Posted on 05/18/2002 7:17:29 PM PDT by Uncle Bill
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:33:32 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON — President Bush said Saturday that Congress must deliver on prescription drugs for Medicare, a promise made by Bush and congressional candidates across the country.
"Medicare is an essential program, but it has not kept pace with the advances in medicine," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "We need to do more to fulfill Medicare's promise."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
He's soooo brilliant! Can't you see, by being a socialist, he's beating the democrats at their own game! Then eventually, he'll turn around and spank them!
There's not a day that goes by that I don't thank God George Bush is our President!
Hey everybody, let's sing! "Our Bush...is an awe-some Bush!
</MASSIVE, gut wrenching, vomit inducing sarcasm!>...
I'm taking a play from the Bush political playbook by getting the flames out of the way, so the REAL Conservatives can get their say!!!
KEEP ON FREEPIN' ON!!!
Only One Side On Medicare
Media Research Center
By L. Brent Bozell III
July 1, 1999
As the hourglass of the Clinton presidency empties toward an end, the networks are trying to wrap up this party the way they began: promoting more socialized medicine. The big network anchors and reporters have unilaterally decided that this very long scandal phase of the Clinton years is over, and now we must march on to the exciting thought of growing the government, to speak in their vernacular.
Bill Clinton has announced triumphantly that the feds somehow have found an additional trillion dollars in federal surpluses coming out our ears, so it is our patriotic duty to spend this taxpayer bounty on Medicare beneficiaries. Clinton proposes we start by subsidizing prescriptions. Okay, how much of this surplus would be spent? CBS reporters surprisingly warned several times it would be "expensive." But they were the exception. For most of the press, the mantra was cost, schmost, we just gotta have it.
On NBC's "Today," co-host Katie Couric was unequivocal in her endorsement: "It sounds like a no-brainer. Seniors spend billions of dollars on prescription drugs every year, often putting them in terrible financial situations. So what's wrong with this plan?"
Later on the same show, NBC reporter Lisa Myers warned of the savage drug market: "Seniors without the bargaining muscle also must deal with rising overall drug prices, up 68 percent in the last eight years. Now the average prescription costs $37, the average brand name drug almost $52. Pharmacist Jack Collins says he sees a serious, perhaps deadly toll on elderly customers."
Call it Medi-scare Redux: if you don't do what liberals want, people will die!
Myers suggested a solution to this epidemic of drug-deficient retirees: "The President's plan, however, will try to change that and require that seniors be given a discount of about ten percent on all drug purchases. O'Laughlin [a Medicare beneficiary who led the story] says every little bit helps and hopes Medicare will finally begin to meet her changing needs, so that she can both stay well and afford to live well." So now we have a new entitlement: the right not to be burdened by large prescription bills.
But that evening on ABC's "World News Tonight," reporter John Cochran suggested Bill Clinton's plan was actually too little. "For many older people the Clinton plan is welcomed, but it would hardly solve the problems of those who have huge drug bills every month. That would include the Mitchells, who live in Florida," he declared, introducing his sympathetic characters. "Sixty-eight-year-old Willie has kidney problems, heart problems, and diabetes. The Mitchells' combined income each month from Social Security is only $1,200. Last month Willie's drug bill alone was more than $1,000. To make it through each month he cuts back on food and on medications, cutting his pills into quarters."
Cochran continued to hammer home the flaws in Clinton's underfinanced plan: "Under the Clinton plan Willie would only get $83 a month, not enough and he is skeptical Washington politicians will do even that much." Cochran concluded with his selected victim's best pitch: "His doctor urged him to go to Mexico, where drugs are cheaper. But as a war veteran who paid taxes all his life, Willie can't understand why his own government can't help more."
With that kind of emotional heart-tugging, how could you oppose the proposed new spending?
