RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events A right to Health Care

support growing for public option...It seems the more the GOP lies about it the more people start liking the idea

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.

Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade.

More generally, the report questions whether the country's network of doctors and hospitals would be able to cope with the effects of a reform package expected to add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the insured, many of them through Medicaid, the public health program for the poor.

In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, "exacerbating existing access problems" in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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Though the report does not attempt to quantify that impact, Foster writes: "It is reasonable to expect that a significant portion of the increased demand for Medicaid would not be realized."

The report offers the clearest and most authoritative assessment to date of the effect that Democratic health reform proposals would have on Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's largest public health programs. It analyzes the House bill, but the Senate is also expected to rely on hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts to finance the package that Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to take to the floor this week. Like the House, the Senate is expected to propose adding millions of people to Medicaid.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administers the two health-care programs. Foster's office acts as an independent technical adviser, serving both the administration and Congress. In that sense, it is similar to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which also has questioned the sustainability of proposed Medicare cuts.

In its most recent analysis of the House bill, the CBO noted that Medicare spending per beneficiary would have to grow at roughly half the rate it has over the past two decades to meet the measure's savings targets, a dramatic reduction that many budget and health policy experts consider unrealistic.

"This report confirms what virtually every independent expert has been saying: [House] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi's health-care bill will increase costs, not decrease them," said Rep. Dave Camp (Mich.), the senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. "This is a stark warning to every Republican, Democrat and independent worried about the financial future of this nation."

Democrats focused Saturday on the positive aspects of the report, noting that Foster concludes that overall national spending on health care would increase by a little more than 1 percent over the next decade, even though millions of additional people would gain insurance. Out-of-pocket spending would decline more than $200 billion by 2019, with the government picking up much of that. The Medicare savings, if they materialized, would extend the life of that program by five years, meaning it would not begin to require cash infusions until 2022.

"The president has made it clear that health insurance reform will protect and strengthen Medicare," said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass. "And he has also made clear that no guaranteed Medicare benefits will be cut."

Republicans argued that the report forecasts an increase in total health-care spending of more than $289 billion.

Sorry MEM, I told you it would happen.

AARP, which has given its full-throated support to Democratic health care legislation even though seniors remain largely opposed, received an $18 million grant in the economic stimulus package for a job training program that has not created any jobs, according to the Obama administration's Recovery.gov website.

The Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), according to the website, is "a work training program for unemployed mature workers who are 55+ and are at or below 125% of the poverty guidelines." So far, $6.5 million has been spent on the program, and it has not reported creating any jobs.

In February, the Politico reported that AARP was putting pressure on Republican members of Congress to support the stimulus package.

Since then, AARP has moved on to lobbying for passage of health care legislation, even though Democratic proposals have called for several hundred billion dollars in cuts to Medicare, a program that the group typically defends tooth and nail when Republicans propose cutting it. A recent Pew survey found that just 31 percent of those over 65 supported health care legislation being touted by AARP.

As it turns out, AARP is also in a position to benefit financially if the health care legislation passes, because seniors losing benefits as a result of cuts to Medicare Advantage will be forced to buy Medigap policies, which is the main source of AARP revenue.

Barry Rand, the chief executive of AARP, was a big donor to the Obama campaign and has retained a cozy relationship with the administration.

The stimulus grant to AARP was reported by WatchDog.org, a site run by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which also found that stimulus funds were funneled into another liberal interest group, the National Council of La Raza.

Critics Rip New Mammogram Guidelines: White House goes on defensive, taking aim at critics of new government findings that advise against routine mammograms for women under 50, saying the guidelines are merely a recommendation.

Get ready. Obama's going to throw his own medical advisers under the bus.

Chicago Tea Party members mock grieving family at town hall

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, November 23rd, 2009 -- 7:35 pm

Now this is low, even for bare-knuckle politics.

That's how Chicago reporter Kristen McQueary described the ugly scene which emerged during a Nov. 14 town hall with Rep. Dan Lipinski.

