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Plouffe has placed Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block. Senator Durbin is expected to lead on focusing on Medicare and Medicaid as drivers of the deficit. And, he did so here, in a video. He vowed to dismiss the voices from the Left demanding ‘no cuts’. No one is calling for fewer wars or fewer war planes, shrinking Homeland Security and reducing the nation’s web of spies. It is left to the poor, the elderly and the sick to pick up the slack for the cost of Empire. This is the price of political cowardice, and parasitism by an elite, corrupt class. Insert a photo of a golden calf here, please.
Wall Street is suggesting that Medicare eligibility age be moved to 67 and that 65 and 66 year olds rely on the ACA in 2014 and on employer health insurance. The President was willing to offer raising Medicare age in the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. Eligibility cuts to Medicare translate into more paying clients forced into the ACA health exchange insurers. Those who propose to raise the age of eligibility for Medicare are using the same dated and incorrect data on life expectancy which they used to raise the eligibility age of Social Security, to rationalize this Medicare money grab.
The Congressional Research Office projects that a single policy through the ACA health care insurance exchanges will have a premium (or cost) of 14.5% to 22% of income for a 60 year old with income of 400-plus-one % of the Federal Poverty Level (above about 43.5K). (The linked pdf has fantastic graphs showing what percentage of income will be extracted from those between 133% and 400% of the FPL. Figure 2, Page 8) For a 60 year old, the low cost area plan is estimated to cost 6,329, the more expensive area plan is $7911, and the estimated premium for a more expensive area is $9494. That would be a range of 14.5 to 22% of that 60 year old’s income. The ACA allows insurers to charge older people three times the rate of younger individuals. That is unaffordable. That means more uninsured older people, more untreated illnesses, more preventable deaths.
6 Comments
Of all the cuts, this is perhaps the unkindest –and most stupid– cut of all. Obama has to know better. What a tool of Wall Street he must be to even go after this! And he is so dogged in trying to cut these programs and outdo St. Ronnie, it’s depressing and scary.
At 65, many people are still relatively healthy, and while some may enter with existing and previously untreated or barely treated health issues, on the whole the 65 year-olds will be paying in but not requiring much from Medicare.
Now, wait until 67? Beginning to see more chronic ailments, more strokes and subsequent hospitalizations, rehab care, etc.
I can only assume that actuarilly, the Big For-Profit Health Insurance campanies see a massive profit for themselves if they can force 65 and 66 year-olds to be ACA’d and required to buy their junk insurance. Oh my.
I know I’ve read the health cost stats for those two years of age, 65 and 66, put together by those who have this stuff down pat, and it’s just plain stupid –and cruel– to suggest putting Medicare off until 67.
I find myself wishing dire health problems on some of these pols, especially the Dems who know better, but I quell such thoughts as being uncharitable and, well, possibly leading to bad karma.
My first graf in no way condones any of the stupid cuts being considered by either SocSec and for Medicare.
Ya know, Wall Street really did pick a winner, for themselves, in ’07 when they told Obama they’d back him. Hillary, for all her faults, could never get away with what Obama has. And she never talked about curtailing SocSec.
And I bet Wall Street got Obama cheap — I wonder what their Return On Investment is for what they got him for???? Given all the trillions pushed their way through the Fed it must be utterly astonishing. Astronomical?
Yes. You have described a pattern: A society depleted of what I call feminine, caring, spirituality, with a reverence for living beings,………. and a healthy disregard for excess, for greed and selfishness.
We are humans, not economic units. The hollow men who rule us now, can never be ‘filled’.
Raising the age on Medicare just increases the political pressure for a Medicare for All single-payer system.
Employers like benefits for their golden handcuff effect but do not like the costs. At some point large employers are going to rush the exits shedding benefits, shoving people onto the individual market.
The health care debate has not ended with the ACA.
It really IS idiotic. You have a health care system that you know effectively controls cost better than other methods and instead of expanding people’s access to it you decide to make it smaller? How dumb is that?
We should have a federalized system that has a universal coding system(no more changing the codes weekly as an excuse to deny a claim) and has universal requirements that say will will charge you x percent of your income and in return you will have a certain set of basic benefits that include x, y, and z.
good job TT! these guys are crooks and liers. they only care about what is in it for them…pox on ALL of them..I just the WSJ reporter an email asking why on one talks about getting big Phrama out of Medicare lowering prices..
YES! Great point. The absolute foundational argument for Medicare for All. Thanks.