But Couric, Cochran, Myers, and Co. aren't bothering to look at some facts. James Frogue of the Heritage Foundation found a very different picture. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average senior spent $637 out of pocket on prescription and non-prescription drugs in 1997. This contrasts with the $1,193 that same senior spent on "dining out." The National Academy of Social Insurance, in a recent study, found that the median amount spent by seniors out of pocket on drugs is $200, meaning that 50 percent of America's seniors spend less than $200 annually on drugs. That also means victims like Willie Mitchell, with his monthly $1000 drug bill, is utterly atypical of seniors, and focusing on him is competely typical for panicked network reporters.
Frogue also notes that Clinton would increase the burden on the administrators of Medicare, the Health Care Financing Administration. The need for some cost control would then lead to limiting the number of drugs available to recipients. While HCFA is already struggling with 800 million annual claims from Medicare Part A and B, "the additional administrative load involved in overseeing Medicare Part D (prescription drugs), with potentially over a billion claims, would be an administrative nightmare."
But the networks don't really care about the gory administrative details, as long as they've riveted their audiences with scary stories that sell the false security of statism, and the resulting electoral success of their liberal Democrat friends.
On the Medicare thing, just do
what I did. Ok. Yeah, yeah, you got it.
We'll be taking contributions soon.
ROTFLMAO!!! Now that's rich.......since when has fedgov ever proposed spending amount x and actually only spending amount x? Fedgov habitually underestimates the costs of anything and everything they do!!!
Unfriggin believable.....$19 billion a year (St. George), $35 billion a year (the wimps) and $50+ and counting billion a year using the traitors figures.
I'd hate to look back to what they said Mediscare would cost back when they first decided they would have the program [I have read the figures previously] and compare it to what the real world figures were--even back when they first started it up.
As I recall listening to congressional hearings, Mediscare recipients only pay about 1/3 of the actual cost of what it costs to insure them--the taxpayer makes up the difference....and now, we're being asked to just hand over another chunk of change to by votes for politicians.
This allows the government to decide who gets drugs and who doesn't qualify. I hope the program is administered more appropriately than our drug program for education. If not, we are going to see a lot of seniors eligible for the stupor inducing drugs that students are on.
And it isn't going to get any better with the education system locked in place that we have. Until we start with the changing people one at a time to understanding what made this nation great, we will continue the spiral into socialism/communism as was predicted--without firing a shot....
Personally, I don't see any hope, especially when you look at what is supposedly a website of 'conservative' voices/thought and the vast majority act as cheerleaders for the 'conservative' version of socialism/communism!!!
STATEMENT OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY ON THE NEED FOR A
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"And then, of course, there's Senator Edward Kennedy. And the folks at the Crawford Coffee Shop would be somewhat shocked when I told them I actually like the fellow. He is a fabulous United States senator."
Source
Yes, but they're winning in their mind. They just haven't figured out yet that the prize that they will reap for their children and their grandchildren is totalitarianism. Or worse, some know it, but would care less, as long as an "R" is stamped on their forehead, and they get their checks and services, cocktail party invitations, and a picture of Bush. American citizens are the problem. Socialist politicians like George W. Bush are a dime a dozen.
Keep your comments on your fridge. If you are fairly young, you'll see it before your very eyes.
Wait until a hardcore Marxist commie gets these in his hands. The main thing is, we need more laws. As you can see, we just don't have enough. You could hold on to the Constitution, if it still existed. It's all over. Not even a shot fired. I had always hoped and dreamed, even as a small boy, that there would always be a large supply of patriots in the country to run off the confiscators of tyranny. My father told me there would be. He was wrong. I was wrong. Just hands reaching for more.
All the news networks played it as the biggest goof Congress had made in a generation, sure to be repealed the next year -- and it was.
Not much chance that they'll fashion the new plan on the old one, though. (Although I wouldn't be surprised if the AARP also had a hand in the cookie jar stew this time around.)
George W. Bush's Plan To Strengthen Socialism in America:
The President's Framework to Strengthen Medicare
"Medicare’s current benefits were modeled on a good private insurance plan – from 36 years ago, in 1965."
