No one could have predicted this:
Anxiety is rising among some Republicans over the party’s embrace of a plan to overhaul Medicare, with GOP lawmakers already starting to face tough questions on the issue at town hall meetings back in their districts.
House leaders have scheduled a Tuesday conference call in which members are expected in part to discuss strategies for defending the vote they took this month on a budget that would transform the popular entitlement program as part of a plan to cut trillions in federal spending.
One thing the average Republican lawmaker should have learned after eight years of being led around by idiots like George Bush and ideologues like Dick Cheney and bullies like Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, is that you should think for your goddamned self and not take anyone’s word for anything.
If they tell you it will be okay to vote to kill Medicare, don’t believe them, you idiots.
Medicare is necessary because old people get sick and require expensive drugs, treatments, and surgeries to sustain their lives and their quality of life. It doesn’t make sense to insure old people, especially people who already require expensive care. Insurance is a profit-industry, and they aren’t going to pay for people’s health maintenance out of the goodness of their hearts. The amount of money it would require to make an insurance policy profitable for an eighty-year old cancer patient with diabetes would probably be in the seven figures. That’s why we do something different. We have people pay into Medicare during their working lives so that they can spread the cost of old-age out and make it reasonable.
You can’t give an eighty year-old cancer patient with diabetes a voucher (calling it “premium support”), think that it will pay for a seven-figure medical bill, and say that you’ve solved the budget problem.
When you vote for a system like that, the people will vote you out of office.
they’re just getting it from Seniors…..the next wave is middle-class White folks with Mom and/or Dad in a nursing home paid by MEDICAID…..still waiting for that to dawn on folks.
There are going to get roasted over that vote. I was the dumbest vote I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Those middle class families might be so busy taking care of mom/dad that they might not have heard yet what Congress is doing.
And then there are upper middle class folks who used financial planners to carefully spend down their assets and gift it to the next generation and skip-generation so that they would qualify for Medicaid payment in a nursing home.
I actually don’t blame them for passing on their assets instead of waiting until their medical expenses bankrupted them and then taking Medicaid. If the country had decent medical policies none of that would be necessary anyway.
If Medicaid were unlimited, you’d have a point. But states so limit Medicaid that it’s a zero-sum situation in which the drain from elder care affects preventive care for children and families. It’s a horrible moral calculus that our politicians have forced on individual families.
I think it’s kind of sweet how you think Republicans are capable of learning.
They do learn, but they learn badly. It’s like they piss on the carpet so you rap them over the nose with a newspaper. They don’t stop pissing on the carpet. They just complain that you are mean to them. And then they bite you.
We can hit them on the nose with a mallet. That might get their attention. Or flick a metal spoon, that would smart.
The Republicans are truly stupid.
“When you vote for a system like that, the people will vote you out of office. “
PLEASE GOD when when when…?
I think the current level is the average person draws 3 x what they put into Medicare. There’s no way a private insurance could ever do that. I don’t think insurance should even be a for-profit industry but that’s a non-starter.
That’s so funny, I was really shocked when the Republicans embraced Ryan’s crazy plan, I knew it was going to help us Democrats. It was like a gift from the heavens.
“The Republicans are reading ‘What color is your parachute?’ They want seniors to read ‘What flavor is your catfood'”
“So, Mr. Representative, are you a Friskies man or a Fancy Feast man?”