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mmonk

(52,589 posts)
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 10:14 AM Jan 2012

"Medicare as we have known it is not part of our future."

What are your thoughts as many of us head into more vulnerable times for the aged in this corporate dictatorship? Will you make it? Medical expenses for me and my family are already a burden being as I'm not yet 65 and too old for a reasonable cost insurance option. Knowing it will continue to be a burden the rest of my life sucks big time to me. Especially since so many before me enjoyed a system that worked well for many years. Well here is the article:

Baby boomers take note: Medicare as your parents have known it is headed for big changes, no matter who wins the White House in 2012. You may not like it, but you might have to accept it.Dial down the partisan rhetoric, and surprising similarities emerge from competing policy prescriptions by President Barack Obama and leading Republicans such as Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.Limit the overall growth of Medicare spending? It's in both approaches.

Squeeze more money from upper-income retirees and some in the middle class? Ditto.Raise the eligibility age? That, too, if the deal is right.



Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/01/02/1747771/medicare-changes-up-for-grabs.html#storylink=cpy

16 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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4dsc

(5,787 posts)
1. Take the profit motive out of Medicare
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 10:17 AM
Jan 2012

lets face it, insurance companies are ruining Medicare for everyone. We could reduce the cost of medicine overall and save Medicare for everyone who will need it in the future.

mmonk

(52,589 posts)
2. Too bad we are moving everything towards privatization.
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 10:24 AM
Jan 2012

It's true that Democrats prefer a government option. But it's quite sad where we have moved to. There is no visible advantage to being an American. I wish I wasn't anymore.

CTyankee

(63,771 posts)
3. there is a fundamental flaw in the American character.
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 10:36 AM
Jan 2012

Not us liberals, but so many others here. They vote against their own best interests. They don't even see the irony. I've given up on them. But they are taking us with them on the downhill slide. That makes me mad. But I guess you can't really be angry with people who are sick in their heads when it comes to politics...

mmonk

(52,589 posts)
4. Well I can be angry when they blame imaginary things
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 10:39 AM
Jan 2012

due to their gullibility and I can be mad at the liars leading them.

CTyankee

(63,771 posts)
7. One thing that would be helpful for liberals to understand is that most Americans
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 11:00 AM
Jan 2012

don't hate the rich. They want to BE the rich. We need to fundamentally understand that and fashion our strategy around it...

MisterP

(23,730 posts)
16. then again, like 80% are for taxing the rich more
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 05:39 PM
Jan 2012

of course, that's faced with two things:
1.) disconnects between people's various beliefs, desires, interests, poll responses, politics
2.) nobody to vote for the 99%, except in a few places

PA Democrat

(13,225 posts)
10. I see many of those who vote against their own self-interests as rabidly
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 11:17 AM
Jan 2012

fearful and angry at the thought that someone else might get more than they do themselves.

It's a sick form of jealosy fed by the fictional "welfare queens" and "lazy" unemployed people portrayed by the right wing. They legitimize greed and indifference to the suffering of others by painting almost everyone else receiving any form of government benefits as unworthy or worse, a cheat.

CTyankee

(63,771 posts)
11. and yet I know many of them that receive those benefits for either themselves or their
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 11:36 AM
Jan 2012

families. That doesn't seem to faze them. They take all kinds of state and federal benefits, as do their family members, and they don't get the irony. Sometimes I want to scream it in their faces! I just hate their smug hatred of the poor and the nonwhite, all the while taking food stamps, SSDI for their kids because Dad was disabled, Medicare for their moms, our state's health insurance program for their kids.

Let's face it: the Right has done a great job of turning members of the 99% against each other, dividing along the lines of ethnic, racial, religious and union/nonunion status. I think we've once again lost the battle to win hearts and minds in this country, when I see what is going on in Iowa. And will see in other primary states when the Hate Machine starts up there.

PA Democrat

(13,225 posts)
12. Yeah, the joke about the CEO, the tea party guy and the public union employee
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 11:55 AM
Jan 2012

applies to much more than public employee union benefits. I see it every day with people who SHOULD know better.

“A public union employee, a Tea Party guy, and a bank CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the Tea Partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy; he wants your cookie.”

stillwaiting

(3,795 posts)
5. Not only is there no visible advantage (at least in my opinion)...
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 10:39 AM
Jan 2012

... there is a visible disadvantage. ** This is in comparing the U.S. to other first world countries, but I'm pretty sure I'd also enjoy my day to day life more living in places like Costa Rica, Belize, Panama, and Argentina more than I do living in the U.S. these days. I truly feel like I'm living in the belly of the beast. **

Things like access to health care, food, housing, retirement security, and education are much less readily available to a much larger percentage in this country than in other industrialized countries with stronger safety nets.

I hope and pray that I am out of this country before I am 50 years old. I do not want to spend my retirement years in this country fearing that any wealth I've been able to wring out of this country will be scooped right back up by the elite due to needing health care needs as I grow older.

Day to day life living in this country has simply become unacceptable to me for a variety of reasons.

Soon to be ex-pat here. I hope.

CrispyQ

(36,231 posts)
8. If I were 20 years younger, I'd be looking to move out of this country.
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 11:06 AM
Jan 2012

Our culture is a cesspool & most people are so immersed in it they don't see what a perversion it is & how it has adversely affected our sense of community. They want to claim the US is a Christian nation, while they pursue their true god, Money, & at the same time deny aid to those less fortunate.

Republicans have been masters at selling Americans a pile of bullshit, from trickle down economics to compassionate conservatism to everything liberal is evil.

girl gone mad

(20,634 posts)
9. I talk about this with people in their teens and twenties..
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 11:14 AM
Jan 2012

and most agree that they would like to start a life elsewhere.

One thing which I found disturbing from reading the Wikileaks cables was just how far and how deep the American tentacles extend. Our government has way too much influence across the globe. This doesn't portend well for the nations which have so far managed to avoid the neoliberal nightmare.

CTyankee

(63,771 posts)
13. I'm so glad my grandson is learning another language and can use it
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 12:03 PM
Jan 2012

to hopefully go abroad and perhaps marry a local gal and be able to live there. He wouldn't be "stuck" in this country and his horizons will be broadened. It's my fondest hope...

 

taught_me_patience

(5,477 posts)
14. Medicare will need big reforms to stay solvent
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 01:39 PM
Jan 2012

There will probably have to be a combination of tax increases, eligibility age raises, and rationing of care.

mmonk

(52,589 posts)
15. Medicare needs to be funded, that is all.
Mon Jan 2, 2012, 04:44 PM
Jan 2012

The rest is lies from people who have the wrong prioritites and beliefs in life.

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