Posted on 10/22/2015 6:19:59 PM PDT by GIdget2004
Republicans have fended off accusations for years that they'd gut Medicare for seniors and end the program "as we know it."
Not Ben Carson. The former neurosurgeon acknowledges he would abolish the program altogether.
Carson, who now leads the GOP field in Iowa according to the latest Quinnipiac Poll, would eliminate the program that provides health care to 49 million senior citizens, as well as Medicaid, and replace it with a system of cradle-to-grave savings accounts which would be funded with $2,000 a year in government contributions. While rivals have been pummeled for proposing less radical changes, Carson hasn't faced the same scrutiny -- and his continued traction in polls has left GOP strategists and conservative health care wonks scratching their heads.
"This isn’t a borderline issue. The politics of this are horrific," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, head of the American Action Forum and health care adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Leni...
In my previous post to you I MEANT to say ...
your post #19.
That should have been: “Decisions are made by faceless bean counters who wouldn’t know you from a bar of soap. The free market could only be an improvement.”
Only if they had hidden the contributions they would have saved, in their mattresses. A liberal source suggests the following numbers for contributions and benefits:
Senator Tom Coburn (a physician in private life) has estimated that the average American couple contributes approximately $110,000 to Medicare over their working careers and receives over $330,000 of Medicare benefits. On Feb. 20, USA Today cited Urban Institute data pegging those same figures at $88,000 and $387,000, respectively.From the bankrate.com savings calculator, assuming a $87K in contributions over 40 years and 6.5% compounded rate of return (3% less than the S&P 500):
Your Result Your monthly deposit of $180.00 for 40 years with an interest rate of 6.50% compounded Monthly
with an initial starting balance of $1.00
Translation:
'I can do socialism and other unconstitutional stuff better than the Democrats.'
There is no “lockbox” like Algore was constantly proclaiming. That money isn’t squirreled away somewhere and saved. It’s spent and doesn’t earn a cent in interest.
The numbers still apply.
I have made sure I always had medical insurance. I went years without a claim. Yet I paid thousands, tens of thousands in premiums, for over 30 years. As I have been self-employed, guess who paid my premiums, along with 15%+ self-employment taxes totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, part of which is meant to fund Medicare, and part of which is meant to fund disabilty insurance?
I recently became medically disabled. My main treatment costs $70000 - 80000 per year. If I am lucky enough for a “cure,” I will require a hospitalization and procedure costing around $100,000, as well as $25000 -$30000 of drugs per year. Along with frequent doctors visits and occasional trips to the hospital.
This is what I need to stay alive. I am currently on Medicare as the government has declared me legally disabled.
Given that I paid for others for decades, what is owed to me?
Money doesn’t grow on trees. So the government just prints more when it needs more?
****************************************************************************
Well, as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what government does.
Oh. Thanks. Get it now. Since we all pay into it from birth practically, I’d like something for the money I put into it for 30 years (not exactly sure when they started stealing money from me for medicare) but until they stop taking money from us every payday, I want medicare to at least survive until I get my money back. Dang thieves.
And this guy is leading in Iowa????
if they put controls in place, the program would die.. Only reason it is popular is because consumer never has to worry about it because it ins’t his/her money,
Then seniors will view the termination or abridgement of these benefits as large-scale theft from the productive classes. And vote accordingly. The GOP is supposed to represent the productive classes. The moment it joins the Democrats in separating the productive classes from what they (mostly) paid for, its raison d'etre will have vanished into thin air.
Not only have the states never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to establish national retirement and healthcare programs like Social Security and Medicare, but there's never been anything stopping the individual states from establishing their own 10th Amendment-protected retirement and healthcare programs.
The reason that Social Security and Medicare exist is the following. The corrupt, FDR-era Supreme Court wrongly let the likewise corrupt Democratic socialist-controlled Congress use the Constitution’s General Welfare Clause (GWC; 1.8.1) to justify establishing these social spending programs (Helvering v. Davis).
But FDR’s activist justices and the low-information 74th Congress made the same “mistake” in interpreting the GWC that the likewise low-information 14th Congress did when that earlier Congress drafted the public works act of 1817.
