It would be really interesting to go to a tea party meeting and take a poll of how many there are collecting government money in some form including social security, medicade, SSI, disability from military service, government jobs or retirement from government jobs. Tea Party rabble apparently want to slash government budgets such as the Endowment for the Arts that is only a drop in the bucket for the national debt. The reason we are in the hole is primarily because George Bush got us into two wars that we had no bussiness being in and then refused to pay for them and to make matters worse he cut taxes on the top 2% of the tax payers who promptly used the money to further enrich their lives and export more jobs to other countries. If the tea party loyal really want to ballance the budget then they should refuse to accept any government money and make it on their own. Refuse to take free scooters and home delivered oxygen and pay their own medical bills. But I forgot they are entitled to socialized medicine but not others. The real pork in the federal budget is wars and aid to countries that hate us. Lets bring the troops home, put them on the borders to secure this country and build bridges and hospitals in this christian country and let the other countries take care of themselves. Why we let somailies and other muslims that hate and want to kill us to move here is something I will never understand. Leif Ronning

ditto

Well said,I agree %1000.But it will never happen.

I have a friend who believes you should not get anything from the government but she is eager for her husband to get his railroad retirement! She does not think of that in the same manner.

I agree completely. Its old people who are the problem in this country.

I think we should let robots take away their medicine.

As shellackings go, the 2010 election was as comprehensive as it gets. Democrats lost among women, men, high-school graduates, college graduates, Catholics, Protestants, and so on. But there was one demographic group whose repudiation was especially influential: senior citizens. In the 2006 midterm election, seniors split their vote evenly between House Democrats and Republicans. This time, they went for Republicans by a twenty-one-point margin. The impact of that swing was magnified by the fact that seniors, always pretty reliable midterm voters, were particularly fired up: nearly a quarter of the votes cast were from people over sixty-five. The election has been termed the "revolt of the middle class." But it might more accurately be called the revolt of the retired.

Why were seniors so furious with the Democrats? The weak economy and the huge deficits didn't help, but retirees have actually been hit less hard by the financial crisis than other Americans. The real sticking point was health-care reform, which the elderly didn't like from the start. While the Affordable Care Act was being debated, most seniors opposed it, and even after the law was passed Gallup found that sixty per cent of them thought it was bad. You sometimes hear (generally from Republicans) that the health-care bill is wildly unpopular. The truth is that, in every age group but one-seniors-a plurality of voters want to keep the bill intact.

Misinformation about "death panels" and so on had something to do with seniors' hostility. But the real reason is that it feels to them as if health-care reform will come at their expense, since the new law will slow the growth in Medicare spending over the next decade. It won't actually cut current spending, as Republicans claimed in campaign ads, but between now and 2019 total Medicare outlays will be half a trillion dollars less than previously projected. Never mind that this number includes cost savings from more efficient care, or that the bill has a host of provisions that benefit seniors-most notably the closing of the infamous drug-benefit "doughnut hole," which had left people responsible for thousands of dollars in prescription-drug costs. The idea that the government might try to restrain Medicare spending was enough to turn seniors against the bill.

There's a colossal irony here: the very people who currently enjoy the benefits of a subsidized, government-run insurance system are intent on keeping others from getting the same treatment. In part, this is because seniors think of Medicare as an "entitlement"-something that they have a right to because they paid for it, via Medicare taxes-and decry the new bill as a giveaway. This is a myth: seniors today get far more out of Medicare than they ever put in, which means that their medical care is paid for by current taxpayers. There's nothing wrong with this: the U.S. is rich enough so that the elderly shouldn't have to worry about having health insurance; before Medicare, roughly half of them didn't have it. But the subsidies that seniors get aren't fundamentally different from the ones that the Affordable Care Act will offer some thirty million Americans who don't have insurance. Opposing the new law while reaping the benefits of Medicare is essentially saying, "I've got mine-good luck getting yours."

