Health care plan's effect on Medicare questioned

WASHINGTON -- The day after President Barack Obama urged Congress to quit bickering and enact health-care reform, Republicans on Capitol Hill said his trillion-dollar plan would be enacted on the back of Medicare recipients and sound the death knell of Medicare Advantage.

"That program will be killed off," Rep. John Fleming, R-Minden, one of three doctors in the Louisiana delegation, said on the House floor Thursday. Medicare Advantage is an option utilized by one in five Medicare beneficiaries. More than 145,000 Louisianians are enrolled in the program, which provides additional benefits, from glasses and hearing aids to preventive care services, but also costs Medicare significantly more per person than the standard Medicare fee-for-service program.

But Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., among a group of moderate Senate Democrats who met with the president at the White House on Thursday afternoon, said that this was only the latest in a litany of scare stories being peddled by Republicans. She said that the president assured the centrist lawmakers that any savings exacted from Medicare would be used to help shore up the entitlement program.

"The critics have just thrown one bomb after another," Landrieu said. "One day it's public option, the next day it's government-run health care, the next day it's death panels, the next day it's scaring seniors and the fact of the matter is if we do nothing, Medicare will run out of money in seven years" and "all the seniors who are apparently happy with it won't have it any longer."

“If they can save hundreds of millions of dollars by cutting Medicare waste why not do that anyway? Why can it only be done in context of reforming the entire health care sector?”

You mean hundreds of billions, since that’s the amount claimed by Obama. First, it obviously could be done without reforming the entire health care sector (although the only feasible way to do it is through radicaling overhauling Medicare by privatizing it). Second, when and if it is ever done, the savings should NOT be used to subsidize coverage for the uninsured. These savings are badly needed to save Medicare!

We can’t afford Medicare as currently configured. If we don’t cut costs, we will have to reduce benefits or eligibility to keep the program afloat OR raise taxes to unprecedented levels. The more waste we eliminate, the less cutting of benefits or eligibility are needed (or the less in higher taxes is needed). But if we cut costs and spend those savings on the uninsured, we haven’t improved matters at all since all we’ve done is swap one obligation (paying for Medicare) for another (paying for uninsured). Medicare itself may cost less but taxpayers are still on the hook for
the same amount of dollars. That is, if we couldn’t afford to feed the Medicare beast before health reform, we also can’t afford a slimmed down Medicare whose excess poundage has now re-appeared as a little twin sister. It’s still going to require the same amount of food etc.

This is why the elderly have every right to fear Obamacare. Taking any easily-available savings from trimming Medicare fat and diverting them to subsidizing the uninsured simply ups the odds that down the road we’ll have to take a meat cleaver to what’s left of Medicare.

ATTENTION FELLOW TEXANS:

Governor Rick Perry may invoke the 10th Amendment over Obama’s health care bill (Vanity)
7/23/09 | Cowtowney
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2299225/posts?q=1&;page=51

Get after Perry, Texans. Burn up his switch board and fax!
Let him know we don’t want Obama DeathCare.

Say no to Obama’s DeathCare.

Send a message; DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS healthcare!

No! NO you don’t, you muzzie pos.

You’re not denying our seniors deserved health care while insuring millions of illegal aliens and while Demorats are REJECTING Obamacare for themselves and their families!

Join organizations who fight ObamaCare.

This is a good organization:
The Alliance of Texans Against Government Controlled Healthcare:
http://www.notintexas.org/

office (972) 466-2915
fax (972) 466-2965
toll-free (866) 377-1300

From the website:
We are currently contacting Governor Rick Perry by fax and mail!

We have made it easy for you to help. Click here to display the letter and contact information.
http://www.notintexas.org/Letter_rick_perry.htm

Petition to STOP government controlled healthcare in Texas
Read and sign the petition
http://www.notintexas.org/Letter_to_Reps.htm

Print and sign the letter
(feel free to make changes if you wish)

Fax the letter to the fax numbers

Mail a hard copy to the addresses

Call their offices

Dear Governor Perry,

On March 30, 2009 the Texas House of Representatives passed HCR 50 affirming that the State of Texas claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.

