NewsTrust - Medicare - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

A Love Song for Paul Ryan [Cartoon]

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Zina Saunders - Apr. 09 (Cartoon) - Mitt Romney woos Paul Ryan with a rendition of Judy Garland's "You Made Me Love You" from the film "Broadway Melody." What else is a flip-flopping Republican candidate to do when he needs some right-wing credentials?

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Medicare Costs too Much and They Better Not Cut it

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Dean Baker - Mar. 19 (Opinion) - There is an old story about two men in a retirement home. The first declares, “the food in this place is poison.” His friend agrees and adds, “and the portions are so small.”

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Fact-checking in the Echo Chamber Nation

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Dec. 23 (Opinion) - At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news. "I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox." My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends. This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies. The paradox ...

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Medicare Is the Solution, Not the Problem

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Jul. 24 (Opinion) - 'Not only is Social Security on the chopping block in order to respond to Republican extortion. So is Medicare. But Medicare isn't the nation's budgetary problems. It's the solution. The real problem is the soaring costs of health care that lie beneath Medicare. They're costs all of us are bearing in the form of soaring premiums, co-payments, and deductibles. Medicare offers a means of reducing these costs - if Washington would let it.' Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

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Growing Economic Inequality the Root Cause of Economic Stagnation

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Robert Creamer - Jul. 11 (Editorial) - The bottom line is that most of the considerable economic growth of the last several decades has gone into the pockets of a tiny percent of the population. As a result, wages and consumer buying power have stagnated, and consumers don't have the money to buy the new products and services upon which economic growth depends.

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Medicare Saves Money

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Paul Krugman - Jun. 13 (Opinion) - 'And here's what you need to know: Medicare actually saves money - a lot of money - compared with relying on private insurance companies. And this in turn means that pushing people out of Medicare, in addition to depriving many Americans of needed care, would almost surely end up increasing total health care costs.' Paul Krugman, The New York Times

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How Fraudulent Is the GOP Budget Plan? It Wouldn't Even Make a Dent In the Deficit!

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Joshua Holland - Jun. 02 (Opinion) - The Republican budget plan is the purest expression of the Right's longstanding desire to dismantle the social safety net. It's not about the budget deficit—that's simply a premise -- it's the "Shock Doctrine" in action.

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What the media establishment refuses to understand

Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - May. 30 (Opinion) - It was quite a roundtable on “Meet the Press” yesterday. Viewers got to see a Republican strategist, a conservative pundit, a conservative Democrat, and an ostensibly center-left columnist who thinks that Democrats are big meanies when it comes to Medicare.

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Paul Ryan Still Doesn't Get It

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - May. 25 (Opinion) - 'Ryan calls it 'demagoguery,' accusing Hochul and her fellow Democrats of trying to 'scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected.

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The Need for Greed

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Timothy Egan - May. 18 (Opinion) - 'The bet was audacious from the beginning, and given the miserable, low-down tenor of contemporary politics, not unfathomable: Could you divide the country between greedy geezers and everyone else as a way to radically alter the social contract?' Timothy Egan, The New York Times

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Sic Seniors on GOP

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

populist.com - May. 05 (Editorial) - House Republicans voted April 15 to turn Medicare into a voucher program that would deny seniors the guaranteed benefits that have made it a lifeline for older Americans. House Budget Czar Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) plans to use the money saved by Medicare cuts to pay for further tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.

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Strengthen Medicare; Barry Rand; Meet People's Health Needs

Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

aarp.org - By Barry Rand - May. 01 (Opinion) - Medicare is more than a line item in the federal budget. It is a program that provides health security for real people — more than 47 million of them. Changing the guaranteed structure of Medicare and replacing it with a system in which individuals would buy coverage from private insurance plans, with only a diminishing portion of the premium covered by Medicare, would put the health of millions of older Americans at risk. This is not cost control. This is simply shifting the vast majority of rising costs to older Americans while reneging on Medicare's promise of secure health coverage.

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PolitiFact, “ending” Medicare and the limits of fact-checking

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

John McQuaid Blog - By John McQuaid - Apr. 27 (Opinion) - Last week, the estimable PolitiFact.com gave its harshest verdict – “Pants on Fire” – to a DCCC ad attacking the Republican plans to privatize Medicare. There are a bunch of exaggerations and questionable assertions in the ad (as in many political ads) but the nub of the issue was the assertion that “Republicans voted to end Medicare.” PolitiFact objected on these grounds: Yes, the Republican plan would be a huge change to the current program, and seniors would have to pay more for their health plans if it becomes law. Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have said they are strongly opposed to the plan. But to say the Republicans voted to end Medicare, as the ad does, is a major exaggeration. All seniors would continue to be offered coverage under the proposal, and the program’s budget would increase every year. Medicare defenders have objected on the grounds that the GOP changes to the program would render it so radically different in form from the old, and the benefits would fall so far short in various ways, that it effectively means the end of Medicare “as we know it.” PolitiFact alludes to that, saying calling it a “critical qualifier” the ad should have included. Here’s my problem. This is a semantic thicket, and adjudicating this is a hopelessly slippery distraction. PolitiFact has fallen into a trap that exposes some of the limits of political fact-checking as currently practiced.

