Tag Archives: Medicare

Apr 24

IF HEALTHCARE OVERHAUL GOES DOWN……

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Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush, says she doesn’t think it’s likely that the court will strike down the entire health law. But if it does, she says, “it seems like it takes everything with it, including those aspects that are only very peripherally related to the expansion of coverage.” 
CALL YOUR CONGRESSPERSONS: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/ They made the mess with lobbyists.
Health experts warn that the Medicare system is so intertwined with the Affordable Care Act that if the Supreme Court strikes the law down, “it takes everything with it.”
TO READ OR LISTEN TO MORE CLICK ON:
To contact Supreme Court click on: http://www.uscourts.gov/ContactUs/ContactUs.aspx
Aug 03

CONGRESSIONAL THEIVES: PAYBACK SS OVER $2 TRILLION,

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PLUS COMPOUND INTEREST!
OVER THE YEARS CONGRESSIONAL THIEVES AND THEIR RICH SUPPORTERS HAVE STOLEN OVER 2 TRILLION DOLLARS FROM THE SOCIAL SECURITY’S TRUST SURPLUS AND ARE NOW REDUCING TAXES, CITIZEN, COUNTY AND STATE RESOURCES AND BENEFITS TO HIDE THEIR OWN CRIMES.
BOTTOM-LINE: THEY ARE NOW STEALING FROM THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASS CITIZENS(including the elderly, sick, untrained, unemployed, etc.) to protect themselves and their rich supporters, corporations, earmarks, etc. and resisting regulations on wall street, banks, corporations, hospitals, protecting the environment, etc; while leaving the average citizens to scape for themselves. -mackie
…..Social Security currently has a $2.6 trillion surplus which has been building  up since the 1983 amendments and is intended to help absorb the retirement of  the baby boomers. This surplus is invested in US Treasury  securities that are backed by the full faith and credit of the US  government. According to the Social Security Trustees 2010 report, Social Security can pay  full benefits until 2037, at which time, if nothing were done to strengthen its  financing, Social Security would still be able to pay about 78 percent of  benefits. This quarter of a century means there is time to strengthen its  financing without cutting benefits for future beneficiaries. The American people  will insist that Congress do what is needed for the program to pay full benefits  and protect these benefits they were promised and have earned..
……….This is what the opponents don’t like. Social Security did not  create the economic problem or the budget deficit. Wall Street and other  government spending did. But the opponents of Social Security  don’t want to pay back all the money that was borrowed from Social Security,  including the interest earned. Instead, they want to cut Social Security  benefits.
Pay Back Social Security — The Government Has Borrowed  More from Social Security than any Other Entity or Foreign  Government
Another argument made by Social Security opponents to raise fear about the  national debt is how much our government has borrowed from China. They never  mention how much our government has borrowed from Social Security. In fact, the  government has borrowed more from the Social Security surplus than it has from  any other source in the world, including China. As a result, Social Security now  “owns” nearly 18 percent of the federal debt, making it the largest single  holder of US debt. The government owes almost twice as much to Social Security  as it does to China and Hong Kong.
Why aren’t the opponents worried about paying back Social Security — why  aren’t they talking about repaying this debt to the American people?
According to the U.S. Treasury Department’s “Monthly Statement of the Public  Debt of the United States” (9.30.10), the total debt was $13.562  trillion and was held as follows:
US Holders of Debt
42.1 % — US Individuals and  Institutions
17.9 % — Social Security Trust  Fund
6.0 % — US Civil Service Retirement Fund
2.1 % — US  Military Retirement Fund
Foreign Holders of Debt
11.7 % — Oil Exporting  Countries
9.5 % — China and Hong  Kong
6.3 % — Japan
1.4 % — United Kingdom
Aug 12

HEALTH CARE REFORM MAY SAVE FAMILY HOME

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After my parents passed away back in the 1990s, my siblings and I were forced to sell our family homestead in Rosenhayn to pay for two liens placed on it by Bridgeton Hospital for hospital care. My father died in 1992 at age 62, and my mother died at age 60 in 1997. Both were ineligible for Medicare.