You have publicly supported this bill, and stated that attorney generals from all over the union could be getting ready to sue the US Government.

We are asking you to take the lead.

We are asking you to order the Texas Attorney General to publicly begin working on a law suit under Article IV, Ninth, and Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.

We are asking you to protect the citizens of Texas that we will not stand for government controlled healthcare in our state.

Under your leadership we can effectively kill the proposal of this administration and allow Texas to be a state free from socialism and collectivism.

Be the voice of reason in the national debate and allow Texans the ability to solve the problems of our state.

Thank you,

(Signature Date)

Lookup your state representatives

FREE FAX SERVICSES:
http://www.gotfreefax.com/
http://faxzero.com/
or google ‘free fax’

Contacting Rick Perry

Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711
Phone: (512) 463-2000
Fax: (512) 463-1849

Washington Office:
122 C St., NW, Ste. 200
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: (202) 638-3927
Fax: (202) 628-1943

Contact Budget Planning and Policy

Address:1100 San Jacinto
Austin, Texas 78701
Phone: (512) 463-1778
Fax: (512) 463-1975
Gregory S. Davidson
Constituent Communication Division Director and
Executive Clerk to the Governor
Phone: (512) 463-1873

Office of the General Counsel
Department Mailing Address
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, TX 78711
Phone: 512.463.2000
Fax: 512.463.1932

Press Secretary
Allison Castle, Press Secretary
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711
Phone: (512) 463-1826
Fax: (512) 463-1847

Contact Texas Health Care Policy Council
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711
Phone: (512) 463-1778
Fax: (512) 463-1975

____________________

From Texans Against Government Controlled Health Care

http://www.notintexas.org/

Facts about the 10th Amendment:

The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) of the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. The Tenth Amendment restates the Constitution’s principle of Federalism by providing that powers not granted to the national government nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or the people.

HCR 50 HAS PASSED THE HOUSE 99-36!
Affirming that the State of Texas claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution, serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates, and providing that certain federal legislation be prohibited or repealed.

Take Action! Before it is too late!

"There are four ways in which you can spend money.
1. You spend your own money on yourself - You shop in a supermarket, for example. You clearly have a strong incentive both to economize and to get as much value as you can for each dollar you do spend.
2. You spend your own money on someone else - You shop for Christmas or birthday presents. You have the same incentive to economize as in the first case but not the same incentive to get full value for your money, at least as judged by the tastes of the recipient. You will, of course, want to get something the recipient will like—provided that it also makes the right impression and does not take too much time and effort. (If, indeed, your main objective were to enable the recipient to get as much value as possible per dollar, you would give him cash
3. You spend someone else's money on yourself - lunching on an expense account, for instance. You have no strong incentive to keep down the cost of the lunch, but you do have a strong incentive to get your money's worth.
4. You spend someone else's money on someone else - You are paying for someone else's lunch out of an expense account. You have little incentive either to economize or to try to get your guest the lunch that he will value most highly. However, if you are having lunch with him, so that the lunch is a mixture of case 3 and case 4, you do have a strong incentive to satisfy your own tastes at the sacrifice of his, if necessary.
All welfare programs fall into either case 3—for example, Social Security which involves cash payments that the recipient is free to spend as he may wish; or case 4—for example, public housing; except that even case 4 programs share one feature of case 3, namely, that the bureaucrats administering the program partake of the lunch; and all case 3 programs have bureaucrats among their recipients."

---Milton Friedman, "Free To Choose"

How to Cure Health Care; By Milton Friedman

Readers Digest Version for liberal bloggers and White House and Congressional radical Socialists who claim Conservatives and Libertarians don't have a plan. We have one, you just don't like the idea that you wouldn't control it.

1. Repeal the tax exemption for employer provided medical care.
2. Terminate Medicare and Medicaid
3. Provide every American citizen with catastrophic insurance. Major medical with a high deductible.
4. Increase the use of tax free Medical Savings Accounts.

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