Pipe dream? Obamacare

[mac]

BB--you may be paying attention, and mrgybe, who knows. The problem here with your posting is that you are scapegoating immigrants for a general problem that has almost nothing to do with immigrants. As multiple postings have shown, Medicare is the largest medical insurance program. It benefits those in my age group, as well as businesses and different entitities of government, by taking over the insurance needs for those over 65. Most people in the country think that they are entitled to Medicare because they have paid into it. Relatively few know that the payments made into Medicare are about 1/3 of the amount that would have been required on an actuarial basis.

When Social Security and Medicare began, the elderly in this country were much poorer than they are now. Those changes will continue over the next few decades as the number of elderly making less than $20,000 per year shrinks frohttp://content.healthaffairs.org/content/22/3/168.fullm 48% to 38%, and the number making over $80,000 nearly doubles.

When Bush expanded the Medicare drug benefit program he did what both parties have done over the past thirty years--pandered to the aging population that votes more regularly than the younger population. The picture has changed from preventing grandma from getting thrown out of her house to making sure that grandma can pass on her full estate free of taxes. Two programs that began as a safety net for the truly needy have become middle class programs where the middle class does not truly pay for the benefits they demand. And modifying those programs has become the third rail of politics.

There are lots of potential fixes. The most equitable is to ensure that most people pay, in an actuarial sense, what they will get out of the programs. That would shrink the needed subsidies to the truly needy who are, in fact, too old and poor to work or live on their savings. Anyone can suggest modifications to the ACA which would do a better job of controlling costs--but you have to start with a realization that Medicare has done a better job of controlling costs than any other insurance program.

It is, of course, a sign of extreme bias to charge Obama with fiscal irresponsibility for policies when you gave Bush a pass for substantially more careless policies. Unless you make racially biased comments on the forum, it is only your heart that knows whether racism is at the root of such bias. But then consistency has never been the conservatives long suit.

[keycocker]

Normally a board of directors has not been bought by lobbyists, either.
Would that even be legal?
Attempts to reform health little by little over the years fell apart.
Repubs in the past have put forward initiatives and then voted against the legislation they wrote themselves.
The lobbyist army is the most powerful army on earth.They do not change from election to election, have no politics and no agenda beyond coercion and bribery on behalf of those who pay them.
They run the USGov.

[beaglebuddy]

Mac, have you heard the term "anchor baby"? This is a child of illegal aliens who is born in the US, this child is a citizen and can sponsor his parents to become citizens who can then sponsor their parents who are old and automatically get medicaire and social security.
Dick Morris claims Bill Clinton told him that Republicans want to help poor people but Democrats want to help the poor and the middle class and when the middle class get hooked on that welfare there will be a problem.
Funny how liberals want a mandate and means testing (which I'm for) but want to give free care to illegal aliens who don't pay a dime.
You can come up with all kinds of statistics to twist your ideology around and I can do the same but common sense tells me otherwise. Living in California for many years and seeing the massive numbers of illegal aliens pumping out babies.
There is a credible argument to be made that the ACA is purposely designed to fail and create such a mess that a complete gov't take over will be deemed necessary, which of course is what they (and you all) want.
Not making this stuff up!

[mac]

Like I said BB, you are scapegoating immigrants--with bigoted language--for a problem that has little to do with them. You turn my stomach.

[DanWeiss]

[DanWeiss]

[MalibuGuru]

Dan, you missunderstand the arrogance and greed of the powerful if you don't at least suspect that they would "like" total control. I mean, hell man, I'd like to be dictator of the world too...

[capetonian]

[DanWeiss]

[mrgybe]