Why Romney Will Lose
August 19, 2012
From Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge quoting the AP:
[T]he number of Americans with incomes at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty level – the income limit for qualifying for legal aid – is expected to reach an all-time high of 66 million this year. A family of four earning 125 percent of the federal poverty level makes about $28,800 a year, government figures show.
From Tyler:
As usual, if anyone expects these 66 million Americans (over 20% of the US population) to vote for someone who dares to even think about taking away any of the entitlements said tens of millions of people are used to, then by all means buy Las Vegas real estate.
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Unmentioned is the alternative to reasonable entitlements — entitlement collapse.
The current recession has weakened our nation’s ability to spend on entitlements and brought closer a decades long discussion concerning the unsustainability of our entitlements state. That, and the Ryan selection which brought to the forefront questions regarding Obama Care’s usurpation of Medicare funding have turned the attention of many in the parasite class toward the weakening health of the host.
Obama’s lack of a plan is a clear embrace of an un-denied eventuality — unsustainability, and evidence of his no entitlements solution.
Too many recognize that this is not in their parasitic interests.
I am sure I heard,on the radio in my car, President Obama saying that the $716 billion in cuts are not reductions in benefits but are reductions in reimbursements. So how much of a pay cut will medical providers accept without quitting? I imagine that most medical providers will deliver their best or just quit, with no in-between reductions in quality. So how does it work to get (promises of ) the same benefits as always but with no one to provide those benefits?
Here is a article from one perspective. It names names and states dollar amounts.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/08/20/how-obamacares-716-billion-in-cuts-will-drive-doctors-out-of-medicare/
“No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H. L. Mencken
If one buys into the comment of H. L. Mencken, then Tyler Durden may be correct.
Funny how all these people making dire prognostications about entitlements don’t ever mention the protectionism that keeps U.S. physicians at significantly higher compensation levels than those of their foreign counterparts, even adjusted for currency exchange rates, costs of living, etc.
Funny how they don’t mention the $270 billion a year in government-granted patent monopoly income that private pharma enjoys every year.
Funny, too, how everyone says we can’t afford entitlements when top marginal tax rates are at their lowest level since the Korean War.
Collapse is not inevitable. Options exist that would render the current system sustainable for the entire 75-year planning horizon that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security work with while reducing benefits minimally, if at all. The fact that those options are politically unpopular among the 0.01% doesn’t mean we can’t and shouldn’t talk about them.
What Lex said.
Tell it!
Obama and Ryan both propose the same reduction in the GROWTH of medicare payouts. One might indeed wonder why providers would keep providing services if the growth in their revenue from Medicare is not as fast as it is today.
The bulk of the reductions is in payments to hospitals who see the reduction in growth in medicare income being offset by no longer having to eat the costs of treating the uninsured in emergency rooms because of Obamacare.
How Ryan’s equal reduction of growth in medicare payments to providers is to be made palatable to hospitals without the offsetting reduction in emergency room costs is not clear. It looks like Ryan is just prepared to hang hospitals out to dry.
Here’s the more urgent question. How is medicare going to remain solvent for those 55 and over if those under 55 stop contributing to it?
What Roch said……..
If the Obama’s “Medicade proposal” is Obamacare, Obamacare is not a proposal.
Not what Roch said
And if the Obama’s medicade proposal is not Obamacare, then…?
Medicare, of course.
“if the Obama’s medicade proposal is not Obamacare, then…?”
Then he has no proposal.
Check your premise, the part that comes after if and upon which your conclusion rests. Obama’s medicare plans are not Obamacare. So now what?
The point is that Obama has no proposal.
Pretending like children that he has one seems awfully silly to me, thus my thinking that you guys feel Obamacare is a kind of medicade plan.
But Obamacare is law — not a proposal.
So we’re back to this sillyness from Roch:
You got me there, Bucko. Obama will trim the growth in Medicare spending because of legislation he signed. Ryan has a proposal to do the same. Thanks for clarifying that.
Too bad it has resulted in all of us paying more since its signing.
Proven wrong before you were started.
Now what are you talking about? What have you paid more for as a result of The Affordable Care Act?