Forget giving away the store — Obama is handing the store to Republicans and inviting them to burn it down.
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: income inequality, Medicare, Psychopaths in charge, Republican politics, Surreality, Team Obama, The Great Recession, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics, We are so F'd | Tags: Barack Obama, crashing the economy, draconian spending cuts, economy, Great Depression, Health care, Medicaid, medicare, Republicans 22 Comments
Please read this shocking story at The New York Times — there’s no way for me to excerpt all the important parts.
Obama administration officials are offering to cut tens of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid in negotiations to reduce the federal budget deficit, but the depth of the cuts depends on whether Republicans are willing to accept any increases in tax revenues.
Administration officials and Republican negotiators say the money can be taken from health care providers like hospitals and nursing homes without directly imposing new costs on needy beneficiaries or radically restructuring either program.
What this really means is that more doctors and hospitals will refuse to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients, and nursing homes will turn away frail elderly patients who can’t pay out of pocket–because Medicaid will no longer be able to assist those who are poor or have already spent their life savings on health care.
“Congress smells blood,” said William L. Minnix Jr., the chief lobbyist for nonprofit nursing homes.
Mr. Minnix, the president of a trade group known as LeadingAge, is urging nursing homes to “bombard your senators with the message that Medicaid cannot be cut by $100 billion” over 10 years, as President Obama and many Republican lawmakers have suggested.
A coalition of hospital lobbyists, worried about the direction of the budget talks, has begun a national advertising campaign to block further cuts in the two health care programs, which account for about 55 percent of hospital revenues. The hospitals have made a commitment to spend up to $1 million a week through August on television, print and online advertising.
Now check this out: Chuck Schumer, supposedly a Democrat, is quoted in the article as saying, “We are very willing to entertain savings in Medicare. Medicare gives very good health care very inefficiently.”
Really? Medicare has almost no overhead, and it pays way below the going rate for health care services. That’s why so few private doctors accept Medicare patients right now.
Now think about what Dakinikat has told us about the dangers of cutting federal spending and read this:
Medicare and Medicaid insure more than 100 million people, account for 23 percent of all federal spending and are likely to be an important part of any budget deal. Military spending, which accounts for about 20 percent of federal expenditures, is likely to be included as well.
President Obama and his Republican pals are on a mission to bring down the American economy and bring on a repeat of the Great Depression. Can anything or anyone stop them? We need riots in the streets, but can elderly people do it alone?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
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quixote
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Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I just continue to be amazed at how our policy makers appear to want to tank the US economy. They’ve been doing it since Dubya got in. It’s a systemic problem. I hope the health industry lobbies against all this but something tells me that the insurance industry is the stronger lobby here. They won’t be happy until all people are paying exorbitant fees for worthless insurance or dead.
I hope not. I really don’t want to see dead bodies being picked up of the streets and carted away like during the Black Plague.
Or people starving and dying in the homes and not being found for long periods of time.
I agree, the hospital can scream till they are blue in the face…………it’s the insurance industry that has the power!
The hospitals are the ones who made the deal with Obama to keep a public option out of the health care bill. Hospitals will just drop Medicare and Medicaid patients. The nursing home industry and AARP will fight this, hospitals don’t care.
Repub policy makers want to burn it down, Dem policy makers want to do whatever to keep the banksters happy and profitable;
But the Dems are also doing yeoman’s work to destroy the Democratic Party as a brand by demolishing its principles, undercutting its great achievements, and selling out its base.
Very short term thinking, all around.
Missing: 163 Million Women
Ever wonder what happens when societies favor boys over girls?
This is on sex selection abortion in Asia and is fascinating.
oops meant to put these last two on the morning thread…. sorry BB!!!
No problemo
It’s like that in China too.
15-Year-Old Girl Faces Life in Prison for a Miscarriage? Why Conservatives Are Criminalizing Pregnant Women
The creeping criminalization of pregnant women is a new front in the culture wars over abortion.
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/151508/15-year-old_girl_faces_life_in_prison_for_a_miscarriage_why_conservatives_are_criminalizing_pregnant_women/
Dat I couldn’t link to the 15 year old girl………..?
sorry! Try again!!! I fixed it!
Is that the girl in Mississippi or Alabama that we talked about previously? Or a different girl?
This has actually been going on for a long time. About twenty years ago, when I was working in the business, a prosecutor approached me and asked if I would support charges against a woman who was doing crack while pregnant. It was her seventh child and the other six had already been taken away from her for abuse or neglect. As an advocate for children and with little understanding of addiction, I actually waffled for a short while about whether or not to go along. The District Attorney, a moderate Republican, put the kibosh on it. That prosecutor is now a judge albeit at the municipal level. If a prosecutor filed a misdemeanor charge of Endangering Children, I’m quite sure that he would allow the charge to stand.
Let me just GUESS which group of people will have services closed, and increased in cost of charges:
WOMEN & CHILDREN
you know the saying
” women and children first”
These days it means the first off the gangplank…but not in waiting lifeboats
Medicare and Medicaid insure more than 100 million people,
Another reason to target thses programs….they want those 100 million people to turn to private companies…perhaps not figuring out many would not be able too? But that doesn’t bother them of course . Either way it’s a win /win for Obama’s owners…. It frees up more federal dollars for war profit / tax cuts for the wealthy and whoever of the 100 million can, will turn to private companies ….
Yeah, either make the greedy geezers profit centers for private for-profit health insurance companies — get them to hurry up and die.
Barack H. Obama — WORST PRESIDENT EVER.
IMHO, I think he’s gone past BushBoy’s miserable record.
What could go wrong? Senator Charles Schumer (D-Wall Street) is in on “the negotiations.”
Sadly, this country no longer cares about the well being of its citizens….My parents are waiting for Medicare to kick in as they are at an age when most private ins companies will not offer them coverage due to pre-existing conditions. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the super wealthy get wealthier….everyone else can go to hell.
You’re right. I wish there was some way to turn it around. I’m 63 and uninsured–hope to make it till I can get Medicare.