It was not easy selling the house we all grew up in, especially with a new generation of family having recently arrived who will want to see the house we grew up in. But we had no choice.

Which is why I’m in favor of this new health care reform proposal being debated in Congress, with a public option where people such as my parents who couldn’t afford standard health insurance can buy coverage from the government at a much lower cost.

I don’t know how anyone can be against a public option. Those against it say it’s socialized medicine, when in truth you don’t have to purchase the public option if you already have and are currently satisfied with your present coverage. With the public option in the market, and judging by the laws of economics, the rates to your coverage will most likely go down because of the public option creating competition in the market.

If we had this public option when my parents were alive, our family would probably still have our home to share with our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Since we don’t, maybe this opportunity would save some other family’s home from the same fate.


George I. Anderson

Millville

For source click on:

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Aug 04

8 MYTHS ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM AND WHY WE CAN’T AFFORD TO BELIEVE THEM ANY MORE FROM AARP…

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AARP HAS A BIG DOG IN THIS HUNT BECAUSE IF THE TELL US WRONG THEY LOSE THEIR REPUTATION WITH US MATURE CITIZENS AND ALL THE COMPANIES THEY SUPPORT.  WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE?-mackie

 

8 Myths About Health Care Reform

By Karen Cheney, July & August 2009

And why we can’t afford to believe them anymore

 Americans spend more on health care every year than we do educating our children, building roads, even feeding ourselves—an estimated $2.6 trillion in 2009, or around $8,300 per person. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever. These staggering figures are at the heart of the current debate over health care reform: the need to control costs while providing coverage for all. As John Lumpkin, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Health Care Group for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, says, “There is enough evidence that it is now time to do something and to do the right thing.” The key is to focus on the facts—and to dispel, once and for all, the myths that block our progress.

Myth 1: “Health reform won’t benefit people like me, who have insurance.”
Just because you have health insurance today doesn’t mean you’ll have it tomorrow. According to the National Coalition on Healthcare, nearly 266,000 companies dropped their employees’ health care coverage from 2000 to 2005. “People with insurance have a tremendous stake, because their insurance is at risk,” says Judy Feder, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. What’s more, in recent years the average employee health insurance premium rose nearly eight times faster than income. “Everyone is paying for health increases in some way, and it’s unsustainable for everyone,” says Stephanie Cathcart, spokesperson for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). “Reform will benefit everyone as long as it addresses costs.”

“There are many ways to tackle our health care problem, but we will come up with a uniquely American solution.”

Myth 2: “The boomers will bankrupt Medicare.”
If you’re looking to blame the rise in health care costs on an aging population, you’ll have to look elsewhere. The growing ranks of the elderly are projected to account for just 0.4 percent of the future growth in health care costs, says Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change. So why are health care costs skyrocketing? Ginsburg and others point to all those fancy medical technologies we now rely on (think MRIs and CT scans), as well as our fee-for-service payment system, in which doctors are paid by how many patients they see and how many treatments they prescribe, rather than by the quality of care they provide. Some experts say this fee-for-service payment system encourages overtreatment (see “Why Does Health Care Cost So Much?” from the July-August 2008 issue of AARP The Magazine).

Myth 3: “Reforming our health care system will cost us more.”
Think of health care reform as if it’s an Energy Star appliance. Yes, it costs more to replace your old energy-guzzling refrigerator with a new one, but over time the savings can be substantial. The Commonwealth Fund, a New York City-based foundation that supports research on health care practice and policy, estimates that health care reform will cost roughly $600 billion to implement but by 2020 could save us approximately $3 trillion.

 For the rest of the myths click on:

 http://www.aarpmagazine.org/health/8_myths_about_health_care_reform.html

 

 

“Search to know the Truth
And the Truth will set You Free.”
(my aim is not to convince, but to share what I have found for your consideration. – mackie)
 

 

 

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Jul 28

RETIRING REPUBLICAN ADMITS GOP PUTTING POLITICS OVER HEATHCARE REFORM?

