Here we go again

Medicare recipients could be a•ected in debt deal

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

   The Associated Press

   WASHINGTON — A debt-busting deal on the scale that President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner had talked about would have all but guaranteed that people on Medicare would feel at least some of the pain.

   But on Saturday evening, Boehner said he wouldn’t seek the $4 trillion deficit reduction deal, but would seek $2 trillion in reductions.

   The exact effects of that shift by Boehner weren’t immediately clear.

   Low-income people on Medicaid wouldn’t have escaped totally under a major deal, either. If a deal ultimately led to overhauling taxes, workers and their families could be on the hook also, facing potential limits on the tax-free status of job-based health insurance.

   Health care was a main ingredient on both the spending and tax sides of the elusive agreement that Obama and Boehner, R-Ohio, had been trying to reach.

   The president has scheduled a meeting Sunday with congressional leaders to keep pushing for a compromise that would reduce future deficits in exchange for lifting the $14.3 trillion cap on the national debt. Action is needed so the government can keep paying its bills beyond Aug. 2.

   With Congress politically polarized and skittish about next year’s elections, it’s unclear whether there’s any combination of Democratic and Republican votes to pass major deficit reduction that cuts benefit programs and raises revenue. Boehner’s shift Saturday suggested there was not.    But many of the healthcare options that negotiators were considering have been available for months. Proposals have come from the Obama administration, congressional advisers and bipartisan groups, such as Obama’s debt commission.

   For Medicare, possibilities included higher premiums for upper-income retirees and new copayments and deductibles that affect all but the poor. For example, seniors do not currently face a copayment for home care. That could have changed if there had been a major deal.

   Obama’s health care law alreadycutabout$500billion from projected payments to providers, and some experts say there’s not much fat left there.

   The smaller deficit-reduction deal, could reduce the likelihood that older people will take a hit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What can I say?  Here we go again.  Boner is at it again.  Let's take the money from the poor people to fix the deficit.  What he doesn't realize is that those poor folk will vote this bastard out next term.  Typical Rep answer to a problem.  Let's fix it on the backs of the poor, disenfranchised and the young.  I can't help it.  I'm disgusted.  Sick of these a-holes.  Seniors are the most vulnerable of all.  We worked all our lives to receive Medicare when we grew old and now the slimy used car salesman John Boner wants to take it away.  I say we need to get rid of 'em all and start from scratch.


Obama told us from the beginning of his campaign that this business would not be easy to fix.  He told us that the rich needed to 'pay their fair share'.  He told us to be patient.  Christ, can't we give the guy the benefit of the doubt.  Reagan started this problem.  Clinton helped get us out, but Bush 1 and 2 buried us again so far that poor ol' Obama is stuck with the biggest deficit in history.


If we want to solve this problem, we need to have some faith in the man we elected to do the job and give him the tools to do it.  Let's stop cutting him off at the knees.  Stop filibustering and give him the reins he needs to do the job.