Medicare
April 5, 2013 — John Hinderaker
A friend who has been on this particular case for a long time writes: Yet another NOW they tell us moment: President Obama had Senate Republicans nodding in agreement during a recent ice-breaking dinner as he described a basic problem for the nation’s fiscal future: For each dollar that Americans pay for Medicare, they ultimately draw about $3 in benefits. What’s more, he added, most people do not understand that.
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March 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
At Power Line, we maintain, as most conservatives do, that President Obama isn’t serious about entitlement reform. But those on the other side of the great political divide are equally insistent that Obama is open to, and in fact has proposed, serious reform of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Who is right? It depends on the meaning of “reform.” For, as Yuval Levin shows, although Obama has proposed some cuts,
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March 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Earlier this evening, Paul suggested that Republicans should be open to a “grand bargain” as long as it includes significant entitlement reform. In principle, I don’t disagree. But is there any realistic possibility that the Democrats will agree to entitlement reform? One might think so, since everyone acknowledges that the current regime is unsustainable, and if entitlements are not reformed they either will be repealed, or our economy and our
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January 22, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Liberals are feeling triumphant these days, but in the backs of their minds there must be a sense of foreboding. They won this year by demonizing Republicans and by bribing various demographic groups with government largesse. But the Left’s tactical victory can’t conceal the fact that its ideology is bankrupt. The left’s real enemy isn’t Republicans, it is arithmetic. Welfare states are collapsing all around the world. Ours is on
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December 12, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama’s goal in the fiscal cliff negotiations seems clear. He wants to force the Republicans to swallow increases in the tax rates of high-earners and thereby bring in at least one trillion dollars in revenue. Alternatively, if the Republicans won’t swallow rate increases for the “wealthy,” he wants to see everyone’s taxes go up and be able to blame Republicans for it. The Republican goal also seems clear. They
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September 28, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Seniors in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia strongly oppose what they take to be the Romney-Ryan position on Medicare, according to polling by the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation. More than 70 percent of seniors in these states say they favor keeping Medicare as a program with guaranteed benefits, rather than moving to a system in which the government provides fixed payments with which to purchase coverage. And in Florida,
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September 23, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In its early days the Obama administration avidly promoted financial incentives for the adoption of electronic health records by medical providers. According to Obama, the adoption of electronic health records would save $80 billion in health care costs. The use of electronic health records has been touted by the government (state and federal) for years. Financial incentives for the adoption of electronic health records by Medicare and Medicaid providers, however,
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August 20, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The stark choice between the competing visions presented in this year’s presidential election manifests itself most plainly in the Medicare debate. President Obama wants to rely on the federal government to impose price controls and other forms of micromanagement to contain costs while delivering good service. The Romney-Ryan ticket wants to rely on a more traditionally American mechanism – competition. The Romney-Ryan approach is already proving its efficacy in the
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August 19, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama says that this election presents Americans with a very clear choice. He is right. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan believe that America can prosper economically the way it traditionally has – through free markets and competition. This is what they mean when they talk about unleashing the private sector. Obama, though, calls this approach the same “snake oil trickle-down economics” that “caused the mess in the first place.”
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August 18, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Yuval Levin argues that the Obama campaign’s Medicare-based attacks on Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan aren’t working so far and are unlikely ultimately to succeed. But Levin bases these claims on his view of the dynamics of the argument, not on any data as to how voters perceive the matter. Team Obama has only just begun its Mediscare campaign. Thus, it would be premature to underestimate the force of this
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August 17, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate should help to focus attention on the federal budget, a critical issue that by rights is an easy winner for Republicans. (There is a reason why the Democrats have refused to adopt any budget at all for more than three years.) By now, news accounts have made it clear that Ryan has some sort of plan to deal with the
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August 14, 2012 — John Hinderaker
If there was one sure thing in this year’s election, it was that the Democrats would demagogue Medicare. You might ask: isn’t that a little tough when Obama cut $716 billion from Medicare to finance Obamacare? Nah. Who needs facts when you’re Barack Obama? So the Democrats are raising money on Mediscare; this email came out today: John – We’re trying to get the word out about Paul Ryan’s plan
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August 13, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Democrats have been quick to pounce on Paul Ryan’s budget, which was enacted by the House of Representatives and incorporates significant entitlement reform. The Democrats, of course, have no budget at all–astonishingly, they refuse to adopt one. They have no plan for entitlements other than to allow them to go bankrupt and, presumably, be repealed by Congress. The Democrats apparently believe that most voters prefer no plan to salvage unsustainable
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April 24, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Medicare Trustees released their annual report yesterday. Today, at a conference hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, summarized the Trustees’ report. The picture isn’t pretty. The report projects that the Medical Hospital Insurance trust fund will run out of assets in 2024. But, as Foster explained, even this dire projection is almost certainly too optimistic. That’s because the projections are based on changes to
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April 6, 2012 — John Hinderaker
I don’t, actually. I think Medicare was Congress’s great blunder of the 20th century. I think the program will continue bleeding money until it bankrupts the United States of America and destroys our economy, in roughly 15 years. And it will be popular right up to the end, as long as people perceive that they are getting something for nothing, or–same thing–a lot for very little. So in my view,
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