators and Representatives know that Obamacare is a threat to their viability at their next election, and are a growing block of dissent.
* Obama's insistence on the inclusion of such hot-button issues as taxpayer paid abortions and cuts to Medicare (so Obama care "doesn't add to the deficit") are forcing more and more Democrat members of Congress into the opposition.
Throw all the rocks that you want at the Republicans, but in the final analysis, the Democrats will own the outcome on Obamacare, and will pay the price for disregarding the wishes of the American people.
When you sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
They have been sleeping with the dogs so long they all have mange.