Tag Archives: medicare

Obamacare Spiraling Downward

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I am not cheering as I write this column. The Presidency of Barack Obama is spiraling downward largely because of Obamacare and it is not clear to me that Mr. Obama can avoid a Presidential face plant.

Earlier this week Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, testified before a House committee about the ongoing disaster that is the Obamacare website.

She didn’t know who was responsible or what went wrong any more than she could have pulled out a stack of code three feet high and walked the Committee Members through it line-by-line. Continue reading →

A Battle Worth Fighting

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Hey, here’s a scoop! I was wrong about when the shutdown would end. I thought it would be last Thursday.

My new prediction is: Never.

As I think I’ve made pretty clear, I thought – and still think – that tying the shutdown to repealing or delaying ObamaCare was a bad idea. That doesn’t mean I think ObamaCare is a good idea; I do not. But, the GOP’s mantra, if you will remember, was “Repeal and Replace.”

Republicans in the House and Senate cannot repeal, and they have not offered a replacement.

But, that was last week’s news. This week’s news is we are about 10 days from the financial world coming to an end – again – this time because we are about to bump our national fiscal head on the debt ceiling.

Continue reading →

Imagine There’s No Trust Fund…

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

…It’s easy if you try.

We are constantly reminded of just how great of a job FDR’s advisors did in the Great Depression ‘selling’ the American people on the whole notion of Social Security being some form of ‘insurance’ or ‘pension’ plan.

Which is it: ‘Insurance’ or ‘Retirement’? Or both? Who the heck really knows nowadays almost 80 years later? Continue reading →

Healthcare Stats You Can Use

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

  1. 1% of the US population, about 3.1 million people, use 35% of all healthcare expenditures each year. The specific people in this number change each year due to death or recovery.
  2. 5% of the US population, about 15.5 million people, use 60% of all healthcare expenditures each year. The specific people in this number change each year due to death or recovery.
  3. Many, if not a majority of these people are in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
  4. Healthcare now consumes 18% of GNP. It is expected to consume 20% of GDP by 2021.
  5. Chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and strokes account for most of our expenditures.
  6. Anywhere from 35%-50% of all healthcare expenditures can be attributable to these four conditions. Continue reading →

Holding Middle-Class Tax Cuts Hostage

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Which one is better..or worse? To which guilty party can these words be assigned, Your Honor?

We are always surprised, although we shouldn’t be, when we see the media attack the GOP in Congress for ‘holding the middle-class hostage to getting tax cuts extended for the wealthy (‘fat-cat, dishonest, conniving, Scrooge-like white rich) guys’. (That is the intimation, isn’t it? Tell the truth.)

Why is it taken as the Gospel Truth that the current impasse is solely the fault of the Republican Party in charge of the House of Representatives in Congress? Continue reading →

Gillespie Deploys MacArthur Strategy

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Ed Gillespie is a modern day Douglas MacArthur. Let me explain.

On September 15, 1950, MacArthur led a force of mostly United States Marines in an amphibious assault at the largely undefended port of Inchon that was located far behind enemy lines. The North Koreans had closed in on American forces around the city of Pusan and the UN forces needed a break-out strategy. The strategy to go on offense helped to turn the tide of the war and the United Nations forces were able to drive the North Koreans back to their portion of the peninsula.

What MacArthur did was a lot like what Ed Gillespie has reportedly done with the Romney campaign. He decided that the best defense was a very good offense. Continue reading →

When I’m 65: Then is Now

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Allow me a day of what, bragging? Whining? Maybe both.

Today I turn 65.

When I was a kid I don’t think I knew anyone who was 65. I thought people who were 35 were old. When I was a kid 35 was the new 65.

I am not one of those people who rue birthdays that are divisible by five. Thirty bothered me because it was the passage between being young and being a grownup, led by the fact that The Lad was born. None of the next six have given me pause.

This one didn’t either, until last Thursday. Continue reading →

Medicare Paid For?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

You know the ad we are talking about. The one where the burly-looking senior looks in the camera like John Wayne and intones something to this effect:

‘You mess with our Social Security and Medicare benefits…and we are gonna kick your butt!’

How is that for ‘thoughtful, rational civil discourse’ in America today, huh? We wouldn’t want to face that guy in a showdown death match on the golf course or the shuffleboard court. Continue reading →

Obama Reality: Conventional President

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the feeherytheory.com

President Obama emailed his supporters that he is running for re-election. I guess he did that as a way to tell young voters (who largely powered his initial election campaign) that he is still with them.

Continue reading →

The Black Swan Looms Over Budget

BY STEVE BELL

             As I write this, cable and broadcast television, radio, and bloggers, and government officials, are giddy with the news released 90 minutes ago that the economy created almost 300,000 jobs last month. 

     “We’ve turned the economic corner.”

      “The recovery has become self-sustaining.”

      “That 1,000 point drop in the Dow was merely because of a human being putting erroneous sell information into a computer,”

      Yet, the official unemployment rate increased to 9.9 per cent and the broadest measure of unemployment continues to rise.  How can this be?  Are good times here again?

      In short, “no.”

Continue reading →

Is Government Really Broken?

   

BY TONY BLANKLEY

If you want to see broken government, consider the fall of the constitutional Roman Republic and the rise of Julius Caesar: “Fortune turned against us and brought confusion to all we did. Greed destroyed honor, honesty and every other virtue, and taught men to be arrogant and cruel, to neglect the gods. Ambition made men false. Rome changed: A government which had once surpassed all others in justice and excellence now became cruel and unbearable.” So said the historian Sallust at the time.

Continue reading →