Posted on 04/14/2015 7:06:20 PM PDT by Star Traveler
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday approved sweeping changes in the way Medicare pays doctors, clearing the bill for President Obama and resolving an issue that has bedeviled Congress and the Medicare program for more than a decade.
The 92-to-8 vote in the Senate, following passage in the House last month by an overwhelming vote of 392 to 37, was a major success for Republicans, who devised a solution to a complex policy problem that had frustrated lawmakers of both parties. Mr. Obama has endorsed the bill, saying it “could help slow health care cost growth.”
The bill, drafted in the House in negotiations between Speaker John A. Boehner and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, also extends the Children’s Health Insurance Program for two years, through 2017.
Without action by Congress, doctors would have faced a 21 percent cut in Medicare fees on Wednesday or Thursday. Senate leaders cleared the way for final passage by allowing votes on several amendments sought by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Not everyone, FRiend....Not everyone.
I wonder the same thing.
Moreover, post a thread about spending and debt, and 100 Freepers come out to condemn it and say we "don't have the money!!!!"
Bring up the fact that Medicare and other spending is skyrocketing and is the cause of most of the deficit, and you get hate mail.
ok, everyone that draws from it later. there are those few jobs with their own retirement plans that managed to be exempt. you are the lucky ones!
No cut means the burden is still on the young and those that have paid into this monstrosity for 40 years. Keep in mind, many seniors paid very little into the program. Cruz probably voted what was best for the country since BO was in support.
If you really believe that any tax savings would go to seniors, I just don’t know what to say to make you understand my premise. The original purpose of Social Security and Medicare was to help those who have come to the end of their ability to earn. They have worked, provided for, educated and housed their families in a lifetime of productivity. At present, any foreigner who strolls across our border, any drug addict, anyone who can claim a mental condition however far fetched, and any able bodied person who can claim back pain, is provided unlimited medical care, education, food, housing and mental healthcare for themselves, their spouses, any children they already have and also any they may produce in the future. Instead of targeting those segments of our society, politicians always find the elderly an easy mark for some reason.
While I fully agree with your point that entitlement needs to be addressed; I suggest that, instead of adding to the freebies for the able bodied “poor”, (who are the new rich) as this bill does, that some ways be found to put the younger generation back to work and end the “entitlement” mentality” that has so many jumping on the Welfare Wagon.
If the elderly are considered a burden to the extent that they seem to be by this Society, then we have become something other than America. It doesn’t bode well for any society to hold it’s unborn and its elderly in such disregard as this one does.
The 92-to-8 vote in the Senate, following passage in the House last month by an overwhelming vote of 392 to 37, was a major success for Republicans, who devised a solution to a complex policy problem that had frustrated lawmakers of both parties.... also extends the Children's Health Insurance Program for two years, through 2017.
Thank you, belatedly, for several good counterpoints.
The first one, of course, troubled me a bit, but I didn’t have time to try to make a formula that accounted for increasing the savings over time to match the Medicare rates. It is a rabbit trail in any case.
I had forgotten altogether the family eligibility issue.
You are correct, we simply can’t afford the program. I fear that only a cataclysmic reset will accomplish any sort of return to sanity on many fronts.
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