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A Real Choice on Medicare

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - Apr. 24 (Editorial) - 'We know it is not how most people want to spend their time, but Americans need to give a close reading to the Democrats' and Republicans' plans for Medicare reform. There are stark differences that will profoundly affect all of our lives - and clear political choices to come.' The New York Times, Editorial

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Ryan’s Leap

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Charles Krauthammer - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - In 1983, the British Labour Party under the hard-left Michael Foot issued a 700-page manifesto so radical that one colleague called it “the longest suicide note in history.” House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has just released a recklessly bold, 73-page, ten-year budget plan. At 37 footnotes, it might be the most annotated suicide note in history. That depends on whether (a) President Obama counters with a deficit-reduction plan of equal seriousness, rather than just demagoguing the Ryan plan till next Election Day, (b) there are any Republicans beyond the measured, super-wonky Ryan who can explain and defend a plan of such daunting scope and complexity, and (c) Americans are serious people. My guesses: No. Not really. And I hope so (we will find out definitively in November 2012). In 1983, the British Labour Party under the hard-left Michael Foot issued a 700-page manifesto so radical that one colleague called it “the longest suicid

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Does Not Compute

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Jonathan Chait - Apr. 07 (Opinion) - The new GOP budget unveiled by Paul Ryan is a wildly cruel document. Yet pointing this out, as Democrats keep doing, seems only to flatter Ryan’s self-conception as a serious man telling hard truths. So let me instead concede Ryan’s moral premises. (Throw tens of millions of people off health care? Why not! Slash food stamps? It’ll just inspire the next Dickens!) Instead, let’s judge Ryan by his own standards. Does his plan, however cruel, actually address our fiscal realities?

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Truly Pathetic

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Josh Marshall - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - You can respect people's contrary opinions. But presumably it's wrong to abolish Medicare because it's wrong. And that Dems are the party who believes it's wrong.

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What’s the Point of Medicare Privatization?

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Think Progress - By Matt Yglesias - Dec. 17 (Opinion) - Creating multiple privately administered risk pools doesn’t offer any efficiency gains. It simply creates an adverse selection problem and ensures that the rationing decisions made necessary by the hard cap will be made by employees of for-profit firms rather than government employees.

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When Medicare “Cuts” are Medicare “Savings”

Thu, 13 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Century Foundation - By Maggie Mahar - May. 13 (Opinion) - It’s worth noting that what many call “Medicare cuts” are really “Medicare savings”—billions that could be reclaimed if we rescued patients from that revolving door.

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Should Middle Class workers and Seniors Pay America’s Debt Bill?

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

ncpssm.org - Jan. 25 (Opinion) - “Creating a commission that places a big red target on Social Security is an incredibly bad idea because Social Security is not the problem. Shifting blame onto social programs for the economic collapse caused by Wall Street excess, tax cuts during two wars and a housing bust ignores one basic fact: Social Security hasn’t contributed one dime to our nation’s bleak deficit and debt picture. In fact, the extra contributions made by American workers to build up the Social Security trust fund surplus have been used for decades to cover up our true budget picture. In classic Washington style, so-called fiscal hawks have selectively redefined our debt and deficit problem in order to fit their preconceived solution — cutting Social Security. And the political cover of a commission is just what they need to do their dirty work.

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Obama Puts Social Security on the Chopping Block

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By James Ridgeway - Jan. 20 (Opinion) - While Massachusetts voters were casting their ballots to install Republican Scott Brown in Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, President Obama was hammering out an agreement with Democratic leaders to support a commission on the deficit with the power to propose reductions to entitlement programs. This proposal represents a capitulation to conservatives in both parties, and leaves liberals surrendering not only on health care, but on the core achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society.

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And the Rest Is Just Noise

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By Jonathan Chait - Dec. 26 (Opinion) - American liberals have a habit of withdrawing into cynicism and ennui at the most inopportune moments. The 2000 presidential election, and subsequent recount, was one such moment. The most die-hard reaches of the left, deeming the Democratic Party hopelessly corrupt, rallied to Ralph Nader’s fulsome populist denunciation of Al Gore’s subservience to the corporate agenda. Among more moderate quarters, an attitude of wry detachment prevailed. (“G.O.P.-lite, Democrat-lite,” sighed Frank Rich, “For the 95 percent of the country unwilling to go for Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan, that is the choice, it always has been the choice, and it will still be the choice on Nov. 7.”) Those liberals who did see something large at stake took on an almost apologetic tone, conceding the lack of any inspired positive choice and focusing instead on the dangers of Bush.

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How a Few Private Health Insurers Are on the Way to Controlling Health Care

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - we still end up with a system that's based on private insurers that have no incentive whatsoever to control their costs or the costs of pharmaceutical companies and medical providers. If you think the federal employee benefit plan is an answer to this, think again. Its premiums increased nearly 9 percent this year. And if you think an expanded Medicare is the answer, you're smoking medical marijuana. The Senate bill allows an independent commission to hold back Medicare costs only if Medicare spending is rising faster than total health spending. So if health spending is soaring because private insurers have no incentive to control it, we're all out of luck. Medicare explodes as well.

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Senators Reach Tentative Deal to Drop Public Option

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:35:51 -0800

Washington Independent - Dec. 09 - Democratic senators say they have a tentative deal to drop a government-run insurance option from healthcare legislation. No further details were immediately available. But liberals and moderates have been discussing an alternative, including a private

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Derailing unprecedented health reform would be unprecedented

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

bestoftheleftpodcast.com - By Jay - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - Edition #309 Act 1: Kid is denied healthcare for being too skinny – The Young Turks Act 2: Max Baucus and Senate health reform – Bill Moyers Journal Act 3: Medicare Part E – Thom Hartmann Act 4: Healthcare, now what – This American Life Act 5: Dems stopping healthcare would be unprecedented – Rachel Maddow Act 6: The history of our healthcare system – This American Life Act 7: Insurance company calls sick people dogs – The Young Turks Act 8: Further reporting on anti-healthcare campaign – Rachel Maddow

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