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The Economist ominously reports: The struggle to digest the swollen generation of ageing baby-boomers threatens to strangle economic growth. As the nature and scale of the problem become clear, a showdown between the generations may be inevitable. The statistics are frightening: The average federal tax rate for a median American household, including income and payroll taxes, dropped from more than 18% in 1981 to just over 11% in 2011. Yet sensible tax reforms left less revenue for the generous benefits boomers have continued to vote themselves, such as a prescription-drug benefit paired with inadequate premiums. Deficits exploded. Erick Eschker, an...

Don't go there, Donny . . . Donny Deutsch has opened a can of worms—or shall we say, a carton of Clairol. On Morning Joe today, Deutsch suggested that it looks like Mitt Romney colors his hair, and argued that Americans would lose trust in a candidate who does. But could Deutsch possibly not know of the evidence that his guy Barack Obama has also grabbed the Grecian Formula on occasion? View the video and photo evidence here.

My "seasoned citizen" mom is concerned that she might be having memory issues, and feels that she's slow on the uptake on some things during conversations. In the past I've tried to recommend ginkgo to her, but she's resistant to try new things... but now, it seems she's willing to give gingko a shot. I understand some preparations are better than others, and I we sure the natural healing community on FR would have some recommends... My mom works here, she's not a member, but I'm going to send her a link to this thread, she'll read what you advise...~*Thank...

The readmission penalty, authorized by the 2010 health-care law, is one of the first examples of the incentives Medicare, the single largest payer of hospital services, is using to try to lower costs and improve care. Some of the hardest-hit facilities are inner-city hospitals that tend to treat sicker, poorer patients. These patients sometimes end up being readmitted because they have a harder time getting medication and follow-up doctors’ appointments, often because they lack transportation, hospital officials said. “Not only do we have the very sick patients, they also have very significant social needs,” said Kamaljit Sethi, who heads quality...

A new phase of Obamacare will penalize hospitals if they re-admit Medicare patients at a rate that the government oversight panel deems excessive. Their premise,a strictly financially based one, is that this will minimize waste and fraud. In reality, it will minimize the survival rate of many seniors in the waning years of life. I'm sure that will indeed make for huge savings in overall Medicare liability. I cared for both my parents for eight years before their deaths. Their health problems, common to many seniors, required more numerous doctor visits, more medications and increasingly more numerous hospital stays as...

The report of the AARP convention booing Paul Ryan the other day made me just shake my head and smile wryly. These are the kind of fools who'd boo the man trying to save their bacon while they remain content to blindly follow a leftist leadership that has sold its organizational soul to liberal orthodoxy. Like millions of Americans, I received my courtesy membership to AARP upon nearing fifty, some two decades ago. At the time, this free milestone membership, available to all Americans of that age, was the source of much merriment among such new members' younger friends and...

Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)was not well received at a gathering held by the American Association of Retired Peoples on Friday. After Ryan said the first step to strengthening Medicare is to repeal President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the crowd erupted into boos. After promising to repeal “Obamacare,” the crowd jeered. “I had a feeling there would be mixed reactions,” said Ryan amid the chorus of booing. “It weakens Medicare for today’s seniors and puts it at risk for the next generation,” said Ryan to more booing. “You may not have heard this side of the...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Easier-to-chew foods, brighter lights in stores and bigger, clearer fonts on packaging: Those are a few of the changes marketers discussed at a conference Friday about how to sell to aging consumers. The retail innovation conference at Wake Forest University’s uptown Charlotte campus was sponsored by drugstore chain CVS Caremark. It was the first of what the school says will be an annual series. “There’s a silver tsunami coming as the baby boomer population moves into seniors," said professor Roger Beahm, executive director of the school’s Center for Retail Innovation. That tsunami is expected to change everything...

Two things about the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) are increasingly clear: (1) seniors have been singled out and forced to bear a disproportionate share of the cost of a new entitlement for young people and (2) the states are administratively just not ready to implement the new program in time for its January 1, 2014, start date. So here's a simple proposal that will not affect the federal deficit: Delay the scheduled cuts in Medicare spending by five years and pay for that expense by delaying the 2014 start date of ObamaCare by two years.That would give everyone time to...

