[aimhigh]

Too bad we need $600 billion in savings this year alone.

[longtermmemmory]

coburn = useless proposal.

[TomGuy]

The best way to fix this problem is to give seniors money to put toward premiums, and allow private insurance companies to compete for the money.

How is that different from the current Medicare Advantage system -- a system which Obamacare is supposed to eliminate?

In fact, Obamacare tries to eliminate private insurance altogether.

==

These politicians need to quit passing laws they have NOT read and have no idea what is contained therein.

[kabar]

....extend the program’s solvency by 30 years.

It depends how you define solvency. People don't seem to understand that Medicare takes non-entitlement designated monies from the General Fund. By law, 75% of the costs of Medicare Parts B and D must come from the General Fund. The premiums for those costs only cover 25% of the expenditures. So Medicare may be solvent, but it assumes the 75% will be provided by the General Fund. In 2011, projected costs for Medicare Parts B and D are $295 billion with 75% of the costs coming from the General Fund. That number will continue to increase as the population ages and medical costs go up.

Medicare already spends more than it receives in dedicated taxes and premium payments. As baby boomer retirees begin to flood the system, the impact will be felt by every other federal program:

• Currently, Medicare claims about 11 percent of federal nonentitlement tax dollars.

•By 2020, Medicare deficits will claim one in every five federal tax dollars that are not already dedicated to Medicare and Social Security.

•By 2030, the deficits in Medicare will claim one in every three general revenue dollars; by 2050, they will claim one in every two.

[RightOnTheBorder]

Getting into bed with Lieberman seems ill-advised to me. Regardless of what we get out of it, we will still have to live with what Lieberman put in.

To paraphrase Mark Steyn’s opinion of compromise with the enemy, “If you mix a quart of feces with a quart of ice cream, the mixture will taste more like the former than the latter.” I don't want republican fingerprints on a feces flavored bill.

[Uncle Miltie]