Will They Cut Them? Help Me Understand

[Guest]

Mediscare: Biden to tell seniors GOP wants to ‘end Medicare as we know it’ | Post on Politics (http://www.postonpolitics.com/2012/03/mediscare-biden-to-tell-seniors-gop-wants-to-end-medicare-as-we-know-it/)

[Guest]

consider the source!

btk

[Guest]

Vice President Joe Biden has never had a problem with obfuscation or blatant lying.

There is no Republican candidate who is advocating the "dismantling" of Medicare. Republican candidates have talked about the need to look at entitlement programs because, as even Biden knows (maybe I'm giving him too much credit) Medicare cannot stand in it's present form indefinitely.

It's the standard Democrat playbook to scare seniors, because seniors are reliable voters. The Obama Administration is spending almost a billion dollars to refurbish mosques in the Middle East. Maybe we can use some of that money here at home. How about that Joe?

[Guest]

Vice President Joe Biden has never had a problem with obfuscation or blatant lying.

There is no Republican candidate who is advocating the "dismantling" of Medicare. Republican candidates have talked about the need to look at entitlement programs because, as even Biden knows (maybe I'm giving him too much credit) Medicare cannot stand in it's present form indefinitely.

It's the standard Democrat playbook to scare seniors, because seniors are reliable voters. The Obama Administration is spending almost a billion dollars to refurbish mosques in the Middle East. Maybe we can use some of that money here at home. How about that Joe?

Amazing how you can comment at 10:20AM about a speech that was scheduled 1 hour and 40 minutes later. By the way, nice word "obfuscation". Hope your use of it was not intended to imply it means blatant lying. A scholar of your stature surely knows that's not what it means.

[Guest]

Amazing how you can comment at 10:20AM about a speech that was scheduled 1 hour and 40 minutes later. By the way, nice word "obfuscation". Hope your use of it was not intended to imply it means blatant lying. A scholar of your stature surely knows that's not what it means.

With all due respect, MRMARK, in the link provided are excerpts from his speech and what is included in that published exerpt is just FLAT OUT NOT TRUE. If you read the proposal from Rep Ryan, you will not find anything but an attempt to do what everyone talks about but does not have the #$%%@ to do anything about...that is entitlements. We all know that this must be tackled and Ryan is just doing that. He is proposing change that might save us from total financial ruin

There is nothing included that will involve anyone utilizing medicaire at the present time but I am pretty sure that Biden will not mention that.

[Guest]

Amazing how you can comment at 10:20AM about a speech that was scheduled 1 hour and 40 minutes later. By the way, nice word "obfuscation". Hope your use of it was not intended to imply it means blatant lying. A scholar of your stature surely knows that's not what it means.

Amazing how you can take the time to just make personal comment to me instead of addressing the post at hand. I do appreciate that you acknowledge my scholarship, but it's rather odd that you should question my use of a word.

I meant exactly what the word means. I already said Biden has no problem lying. He does so with abandon. He's lying about Medicare and the Republicans blatantly. But he also obfuscates in his speeches, and if you don't know what I speak of, it leaves me nonplussed.

[Guest]

:mornincoffee: Whoa wait a minute Richie, next you will be saying the the MITT NEVER PERVARICATES ? :icon_twisted:

[Guest]

I sure wish we could get away from the political bickering on issues like this. Why don't we try to answer the original poster's question?

Sooner or later, massive changes will have to be made to entitlement programs. It's simple arithmetic. The growth in spending on these programs is unsustainable.

Can we rely on either political party to enact the necessary changes? The answer appears to be NO! If I had to bet, like Greece is experiencing now, it will be our creditors who demand that the necessary changes be made. It's no great secret what changes are necessary. They will be life-chnging for lots of people. It's just that both political parties are avoiding facing the inevitable in the interest of being elected for additional terms.

Has anyone noticed that even the most conservative spokesman, Paul Ryan, hasn't really suggested any changes to Social Security or Medicare? His proposal is comprised of tax cuts, cuts in defense spending, and deep cuts in discretionary spending, much of it cuts to spending on education and programs benefitting the poor and disadvantaged. Ryan hasn't proposed one dime in cuts to entitlement programs.

