Obama decides to spread to pain

NY Times via pioneer press ^ | 9-19-11 | robert pear

[WOBBLY BOB]

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's budget director said Monday that the president's new deficit-reduction plan would impose "a lot of pain," and is clearly true of White House proposals to cut $320 billion from projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid in the coming decade.

Obama proposed higher premiums and deductibles for many Medicare beneficiaries and lower Medicare payments to teaching hospitals and rural hospitals. He would start charging co-payments to frail homebound older people who receive home health services. And he would reduce the growth of federal payments to states for treating low-income people under Medicaid.

[WOBBLY BOB]

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."- Winston Churchill

[GlockThe Vote]

What a friggin disaster - this is all while obama cut 500 billion from medicare in MengeleCare and is tossing tens of millions on to Medicaid that the states will have to pick up as well.

I swear - I hope every obama rots in hell for what they have done.

[albie]

I have Churchills quote memorized for use whenever I run into a lib. Which is often.

[HomeAtLast]

He would start charging co-payments to frail homebound older people who receive home health services.

Do that and there will be a lot more people giving up and going into public housing.

I do volunteer work that involves going to the homes of these "frail homebound older people." In our community the public housing for seniors is pretty ritzy, cleaner than most hotels. Taxpayers pay to keep it that way. Social workers [*spit*] will tell you that the frail elderly are better off there; doesn't matter where they watch TV all day, does it? and it doesn't matter if they don't WANT to go, because they no longer know what's best for them.

So you hike their co-pay and you get another five bucks or fifty. They don't have it to pay, so they give up and move and you wind up paying for all their utilities, housing, security. If they owned their home (often it belongs to a relative), the municipality loses the taxes too and maybe gains a little more blight. Abandoned property can stand waiting for a buyer until it collapses or burns.

Co-pay hikes on frail elderly is not the simple fix it is made to seem. Social Security hasn't increased and energy prices have. Under Obama and his Great Hurry-Up-And-Die Deal, these people have already been squeezed. We're reaching the point where it turns counter-productive.