George W. Bush - Source
"MORE TAXES WON'T SAVE MEDICARE" - Statement of U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm
"I WANT TO THANK THE PRESIDENT FOR ANNOUNCING HIS APPOINTEES WHO WILL JOIN US ON THE NEW MEDICARE COMMISSION. NOW THAT THE COMMISSION'S MEMBERSHIP IS COMPLETE, I HOPE WE CAN CONCLUDE QUICKLY THAT RAISING TAXES TO RESCUE MEDICARE JUST WON'T WORK. THE 25 MEDICARE TAX INCREASES THAT RAISED THE YEARLY MAXIMUM LEVY FROM $46 IN 1966 TO $3,900 IN 1994 TO AN UNLIMITED AMOUNT TODAY DEMONSTRATE THAT RAISING TAXES ONLY POSTPONES THE DAY OF RECKONING.
"THE SENATE'S HEALTH CARE SUBCOMMITTEE HAS HELD A SERIES OF HEARINGS ON THE FUTURE OF MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY THIS YEAR, AND HERE'S WHAT WE'VE FOUND:
"SINCE MEDICARE WAS CREATED IN 1965 AS A MEANS TO GUARANTEE HEALTH CARE FOR RETIREES, IT HAS DRAWN FUNDING FROM THE PAYROLL TAX AND ALSO FROM GENERAL TAX REVENUES OF THE GOVERNMENT. BUT WHEN BABY BOOMERS BEGIN PILING ONTO THE SYSTEM AS THE NUMBER OF WORKERS SUPPORTING IT DECLINES, MEDICARE WILL COLLAPSE FROM AN ACUTE SHORTAGE OF FUNDS. BANKRUPTCY IS PREDICTED IN JUST 10 YEARS.
"MEDICARE WAS ALREADY $5.3 BILLION IN THE HOLE LAST YEAR, AND IT IS CLEAR THAT GROWTH IN THE PROGRAM'S COSTS IS SIMPLY OUTPACING THE GOVERNMENT'S ABILITY TO PROVIDE MORE MONEY BY CONTINUING TO RAISE TAXES. MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO ULTIMATELY REQUIRES DOUBLING THE PAYROLL TAX. THAT WILL LEAVE A MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY PAYING MORE THAN HALF OF WHAT THEY EARN IN AN ASSORTMENT OF TAXES, AND THIS CALCULATION DOESN'T ACCOUNT FOR THE MASSIVE SOCIAL SECURITY TAX HIKES THAT INEVITABLY WILL BE PROPOSED. THERE IS BROAD AGREEMENT THAT A TAX BURDEN OF THAT MAGNITUDE WOULD CRUSH JOB CREATION AND END ECONOMIC EXPANSION IN AMERICA.
"IT SEEMS TO ME THAT DRAMATIC REFORM OF THE FINANCING MECHANISM IS THE ONLY REAL HOPE WE HAVE OF PREVENTING A TAX EXPLOSION, AN ECONOMIC IMPLOSION, OR A WHOLESALE DEFAULT ON MEDICARE BENEFITS.
Beware of Medicare Commission
"Patriotism may or may not be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the last refuge of a politician is almost certainly a commission. President Clinton, Bob Dole and almost everyone else in Washington seem to have agreed to place the future of Medicare reform in the hands of a bipartisan commission. As a general rule, anytime politicians reach this sort of consensus, we should reach for our wallets. The Medicare reform commission is no exception."
Financial crash forecast for D.C.
"The D.C. Federal City Council issued a report yesterday warning that Mayor Anthony A. Williams' government is well on its way to a major financial crisis just six months after the dissolution of the D.C. financial control board. The study, released by the private group of influential Washington civic and business leaders headed by former Sen. Bob Dole, predicts a $500 million budget deficit for the city by fiscal year 2005 if spending isn't brought under control."
Yeah, it's an idea whose time has come.
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Medicare is a solemn promise to senior citizens. It says, "Work hard. Pay into the system, and we will guarantee you health security in your retirement years." But that promise is broken every day, because Medicare does not cover the cost of needed prescription drugs.