If the most fiscally conservative elected officials keep avoiding the obvious, you don't really expect more liberal elected officials like Joe Biden to make such suggestions do you? To the contrary, politicians on the left will appeal to the public that their entitlements are threatened by the other side, even though everyone knows that such entitlements simply can't be afforded for very much longer. But neither political party is willing to address the obviously needed cuts to entitlement spending--their " horizon" is the next election!

Unless or until we elect some people who both know how to do the arithmetic and are willing to put their political careers at risk by making politically unpopular decisions, I guess we can just wait for China to tell us how deeply we'll have to cut entitlements. And they will. It's only a matter of time.

[Guest]

:mornincoffee: Whoa wait a minute Richie, next you will be saying the the MITT NEVER PERVARICATES ? :icon_twisted:

Who was talking about Mitt?

[Guest]

I sure wish we could get away from the political bickering on issues like this. Why don't we try to answer the original poster's question?


I would just like you to notice VK, that I am not the one who starts these things. Over and over I become the subject of discussion when all I'm doing is commenting on the post or the issues being discussed.

I really have to take it as a sort of compliment that my posts must say all there is to say that's important on a topic and so I become the topic. What other explanation can there be? :024:

[Guest]

I sure wish we could get away from the political bickering on issues like this. Why don't we try to answer the original poster's question?

Sooner or later, massive changes will have to be made to entitlement programs. It's simple arithmetic. The growth in spending on these programs is unsustainable.

Can we rely on either political party to enact the necessary changes? The answer appears to be NO! If I had to bet, like Greece is experiencing now, it will be our creditors who demand that the necessary changes be made. It's no great secret what changes are necessary. They will be life-chnging for lots of people. It's just that both political parties are avoiding facing the inevitable in the interest of being elected for additional terms.

His proposal is comprised of tax cuts, cuts in defense spending, and deep cuts in discretionary spending, much of it on education, the poor and the disadvantaged. Not one dime in cuts to entitlement programs. If the most fiscally conservative elected officials keep avoiding the obvious, you don't really expect more liberal elected officials like Joe Biden to make such suggestions do you? Quite the contrary, politicians on the left will appeal to the public that their entitlements are threatened by the other side, even though everyone knows that such entitlements simply can't be continued for very much longer. But neither political party is willing to address the obvious needed changes in entitlements--their " horizon" is the next election!

Unless or until we elect some people who both know how to do the arithmetic and are willing to put their political careers at risk by acting on the numbers, I guess we can just wait for China to tell us how deeply we'll have to cut entitlements. And they will. It's only a matter of time.

Does Ryan's plan not call for major changes to medicaire for anyone 55 or younger ? And also to Social Security ?

I do not profess to understand all he has proposed,but I question your statement..."Has anyone noticed that even the most conservative spokesman, Paul Ryan, hasn't really suggested any changes to Social Security or Medicare?"

[Guest]

Does Ryan's plan not call for major changes to medicaire for anyone 55 or younger ? And also to Social Security ?

I do not profess to understand all he has proposed,but I question your statement..."Has anyone noticed that even the most conservative spokesman, Paul Ryan, hasn't really suggested any changes to Social Security or Medicare?"I believe you'll find that the essence of Ryan's entitlement proposals focus only on Medicare. The essence of his proposal is a shifting of the risk of increasing medical costs from the government to the individual. He would cap the amount the government would pay in "premium support" should seniors choose private insurance instead of Medicare, which the structure of his proposals would encourage them to do. His proposal does nothing to reduce medical costs or assure broadened coverage for more Americans. His proposal is designed to shift more of the insurance away from the government to private insurance companies--with heavy dependence of any spending cuts dependent on assumptions of reduced premiums resulting from a greater number of people insured. The end result could be fewer Americans being able to afford health insurance because of unaffordable premiums, threby driving them back to hospital emergency rooms for even basic care.

Would the Ryan proposals cut government spending? That's uncertain based on Government Budget Office scoring. But it's more certain that if his proposals wee adopted, we would return to fewer Americans having health insurance, being increasingly dependent on the beneficence of private insurance companies to assure affordable insurance.

[Guest]

...and, as I recall, the 'voucher' or whatever you want to call it that the government would provide as 'premium support' wouldn't exactly go very far.

It does nothing to solve one particular problem with health care costs - the fact that there are people profiting from illness who do NOT add value. The insurance companies are still private and still have to answer to their OWNERS - the SHAREHOLDERS and would be under threat of sharehgolder lawsuits if the DIDN'T squeeze every penny they could from government and subscribers!