Current sentiment among seniors seems like a classic example of an effect that the economist Benjamin Friedman identified in his magisterial book "The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth": in hard times voters get more selfish. Historically, Friedman notes, times of stagnation have been times of reaction, with voters bent on protecting their own interests, hostile to outsiders, and less interested in social welfare. In boom times, by contrast, societies typically become more open, more inclusive, and more generous; think, in the U.S., of the myriad reforms of the Progressive Era, or of the nineteen-sixties, when Medicare, Medicaid, civil-rights legislation, and immigration reform were all introduced.

This isn't a hard-and-fast rule; Social Security, after all, was created during the Great Depression. But Friedman suggests that the Depression's effects were so deep and widespread that it created a sense of social solidarity. The current crisis, bad as it is, isn't severe enough to do that; instead, it has tended to drive people apart, with economically anxious voters trying to hold on to what they have. These days, the notion that we can't afford to expand the safety net sounds plausible, because everyone's feeling poor. By contrast, when Medicare was first proposed, in the boom times of the nineteen-sixties, Republicans made little headway trying to fend it off, despite using arguments remarkably similar to the ones they're now advancing in support of health-care repeal. In this environment, it's understandable that seniors want to pull the ladder up in order to protect their benefits, just as other voters don't want to pay for any more stimulus spending, even if millions of Americans are unemployed.

To be sure, the Obama Administration didn't pitch health-care reform as well as it might have: its emphasis on the way the bill would "bend the cost curve" was heard by seniors as "slash Medicare." But the Democrats' loss of support among the elderly was more a matter of economic fundamentals than of political framing. If the economy were growing briskly, it's unlikely that the health-care bill would have become so politically toxic. And, with Republicans now looking to roll back parts of the bill, what happens to health care in the long term may depend a lot on what happens to the economy in the short term.

http://www.newyorker.com/...z16MMGgb5V

Have them take away their vehicles while they're at it.

It seems to be a recurring theme to accuse those who attend Tea Party meetings of recieving some kind of government benefit, usually medicare, social security or something similar. Of course, many of the people receiving those benefits have paid into those programs for long periods, as have most of us here.

I'd just be curious. What specific issue do you have with those folks, or are there other government programs that they are not 'entitled' to that is of concern, and do you have any kind of documentation to back up the claim, or is speculative?

Lets try Reading 101 with ole Trace again, although given his track record on this site, I ain't holdin' my breath:

There's a colossal irony here: the very people who currently enjoy the benefits of a subsidized, government-run insurance system are intent on keeping others from getting the same treatment. In part, this is because seniors think of Medicare as an "entitlement"-something that they have a right to because they paid for it, via Medicare taxes-and decry the new bill as a giveaway. This is a myth: seniors today get far more out of Medicare than they ever put in, which means that their medical care is paid for by current taxpayers. There's nothing wrong with this: the U.S. is rich enough so that the elderly shouldn't have to worry about having health insurance; before Medicare, roughly half of them didn't have it. But the subsidies that seniors get aren't fundamentally different from the ones that the Affordable Care Act will offer some thirty million Americans who don't have insurance. Opposing the new law while reaping the benefits of Medicare is essentially saying, "I've got mine-good luck getting yours."

I understand your whining about medicare, however you are whining at the wrong people. For your information, it was Prez Johnson who iniated the transfer of medicare and social security funds to the feds general fund and approved by a democratic congress. If they had left it alone there would be more than ample money in it now to cover even your generation. Also I was very happy with my insurance when I turned 65 I was forced to go on medicare. So you have your gov't to thank for the shortfalls in medicare and social security.

I had a hard time even rationilizing why I would respond to Tracey...yet I did.

I cannot even begin to try it again with korky, who takes Traceyism to a new level.

I'll leave it to the rest of you.

It seems to me that we have a fundamental decision to make in this country with regard to entitlements in general and health care in more specifics.