Facing an audience stacked with Tea Party members, Lipinski introduced a family who believe they lost a daughter and unborn grandchild because the girl did not have health insurance. Dan and Midge Hough, of Chicago, said their daughter-in-law Jenny, 24, was not receiving basic prenatal care and fell ill with double pneumonia. She eventually developed septic shock and went into respiratory failure.

"Her baby died in the womb, and Jenny died a few weeks later, leaving behind a husband and a 2-year-old daughter," noted McQueary, writing for The South Town Star.

When Midge Hough took the stage to tell Jenny's tale, the Tea Party crowd began to jeer, mocking her story and accusing her of inventing the sad affair.


"She didn't have to die," Hough said. "The cost of that was $1.5 million, or just a little more than that. You guys are going to absorb the cost of that, is what I'm saying. That's what happens. It's not just Jennifer, it's all of the people that are out there that are sick and don't have insurance."

After another round of cackles from the audience, she retorted: "You can laugh at me. That's okay. I get it. I get it. But I lost two people. I know you think that's funny."

"Catherina Wojtowicz, of Chicago's Mount Greenwood community, an organizer for a Tea Party splinter group, Chicago Tea Party Patriots, falsely claimed that the Houghs fabricated their story," South Town added. "In an e-mail, she called them operatives of President Barack Obama who 'go from event to event and (cry) the same story.'"

The reporter characterized the event as "a low mark in a very dark week."

This video was published to YouTube by user dhough1976 on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009.

RAW

Do you know what I think is even sadder? The fact that her friends and family didn't contribute to getting her prenatal care when they knew she couldn't afford it.

Not to mention the fact that a woman can already receive government-funded prenatal care if she qualifies for Medicaid.

don't confuse the issue with facts. what will the faggots do if the mainstream media is somehow discredited?

Do you know what I think is even sadder? The fact that her friends and family didn't contribute to getting her prenatal care when they knew she couldn't afford it.

Speaking fee controversy
During an interview in 1996, David Broder said that "It’s clear that some journalists now are in a market category where the amount of money that they can make on extracurricular activities raises, in my mind, exactly, and, clearly, in the public’s mind, exactly the same kind of conflict-of-interest questions that we are constantly raising with people in public life. . . ." [8] In June, 2008, however, Harper's magazine reported that David Broder had accepted free accommodations and thousands of dollars in speaking fees from various business and healthcare groups, in one instance penning an opinion column supporting positions favored by one of the groups.[9] The Washington Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, wrote that Broder's acceptance of speaking fees was an apparent violation of the paper's policy on outside speeches, as was the fact that some of the groups that paid Broder also lobby Congress.[10] Howell continued that "He (Broder) also said he had cleared his speeches with Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor, or Tom Wilkinson, an assistant managing editor, but neither remembered him mentioning them."

"I am embarrassed by these mistakes and the embarrassment it has caused the paper,'' Broder said.

Broder should have followed his own and The Post's rules. Woodward's case is somewhat different, but Downie would like to know and should know what groups Woodward is speaking to in case he wants to object. Woodward's name and The Post's are synonymous, and whatever Woodward does is associated with the paper, even if he's rarely there.

Most of all, The Post needs an unambiguous, transparent well-known policy on speaking fees and expenses. It should deal with charities and those on contract. Approvals for speeches that involve fees should be sought and given in writing by a high-ranking editor. Fees should be accepted only from educational, professional or other nonprofit groups for which lobbying and politics are not a major focus -- with no exceptions.

Deborah Howell

Check out the footnotes that are given you lazy bitches

A Milestone in the Health Care Journey
When I reached Jonathan Gruber on Thursday, he was working his way, page by laborious page, through the mammoth health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had unveiled just a few hours earlier. Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won't succeed unless it "bends the curve" in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.

"I'm sort of a known skeptic on this stuff," Gruber told me. "My summary is it's really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try. They really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything is in here....I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn't have done better than they are doing."
...

Can you assume that they were in a position to do so considering the way things are?

Can you assume that her or her husband would have been in a position to pay higher taxes for this health care bill considering the way things are?

Btw I don't think whatever health care reform that ends up getting passed will be all wonderful and perfect. Reform is needed though.

Reform for the sake of reform.

You are so retarded.