Naming Paul Ryan as his running mate hasn’t given Mitt Romney a significant boost in the polls, but it doesn’t appear to have scared senior voters the way Democrats hoped and some Republicans feared. Ryan, the author of a Medicare overhaul plan that has fueled a furious messaging war between the presidential campaigns and their allies, makes his first visit as a vice presidential candidate to senior-heavy Florida Saturday.

A provision of ObamaCare is set to punish roughly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals evaluated by Medicare starting this fall over high readmission rates, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News. Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates --which refers to patients who return within a month --by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014. Doctors are concerned the penalty is unfair, since sometimes they have to accept patients more than once in a brief period of time but could...

SUMTER COUNTY, FL — Paul Ryan wanted to reassure the 50 thousand retirees here in The Villages that his big plans to reform Medicare will not have a negative impact on them. It was a ruckus crowd in friendly territory and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan took to the stage with his mother in hand. His mission: to convince retirees both here and across the state that his plan to reform Medicare is good for them.

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is speaking at The Villages, northwest of Orlando.

Washington, DC Saturday, August 18, 2012 Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan will speak at a retirement community in Florida, Saturday. Ryan will be accompanied by his mother, Elizabeth “Betty” Ryan Douglas, when he speaks at The Villages, the world’s largest retirement community. His mother lives in Florida for part of the year and spend the rest of her time in Wisconsin.

At one point during Good Morning America's coverage of the presidential race this morning, co-host Dan Harris proclaimed that--"seven days into the newly minted Romney/Romney ticket, the snark and sniping is hitting new levels." He should know. The snarkiest snipe of the morning came from Harris's own co-host. Opening the show, co-host Bianna Golodryga declared that Paul Ryan's mother would be appearing on the campaign trail with him today "for a very calculated reason." Do you recall ABC or other MSM outlets depicting, say, Michelle Obama's frequent campaign stops—or politicking thinly-disguised as public service appearances—as "very calculated" or the like?...

At about 1 minute into the video... "Benefits to seniors actually increase under Obamacare which reduces payments to providers in exchange for more people covered by insurance." In other words... "Seniors get more when health providers are told they will be paid less to work harder and faster"

In a swipe at the GOP presidential ticket, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod on Tuesday defended President Barack Obama’s handling of Medicare. “The president … took away subsidies, unwarranted subsidies, to insurance companies, and he used that money to help lengthen the life of Medicare by nearly a decade,” Axelrod said on CNN’s Starting Point, referencing a provision of the new health care law. “So when Gov. Romney says he doesn’t support that, obviously … that’s problematical.” …

Betty Ryan Douglas, who turned 78 last week, lives at least part time in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea in Broward County. A Republican, she has been registered to vote in Florida since 1997...... ....It was Paul Ryan’s mother who helped push him off the ski slopes and into politics. From Wisconsin Interest magazine: “Upon graduation, he headed to Oxford, Ohio, to attend Miami University. (Twenty-three years later, he would return to give the commencement speech.) His junior year, Ryan took an internship with Wisconsin Sen. Bob Kasten’s foreign affairs advisor. Ryan says he spent more time opening mail than working on the study...

Americans split nearly evenly on Paul Ryan’s selection as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate, a divided response that nonetheless represents a sharp gain for Ryan compared with the negative tilt that preceded his pick, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll has found. In weekend interviews 38 percent responded favorably to Ryan joining the Republican ticket, up from 23 percent in pre-selection interviews last week. Positive views rose among independents as well as among Republicans, and among women. And Ryan was notably well-received among senior citizens – a group of interest given his plan to reshape Medicare. At the same...

Paul Ryan is committed to radically changing Medicare into a voucher program, and Democrats are hoping that they can turn this fact into an issue that destroys Romney's chances in Florida, a state filled with entitlement-happy seniors that is a must win for the Republican. But if Florida seniors were thinking rationally and self-interestedly, this Democratic attack would flop. Paul Ryan is proposing no changes to Medicare for another 10 years, so anyone currently 55 or older wouldn't be affected at all. And if you assume that the law won't get passed for a couple years, you can safely assume...