The future of America with the Tea Party in control

Your revisionist history is not accepted by most credible historians who are pretty much in agreement that the New Deal programs started helping with the Great Depression before the U.S. even entered WWII.

Lately a few rogue and extremist historians have tried to make the revisionist claim that it didn't help. They've been shot down at every turn by more credible historians with more sound evidence.

 

In 1940 Social Security and Medicare accounted for less than one percent of budget expenditures. Now they account for more than half of budget expenditures. Using any effects of the New Deal at the end of the great depression to argue current policies is beyond ridiculous.

 

The skyrocketing costs of healthcare made this necessary - we need price controls on medical expenses.

 

It was certainly a factor. I would posit that a larger contributing factor is that in the early 1940's people did not tend to live much past the age of 65 (an age beyond the typical life expectancy). When most of the population is dead before Social Security or Medicare kick in, the costs are going to be much lower than when the average person is on the dole for 10 years or more.

 

I wasn't arguing for current policies based on the successes of the New Deal, I was commenting specifically based on the Depression.

 

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Beyond ridiculous is what I'd call somebody who operates under the misconception that Medicare (est. 1965) was part of the New Deal.

 

Well, I did in fact use zero as the amount spent on medicare in my calculations. I suppose I should have used the term "after 65 government entitlement programs" instead of the New Deal. The point remains the same. Of course, the point is moot because I did not read the thread carefully enough. FB was not arguing current policy based on the effects seen at the end of the great depression. You got me though, I included Medicare as part of the New Deal, when it was actually a later liberal largess.

 

SM, I know some elderly folks very well who are dependent on Medicare/Medicaid to obtain the meds they need to lead a productive, relatively healthy life. Some of them work, despite their age and health problems. Would you prefer some other alternative? Explain what that might be. Are you prepared to spends possibly thousands of dollars a year to pay for your own parents medical needs if that need should arrive, assuming they are living? Are you prepared to have them live in your home and support them, if they have high medical expenses and can't afford to pay their own way? Got all that lined up, prepared for in advance for when that day comes, if that "largess" were to disappear?

 

Exscuse me what?

The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (also called the Medicare Modernization Act or MMA) is a federal law of the United States, enacted in 2003. It produced the largest overhaul of Medicare in the public health program's 38-year history.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2003/roll332.xml

Republicans for 207 against 19
Democrats for 9 against 195

Medicare Part D adds $8 trillion to the nation's long-term debt according to the Government Accountability Office. It's the largest entitlement expansion since 1965 and on the cusp of boomers becoming entitlement eligible. (Talk about a heavy burden on the shoulders of young people.)

During a speech at the London School of Economics, the U.S. Comptroller General said, "it may be one of the most poorly designed, inefficiently implemented, and fiscally irresponsible government programs of all time."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-gralnick/fattening-medicare_b_39685.html

In fact, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted in 2006 (Part D) alone adds some $17 trillion to the projected
Medicare shortfall — an amount greater than all of Social Security’s unfunded obligations.

http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/ba662.pdf

Oops those "conservatives" that hate socialism rammed through the largest and most costly socialism entitlement program EVER.

Talking points are great until you actually do some research.

 

I think it is unworkable to have the government attempt to maintain people beyond working age in their homes for 10 years or more. I would be in favor of having government care homes that are funded by the taxpayers, both for the elderly and for the poor (though the poor would be put to work). The government should take advantage of economies of scale to provide for a lot of people at once to bring the per unit cost down. Something along the lines of dormitory living, where there can be common kitchens and bathrooms and bedrooms can be shared by two people, or individual rooms can be provided for a price to the resident. Government health care workers could be maintained on site to care for the elderly, hopefully at lower prices than get charged at private nursing homes. It would certainly be much cheaper than the government trying to maintain people in their own homes all over the country on SS.

Raising the age at which benefits begin would be kind of the minimum that should be done if they don't want to scrap SS and Medicare altogether. When people are dying at 68, starting benefits at 65 is fine. When people are dying at 90, starting benefits at 65 is unsustainable.

I would also not be averse to my mother living with me in her old age, and in fact I fully expect that to happen. Her sister (my aunt) took care of their mother in her own home until her death and their father before that, so I have some experience with the situation. My grandmother had Parkinson's and dementia, so it was by no means an easy situation, but we got through it. Bear in mind also that without SS and Medicare, what was once taken as payroll taxes can be put toward individual retirement accounts, so that would help to defray the cost of elder care.

A couple of points here:
1. I would never consider Bush and the Republican congress of the early 2000s conservative.
2. I was not in favor of Medicare Part D (clearly, since I am not in favor of Medicare generally).
3. Medicare Part D is NOT the largest government entitlement program. SS costs more than ALL of Medicare plus all of Medicade, let alone just Medicare part D.
4. The Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency for about 2 years now, how much have they done on getting rid of Medicare part D?

 

This statement tells us all we need to know. I'm guessing you're a big fan of Mussolini and Franco.

 

Nope, not a facist, just don't see someone who set records for spending as conservative. About the only conservative thing about GWB was his judicial appointments.

 

Do you consider Reagan a conservative?

 

It's Medicaid and look back at my link Part D alone is larger than the entire unfunded liability of SS.

The recently passed healthcare reform legislation, that the GOP and all good conservatives support has rolled back the Medicare Advantage plan subsidies and reduced a large portion of Medicare cost and what was the reaction by those Conservatives? Hypocrisy as always:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a sharp switch from their historic reproach of government-backed health care, Republicans on Capitol Hill this year are embracing Medicare in their bid to kill the Democrats’ health reform plans.

Last year, when the Bush administration rolled out its annual budget proposing more than $500 billion in Medicare cuts, many Republican leaders cheered the legislation as a necessary move in the direction of fiscal responsibility.

