By getting rid of it by forcing everyone under 55 out of it and handing them a voucher? What good will that do to someone in a nursing home? Someone 96 tears old and senile?No-one buys such Koolaid.
RE :”With “conservatives” like you, who needs liberals?’
I dont drink Koolaid, I gave that up in 2008. If you are successful here pushing this putting Pelosi back as Speaker before the Republicans get anything reformed or cut passed into law, you might just as well be working for her. Pushing something even you knew was unpopular without getting the voters prepared for it first will go down as the biggest blunder of all times, just last year your buddies were going to 'protect' benefits.
RE :”No, they needed to strike while the iron was hot. They had a political moment, which is not yet lost.”
What iron? These ideas were unpopular before they were even made public, plus the house cant get anything into law by themselves anyway, and this was not even a real bill. Are you joking? . Even Pelosi knew not to force suicide votes on her members 2007-2008 until she had the WH and super majority to get her liberal stuff passed into law. Why hand over power to democrats without getting any reforms into law first? That saves nothing.
RE :The alternative -- that we do NOTHING -
Obama used that same line to get Obama-care passed. It is a lie, there are many less toxic variations they could have put up for a vote. Plus, do NOTHING? At the end of the day your unpopular plan here will do nothing, because you were never serious about getting any reforms into law, just symbolic suicide votes without the hard political prep-work., THAT IS DOING NOTHING.
By returning them some actual part of what they've paid in, as opposed to NOTHING. That is YOUR alternative: to bankrupt the country. The healthcare system for all Americans is in trouble because of Medicare and Medicaid. Those programs distort the market and make cost containment impossible. The government should NOT be involved in healthcare and if we can't summon the will to force that issue, we can at least get people to save their money into the fund and perhaps get at least some of it back someday.
What good will that do to someone in a nursing home? Someone 96 tears old and senile?
What utter crap. The person you're talking about will experience this issue in no less than 42 years! If you can't save enough money to take care of yourself in 42 years, please don't come whining to me about bailing you out.
No-one buys such Koolaid [sic].
YOU are the one drinking Kool-Aid. Under even the most unrealistic assumptions Medicare will be completely exhausted in 15 years. It is ALREADY -- as of right now -- impossible for the program to meet its future obligations.
You aren't a conservative or a libertarian. Please stop pretending to be one. Please go drink your Kool-Aid over at DU, or some other forum where they swallow the crap that the money is going to hold out forever if we just garnishee peoples' pensions and kill all the "rich" people. Even that won't save the Entitlements for very long.