More specifically, President James Madison, Madison generally regarded as the father of the Constitution, had indicated in the constitutionally required veto explanation that the GWC, which the 14th Congress used to justify that bill, was not an express delegation of power to Congress. Madison explained that the GWC was basically an introductory clause for the clauses which followed it in Section 8 which are express delegations of power.
”To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust.” —James Madison, Veto of federal public works bill, 1817
Also note that both the FDR era 74th Congress that passed the bill that established Social Security and Medicare without the required constitutional justification, and the 111th Congress which likewise passed Obamacare without the necessary constitutional justification, had also wrongly ignored the Constitution’s Article V requirement to successfully propose appropriate amendments to Constitution to the states before establishing such spending programs. If the states had chosen to ratify such amendments then Congress would have the constitutionally required consent of the Article V state majority to establish these programs.
Getting back to the introductory paragraph of this post, if a given state’s legal majority voters want state-managed retirement and healthcare programs, then there’s nothing in the Constitution that prevents the individual states from taxing and spending to run their own custom programs.
And should most of the states ever decide that the federal government can run such programs better then the states can (ahem!), then there’s nothing stopping the states from amending the Constitution to expressly grant the specific powers to the feds to do so.
The bottom line is that the ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators who help to pass Section 8-unjustifiable House appropriations bills, like the bills that established unconstitutional Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare, along with it.
“And it might hurt the republicans by association.”
The first thought that popped into my head when I read about Carson’s proposal.
“Let me ask you. Do you want to leave 53 million old people without health care? You have got to be MAD!!”
Indeed. After having money stolen by the government from every pay check I’ve ever earned to pay for this health care they’ve promised me all my life, I’m two years away from being dropped from my company’s private health insurance plan (which I pay the full freight for) and dumped into Medicare. So now Ben’s big plan is to fuck me and 53 million other seniors in the same boat?
proto???
Then we can discuss the fraud reduction, since its your money you'd be throwing away. IBM offered husain for free a med fraud package they thought would prevent $900,000.000.000 per year, he refused
not paying attention huh?
Medicare premium is going up @55 dollar a month - the biggest increase it it’s history - while, at the same time NO cost of living increase...for the third time since 1940 - and all 3 times by O’bumbles
So, a deductible, 20% co-pay and an average @ $150+ monthly premium - on an ‘account’ we’ve PRE-paid into for 50 years before being able to use it. ... while millions who are not SS age and who have not paid in - are getting 100% free medical. How about, instad, paying those people out of the General fund - and pay back the 2 trillion dollars that have been embezzled from our account - and keep the sticky fingers out of the cookie jar.
It isn’t SS that’s the problem. It’s the misuse - out and out embezzlement - that’s the problem.
If you don’t get that, you’re part of the problem.
$2 K would not even take care of a nursing home, most meds, and most doctors seniors use. 1 CT alone cost over $3 K. 1 Trip to the ER for chest pain cost more than that. My last Mammo cost over $3K after we got the statements from Medicare/Tricare Life, both Fed controlled medical care.
I hate to think what my full Cardio work up cost, besides the Cardiologist trip. They found a leaky valve. Primary has you in every 3 months to monitor blood work from all the meds they have you on especially for cholesterol, arthritis and any other health issue. That alone is about $350 per visit. Since finding the leaky valve I suspect that will mean closer monitoring. That does not include the Hematologist who is monitoring a bone marrow blood cell issue, he ruled out Leukemia, but does not know at this point why the Hemoglobin is off.
Does he NOT have any idea of what it cost to just go to the doctor today? And I’ve not included vision or dental. Hubby goes to the ophthalmologist every 6 months for Glaucoma.
Well no need to worry I am one of the Gen X’ers who will get nothing after the selfish boomers get done squandering our great country. Could that generation possibly be any worse. Sorry if you are in it but truth is hard sometimes.
Where would the government get that money to give folks $2000/year in this cradle-to-grave endeavor?
Now for a short public service announcement:
GO CRUZ!! Keep it up Trump!!
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