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), then-minority whip, called the cuts “the needed first-step” to lend Medicare “a solid economic footing.” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the proposal marked “an important starting point” for reining in Medicare spending. And Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, cheered the plan for taking “a significant, critical step toward addressing the greatest threat to our nation’s future strength and prosperity — the unsustainable growth of our largest entitlement programs.”

What a difference a year can make.

As the Democrats aim to overhaul the nation’s health care system this year — a plan that would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in projected Medicare spending — the message coming from conservative leaders has been hardly congratulatory. Instead, most are warning of the disastrous effects that those cuts will have on seniors. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) charged the Democrats with using “Medicare as a piggy bank” to fund their health reform plans. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has accused those across the aisle of trying “to cannibalize” Medicare. And Boehner has said the proposal would create “fewer choices and lower health care quality for our nation’s seniors.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” the minority leader said late last month.

The sentimental flip-flop, many experts argue, is hardly accidental. Faced with sweeping Democratic proposals that include the creation of a public insurance plan and the broad expansion of Medicaid to subsidize millions of uninsured Americans, Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to kill the legislation. Their tactics have ranged from the wholly absurd — like claims that the Obama administration hopes to promote abortion and euthanasia — to the simply uncharacteristic, like the sudden embrace of the same Medicare system they’ve long tried to privatize. The scare tactics have resonated with seniors, who oppose the reforms more than any other group. But the opposition strategy also puts Republicans in the odd position of blasting away at the public plan at the same time that they’re adamantly defending the virtues of Medicare, the working definition of government-backed health care. In the eyes of many experts, the strategy is sign that GOP leaders will say anything to defeat the legislation.

Alluding to the trillions of dollars of deficit spending run up by Republican leaders this decade, Henry Aaron, health policy expert at the Brookings Institution, seemed to find the change of heart amusing. “They do not want to do anything now that would raise the deficit and they do not want to cut spending because that would deny someone something (even though there is considerable waste),” Aaron said in an email. “But they claim to be all in favor of health reform. Go figure!”

“As far as economic probity is concerned,” Aaron added, “no one has ever accused the Republican leadership of consistency.”

Julian Zelizer, political scientist at Princeton University, pointed to a similar explanation. “It’s just politics — politics and hypocrisy,” he said. “It can scare seniors against Obama’s plan.”

http://minnesotaindependent.com/42034/gop-embraces-medicare-to-kill-health-care-reform

Flip flop flip flop. So long have the GOP relied on the ignorance of their constituents and so rarely are they disapointed.

 

SS is much larger than the unfunded liability of SS. It is the second largest part of the budget, after all of national defense. So you were wrong, Medicare part D is certainly not the largest and most expensive government entitlement program, in fact it isn't even close.

Medicare Advantage is Medicare part C, which is different than Medicare part D (hence the different letters). Let me ask again: have the Democrats, with a supermajority in the Senate (until the loss in Massachusetts), a majority in the house, and the presidency managed to repeal Medicare part D?

 

Those aren't REAL conservatives, they're just the GOP Establishement!

WHere do these true conservatives dwell, some magical dimension? Ayn Rand wet dreams? You cannot have a government more chock full of right wing ideologues than the last one. Or the one before it, or the one before it.

We've had decades of wing-nut rule for various intervals post war and by the r****ded "he didn't abolish the post office!" standard - none of them are TRUE INTERNET CONSERVATIVES! Like platonic forms. Sad sad sad I am crying.

 

No and nor should they. My point is, as always, the hypocrisy of the "conservatives" who hate entitlements but ram them through. Hate government programs until the Dems try to cut back on them, then they use scare tactics on Seniors.

Don't try and make Medicare a liberal largess. When the GOP had the majority they expanded it, big time, not curbed it.

So if you hate Medicare, blame both parties equally.

 

The left created Medicare, that is not in question. Yes, the biggest spending president to date at the time expanded it, but that does not mean it is not liberal largess, it just means there were liberal Republicans. Huge entitlement programs, TARP, nation building foreign policy, which of these things did you and Sam find to fit into the traditional conservative view. Outside of judicial appointments and foreign policy (I think an interventionist foreign policy is a good thing), Bush was the worst of both worlds. He was economically liberal, the biggest spender of any president at the time, while restricting individual liberty.

 

And conservatives put him in office.

 

In 2003, Congress and President Bush enacted the "Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act," which established a prescription drug program for Medicare. That legislation expressly prohibited Medicare from negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.



Oct. 17, 2004 – The New York Times reported today that the American Medical Association has decided to join the fight to get the Bush Administration to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug manufacturers for lower prices on prescription medicine for America’s senior citizens.

When the new Medicare law was written, the government specifically prohibited Medicare from such negotiations and this has been one of the major objections to the bill be seniors.



Because of Obama's decision to develop a plan operating through the legislative process, members of Congress also played key roles. Early on, the pharmaceutical companies were told to deal directly with Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus. Baucus would be the vehicle for the deal worked out behind the scenes by the White House and PhRMA.
Central to this effort was PhRMA president, CEO and top lobbyist Billy Tauzin, a longtime Democratic member of Congress who switched party affiliations after Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. By switching parties Tauzin was able to maintain his influence and even rose to be Chairman of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce. Tauzin became the poster child of Washington's mercenary culture. He crafted a bill to provide prescription drug access to Medicare recipients, one that provided major concessions to the pharmaceutical industry. Medicare would not be able to negotiate for lower prescription drug costs and reimportation of drugs from first world countries would not be allowed. A few months after the bill passed, Tauzin announced that he was retiring from Congress and would be taking a job helming PhRMA for a salary of $2 million.



WalMart negotiates with drug companies for lower drug prices and has 4.00 prescriptions!