Tuesday Open Thread

 

"Now It's On" - Grandaddy

- Well the Wisconsin Supreme Court, on the strength of the one vote margin they maintained followng the recent election, upheld Scott Walker's union busting travesty.  So now it's on kids.  This summer's recall elections for state senators in America's Dairyland loom as part of a life or death struggle for public employees unions in Wisconsin.  Any of you who can spare a few bucks should think about donating to Act Blue to support the recall efforts. 

- When the fact checkers lie - I find it incredibly frustrating when the individuals designated by major media outlets to be fact checkers turn out themselves to be partisan apologists and distorters of truth.  Not shockingly, Glen Kessler, the man to whom the Washington Post turns to for such determinations does not like Democrats claiming that the Ryan Plan is the end of Medicare.  He gives such claims "four Pinocchios" meaning that they are big and blatant lies.  Which, when you think about it, is a bit astonishing.  Medicare is a single payer system that guarantees the payment of a certain percentage of health claims incurred by those over 65 or disabled and covers everyone eligible regardless of income.  The Ryan Plan, on the other hand, ends the government paying health claims for those who would otherwise have been eligible for Medicare in the future, requires future senior citizens to go out and purchase private insurance, offers premium support to some of those future senior citizens, but ties that premium support not to medical inflation but rather to general increases in CPI.  In other words, the Ryan Plan may be called Medicare, but is utterly unrecognizable when compared to Medicare as it exists today.  The tell with Kessler is that he embraces the use of the term "Mediscare" to describe Democratic attacks on the Ryan plan.  And this reflects more on the nature of Mr. Kessler's ideological view and his employer's policy preferences rather than the veracity of the Democratic claims, which, it seems to me, are unassailable.

Naturally, I had to send Mr. Kessler one of my always temperate emails -- I just can't help myself:

Dear Mr. Kessler:

So you are doubling down and giving four Pinocchios to claims that -- characterized by you as "Mediscare" tactics -- the Ryan Plan ends Medicare.  How in God's name can you make this preposterous claim?  Medicare is a single payer system that guarantees senior citizens payment of their health care claims.  The Ryan plan requires future seniors to go out in the private market and obtain personal health insurance with ever diminishing premium support -- on an income-based basis.  You can call this whatever the f*ck you want, but it is not Medicare and it is not even close to being Medicare. 

You are an utter and shameless whore -- or criminally ignorant -- or, given that you work for America's foremost rag, you could well be both.

 

At any rate, it is you who lacks fundamental honesty here -- not the Democrats.

 

I hope you spend your golden years ill and uninsured and suffering, you smug, grotesque piece of crap.  And that your family suffers illness that breaks you financially and spiritually.

 

You deserve that fate in spades for giving cover to these lying bastards in the Republican party.

 

Yours in Christ.

Sir Charles 

 

What say ye?

 

  

Comments

[big bad wolf]

Go tell it on the mountain

[Crissa]

I always just figure it's about false equivalency. They want to keep the argument going, so they have to be contrarian at all points. This means they'll take some weaselly position denouncing some Republican things - there's enough of them that they can skip the big ones - and then denouncing Democratic things that 'sound' good.

Ryancare is vouchers for all. Not Medicare. Medicare chooses what they pay based upon evidence based medicine. Vouchers is just saying go feed yourself. Medicare is an insurance company.

[kathy a.]

here is a similar complaint about poor reporting regarding medicare, this one addressing an NPR report, from a blog concerned with public health issues.

[kathy a.]

by "poor," i mean pathetic, misleading, falsely equating two positions on an issue.

[Paula B]

Great blog, kathy! thanks for the link.
Here are two I read regularly, with clips from recent posts regarding Ryan plan:

Time Goes By (an elderblog, written by a former producer for Barbara Walters)
http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2011/06/republican-beliefs-about-elders.html
Ryan's is a terrible, immoral plan that would either impoverish future elders or force them to go without adequate health care in their old age. But Ryan's and others' repeated appeal to current elders that we're “safe” from this travesty says volumes about what they think of old people, which is this:
The culture inside Washington is so debased now that they believe we, like they, will betray our children's and grandchildren's future as long as we've got ours.

Health Matters (written by a very bright guy with multiple blogs, who is studying for a graduate degree in health care administration) http://www.healthmatters4.blogspot.com/
As I've written before, Ryancare substitutes ideology for honesty. Brooks has sipped from this cup of Kool-Aid regularly, rarely if ever pointing out that it is all in on controlling costs by shifting them onto elders. If that's what the country wants, then it's what we should do. But how about being up front about the choice?