I am concluding that with healthcare we have only two options:

A. We go to a market-based model, that eliminates 99% of the government intervention, where health consumers pay their own way, and hope that supply and demand create affordable healthcare for all;

B. We go to a single payer system that is administered by either State Governments or the Federal Government.

I do not believe that any middle ground modifications in this issue will work long-term. Obama care in its current state is essentially medicare for the rest of us. Long-term this will cost more and create all manner of confusion that simply drains people of their disposable income without providing real healthcare.

While I am "genetically" predisposed to Option A, I recognize that in this day and age it is not workable. It sounds good as a libertarian political plank, but functionally is nearly impossible to achieve.

While Option B is distasteful, I have concluded that it is really the only way to provide the level of care that Americans need. If we can put a man on the moon and accomplish all sorts of other great achievements, why can't we as Americans create a single-payer system that is the envy of the world? I say it is worth a try. It is frankly unacceptable that democrats were not more assertive on this issue and proposed a true single payer system rather than a watered-down program that basically breaks the current system and then will rush in to replace what is broken with some bastardized hybrid that will take 50 years to function properly.

I don't think there is any middle ground on this issue.

[This message has been edited by Richard Bonine, Jr (11/29/2010)]

Obama care is essentially medicare for the rest of us.

Really?

Come on, now. I loved Korky in "Life Goes On"

The reason we are trying to do all this healthcare reform was caused in whole by the gov't not being able to leave their fingers out of the fund that we the tax payers set up to cover retirement years. It was not theirs to take but they did it anyway. Personally I had better coverage for less money than what medicare costs, however when you turn 65 it is mandatory that you go on medicare. It is not an option. I am against anything run or administered by the gov't, especially if it involves money. They dang sure don't have a good track record when it comes to finances. The less the gov't messes with me the more happy I am.

I'm still waiting for the Sanitarians who hate Big Pharma to swear off prescription medication.

Korky, the reason we are trying healthcare reform is that healthcare COSTS have far outpaced the wages(earnings) of most Americans. Simple as that. Now, the reasons for that frightening (for me) increase are not so simple. But a sure fact is that healthcare broblems go far beyond your Medicare.

If that be the case, the solution is simple. Limit cost, let people shop across state lines and limit what a doc, or hosp can be sued for. I was recently in the hosp and was charged $4.50 for a bandaid. Texas did this and they have the lowest rates in the nation. Under the new healthcare plan the cost will be higher than they are now, It will be cheaper to just pay the penalty for not having insurance. It's not the insurance companies so much as it it the providers. Pay a good doc good money for his/her service, but limit the ancillary charges.

Is it really true that once your'e 65 you must "go on Medicare" and can't have private insurance? Is this a government rule or from the insurance industry?

The last I looked into it Wendy, you can decline Medicare, but you must also decline Social Security. I don't know if that has changed.

Lets try Reading 101 with ole Trace again, although given his track record on this site, I ain't holdin' my breath

I had a hard time even rationilizing why I would respond to Tracey...yet I did.

I cannot even begin to try it again with korky, who takes Traceyism to a new level.

Thanks very much Gunnar, for your kind comments.

How does it feel to sit in your ivory tower of 'I know it all, and the rest of you are trash that don't have the mental capacity to grasp what I'm telling you to think?'

LImit cost. Okay, you get right on that. Figure out how to make insurance companies not charge 30 to 40% of their costs to administration. Figure out how to get hospitals to stop building four story hotel lobbies instead of spending money on patient care. Figure out how to convince medical personnel to take pay cuts. Figure out how to convince patients they don't need expensive tests.

And do it in such a way that nobody complains.

Go for it!

Not everyone is trash, Tracy. Even Rick makes some valid points occasionally. I reserve my deepest scorn for you and you alone, our poor wounded martyr.

Healthcare is a many headed Hydra... Cut off one head and the others will bite you. Cutting costs is a great idea, as is effective regulation of the insurance industry. I have to agree with Richard, a single payer system is now a must as what we have now is sooo broken.