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NOT ONLY IS GOP QUOTING MISLEADING NUMBERS FROM A POLLING CO. THAT IS FUNDED BY UNITEDHEALTHCARE (one of the most corrupt in the insurance industry) WHICH ALSO FUNDS THE GOP,  THE GOP IS CALLING THESE #S AS CREDIBLE AND FAIR AND BALANCED.

George Voinovich is retiring from Congress next year, and I guess that means he can feel free to let a few things slip out. In this clip from CNBC, he admits what we’ve known all along – that opposition to the President is driving opposition to health care reform. Republicans know that if a Democratic President expands access to health care more than any time since Medicare, and lowers individual costs for most people, he will reap rewards. So their strategy, as revealed previously by internal memos and Jim “Waterloo” DeMint, is to obstruct reform to deny the President a “win”, thusly turning the uninsured and the poor into pawns in a political game.

Most of Voinovich’s remarks are of the fiscal scold variety, claiming that we cannot afford the cost of government (something I forget hearing from Voinovich when he voted to authorize a war in Iraq that cost three trillion dollars), but here’s the key moment at around 4:25:

QUESTIONER: …on health care, how much of this disagreement with the Administration is about the policy of health care and how to fix it, and how much of it is Republicans’ obvious and understandable desire to declaw the President politically? How much of that does fit into the equation.

VOINOVICH: I think it’s about 50/50, but I will tell you this…

He then claims that some Republicans want to work “on a bipartisan basis” on health care, but that’s pretty much the death knell right there.

Democrats are right to jump all over this and expose the GOP as obstructionists. We’ve known this for some time with the record number of filibusters, but haven’t gotten it out to the public. On a high-profile issue like health care, it should be radioactive to obstruct for political reasons and deny millions of people the right to have quality, affordable care.

 For more info click on:

 
“Search to know the Truth
And the Truth will set You Free.”
(my aim is not to convince, but to share what I have found for your consideration. – mackie)
 
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Jul 24

NOW OR NEVER?

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We are in an emergency situation where 47 mil. American families including children are without health care, 10s of millions more are being denied and canceled because of their health, and increasing numbers (500,000 losing their jobs a month without health care) are in dire situations because of no health care.  Many 1000s a month are dying because of lack of health care.
 
What would Jesus do?  In depression times crime, suicides and death rates increase.  We have been waiting on health care change since 1994 because white male anglosaxon conservatives opposed an intelligent lady who was trying to bring about health care reform.
 
The American Ship is sinking because we are not looking out for those who have no hope (AS JESUS TAUGHT US).  We must respond no matter what the cost for now so we can save as many as possible while we reform the system.  OUR GREATEST OPPOSITION ARE OUR REPRESENTATIVES WHO ARE TAKING MILLIONS FROM LOBBYISTS TO PROTECT THEIR 30% PROFITS OF INSURANCE COMPANIES (Medicare‘s overhead is 3%).
WE HAVE SPENT ALL THESE BILLIONS TO FIGHT A COUNTRY WHO WAS NOT A THREAT TO US (in the former administration we lost over 3,000 lives because the former administration was not at the switch and 10s of thousands of lives because our former president claimed he was ordained by God and was going after the man who tried to assassinate his father).
 
I COULD GO ON BUT THE IDEA THAT WE HAVE TO WAIT TO PROVIDE A BETTER HEALTH PLAN BEFORE WE REFORM IS VERY SUSPICIOUS OF THOSE POLITICIANS WHO STATE THAT.  I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT IF I HAVE A FAMILY MEMBER, FRIEND OR NEIGHBOR (“DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU”) COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, LOSS OF REPUTATION, POSSESSIONS, ETC., I AM GOING TO DO WHAT JESUS TAUGHT ME TO DO.
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