[kathy a.]

one day of millionaire tax cuts would feed needy families for a year.

and on the subject of taxes, all that tax-cutting has left the US with low rates of taxation.

[kathy a.]

paula, great links!

i'm a little testy on that fab GOP argument that nobody over 55 need worry about losing medicare benefits since the cuts will kick in later -- just in time for my cohort.

what that means [since it is unreasonable to expect a 50-something to suddenly find a get-rich niche and hoard the vast profits in case of misfortune] is that should i fail to have a timely and quick death -- should my body follow in my grandmother's footsteps, with many years of total disability + dementia -- my kids will have the joy of figuring out what to do with me once my means are exhausted.

that's the shift of costs/burdens that i really fear -- ones that can't be predicted, that can't be met by the relatives of those unlucky in the elder health draw. that's what we need to be talking about.

[Sir Charles]

The thing is -- if Medicare is ended for people under age 55 -- how long are people going to support it for the fortunate demographic who get to keep it?

I would imagine that some enormous resentments would occur for those, like me, who have paid into the system since 1977, and will probably not even qualify for a voucher under a Ryan type plan.

As a self-employed person, I have been paying 2.9% of my entire income to the program for many years. The notion of having ladder yanked up when I am age 51 is not really making me happy.

[Barry]

Yes, once the cohort of people in their 50's will qualify for Ryan-levels of support, their support for keeping the upper tier intact will disappear completely.

And those in their 40's will probably have the exact same attitude. I'd guess that implementation of anything like the Ryan plan would result in the abolition of the original Medicare program after five years.

[Sir Charles]

Barry,

I hate to invoke the politics of individual interest -- I never bitch about the taxes I pay -- I feel fortunate to have the income.

But, really, it's going to be a tough sell for people to continue ponying up for a program where they will get so much less -- and for some of us -- will literally get nothing. And I am very uncomfortable, no matter how much I've saved for retirement, being left at the mercy of private insurers in my old age. I've got some pretty long lived ancestors and the idea of ponying up premiums on a private policy when I am 85 just doesn't thrill me.

[kathy a.]

and who will insure seniors, much less seniors with pre-existing conditions, which is often part of the job description?

my point is that all generations have an interest in keeping medicare intact as the basic insurance plan for elders -- and medical for long-term care once other resources run out. anyone with parents or grandparents. anyone who plans to live past 65, or knows somebody with such plans. any younger person who loves their mama, dad, aunties, cousins, and doesn't want to be asked to choose between raising their own family and putting an elder family member on the street.

this is a moral and human problem. it's a pretty real one to me, since i've been involved with care of my own elders.

[kathy a.]

*sorry, i meant to say "medicaid" instead of "medical", which is what medicaid is called in CA.

[Sir Charles]

The funny thing is that my impression is that the private insurers don't really want to try and write polices for this market.

Even Medicare Advantage plans were fraught with difficulty in its early years. A lot of companies abandoned the market pretty quickly.

There is no way that Ryan's proposal would be anything but a disaster in the real world.

[oddjob]

While I realize reading about it from a paper is hardly the same as reading the filed complaint itself, since he's a labor attorney I'd still be interested in Sir C.'s take on the latest development in Wisconsin.

Hat tip, The Plum Line.

[Paula B]

re: Ryan Plan

In case you didn't see this on Time Goes By, here are some frightening numbers:

"Last month, Representative George Miller (D-CA) discussed one report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) which calculated how much those younger workers would need to save to be able to afford private health coverage in retirement under Ryan's voucher system. Here is the CEPR chart:
Your age (under) Additional $$$ needed at retirement
55 $182,000
50 $231,900
45 $286,700
40 $343,800
35 $404,500
30 $471,200
25 $544,500
20 $624, 400
15 $711,500
Source: CEPR calculations

As Representative Miller, who is chair of House Committee on Education and the Workforce, points out on his committee webpage, about half of all workers have no retirement savings and:
”Since the voucher’s value relative to health care costs would decrease over time and private insurance costs are higher than traditional Medicare, seniors retiring in 2022 under the Republican plan would pay much higher costs than under current law.”

No kidding. Take a look at those numbers again. What average worker can even hope to save that much. Some commentators take issue with the CEPR numbers, but few argue that the costs to retirees under the Ryan plan are unaffordable for most people and gets worse over time."

http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2011/06/republican-beliefs-about-elders.html

[Sir Charles]

Paula,

That's great information. And since the average person has now saved about $29,000 for retirement, all I can say is lots of luck.

How depressing that we are even having this conversation.