Making my case for why I don't think that Medicare should pay for long term nursing care.

Sorry, but I didn't want to hijack someone else's thread so I decided to start my own. If Medicare had to pay for long term nursing care for the elderly, the fund would be bankrupt within in a very short time. Long term nursing care is very expensive.

This is not what medicare was designed for. Also, I find it hard to believe that the government is not paying for any Alzheimer's research, for a disease that threatens most retirees and their families should they live long enough. I read an article the other day which stated that 1 of 5 people who reached age 90 had no cognitive disabilities, which says to me that 4 out of 5 do have some form of cognitive disabilities. This is the subject that Americans and our politicians needs to be talking about. Thanks to Sarah Palin back in 2008, she made it almost impossible to talk about, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be talking about it and what i'm talking about is Sarah Palin's death panels. Nursing homes when you aren't dealing with a demented patient are incredibly expensive. When you add dementia to the mix, it's that much more expensive.

I am dealing with two parents one 85 and one 84, who both have recently come down in the past year with early stages of dementia. My dad's came on with gangbusters and his cognitive skill are diminishing quickly. You wouldn't believe that he was still driving as recently as last September and living alone as recent as 4 months ago. The problem is that his body is still relatively healthy, thanks to a host of pills he takes to control a host of ailments common with old age, but he's becoming less and less cooperative each day, and more and more defiant with those trying to assist him. My mother is in the early throws of dementia and still relatively healthy, and could live another decade. But because she lived alone, some of my siblings sought a temporary conservativeship over her because they thought she was making poor choices which could threaten her finances, (i.e. buying things she didn't need from door to door salesmen.) The problem is that the one with dementia is usually the last to know it. Our parents lived in separate households which only makes the problem worse. Their children up until recently have had to split their non working time going between their two residences. Few people could afford 24 hour in home care of some sort or for an assisted living facility with a dementia ward. I could buy a condo on a beach and the payments would be less than it would cost for a month in a shared room in an assisted living facility with a dementia ward. I don't think Medicare should have to pay these types of bills. The system was not set up for this type of thing and the system would be bankrupt in no time.

People who would have normally died of natural causes a decade earlier due to heart attacks or stroke or other diseases can now live decades longer thanks to medication and other medical devices that keep our hearts pumping but no one has yet to find a cure to keep brain cells from dying resulting in a continual degradation of our cognitive skills. When I reach that point and perhaps before I reach that point, I want to be able to die with dignity. My siblings and I have investigated various types of faciiities over the past 9 months checking out what options are out there for the cognitive impaired and what it costs, and what the quality of life appears to be at these types of facilities and I've personally have arrived at a few conclusions for me. I don't want to go to Adult Day Care or be put in a nursing care facility because my working adult children who have not reached retirement age, can't supervise me 24/7. I also would rather pass on to my children any resources I have remaining when I can no longer function on my own, or tend to my own needs, rather than spend my final days or what could be years being medicated in some smelly nursing facility with a bunch of other demented patients. Our body parts were not designed to last forever, but modern devices can keep our heart ticking long past what Mother Nature intended.

Hater’s gonna hate. I thought Hillary did great this morning.

I'm thankful for the photos shared here and for the many who made the trip to support her. Thank you all. I then spent more time than I should have, sifting through the anti-Hillary posts, since you can't miss them. They're everywhere.

Hillary could have been anything she wanted to be. No one can deny that the woman is incredibly smart, insightful, and yes ambitious. But so what. If she had a pair of balls, she would have been president a long time ago. But there has always been this double standard for women; so the best she could do before now, is to be the woman behind the man. We know the media is going to spend the dog days of summer talking about the Clinton’s wealth and conducting bullshit polls about whether American’s think Hillary is honest or not, but if the media was truly honest they would take a poll about what the country thinks about the honesty of every candidate running for president, or any office for that matter and I’m sure the results would show that Hillary is in good company. And if all the Clinton’s were interested in was wealth, they could have had that decades ago and spared themselves and this nation a ton of grief.

For those of you who don’t like her, and have no plans to vote for her, that’s your business. But be honest about it. It takes a hell of a lot of guts to put yourself out there as a candidate. Much more than it takes to sling mud via a keyboard. If Elizabeth Warren wanted to run for president she could have, but she didn’t. If Bernie has a loyal fan base out there who CAN get him to the White House, so be it. Time will tell. But stop opining about what could have been, and what ifs. Running for president is not easy. Hillary’s been down this road before, and she knows that it’s not going to be easy, especially with what she’s already had to put up with in the past three decades with all the bullshit investigations woven out of whole cloth. I’m always amazed at how the Democratic party members like to eat their own, particularly when there is a whole host of GOP members who are waiting, ready and willing to do their bidding for them. No I don’t have thousands of posts here on this website like some here, but than I’ve got a job and a family and didn’t have time to rack up thousands of posts over the past, but I’ve always kept myself politically informed and voted, and my husband has worked on both national and local democratic campaigns in the past few years since he was been retired.

The GOP has a host of billionaires ready to finance their puppet candidates who will do their bidding to continue stacking the deck of the Supreme Court, suppress voter’s rights, try and repeal the ACA, continue fighting the last war with other people children’s boots on the ground, ship your jobs overseas, overturn environmental protections, further reduce taxation on the top earners, etc, etc, etc. The Democratic Party needs a candidate who can win. If that candidate is Bernie Sanders, time will tell. In the meantime, ask yourself what YOU have done lately to further the Democratic cause. If the only thing has been to sit at your keyboard and bash those who’ve thrown their hat in the ring, than heaven help us all. I plan to retire at the end of the year, just in time to work on Hillary’s campaign. If Hillary’s no longer a candidate, I’ll campaign for whomever the Democratic candidate is, because never before have the principles of the two major parties been so stark in contrast.

Will the Dems in 2015 allow "the perfect to become the enemy of the good"?

I've checked in a couple of times today to take the pulse of this board in reaction to Hillary announcing her candidacy and I was hoping that the Dems in 2015 won't permit themselves to become entrenched to the point that we, (to borrow a much maligned phrase from President Obama), " allow the perfect to become the enemy of the necessity".

And yes I meant to say 2015, and not 2016 because if we play out cards right and screw things up enough, this thing could be over with before 2016 gets here.

The GOP which holds one BS convention, forum, pep rally, symposium etc, a month, will take their F'd Up candidates warts and all, but for some strange reason, our party is always in search of that elusive candidate who represents the perfect Dem whose just there waiting on the sidelines to throw their hat in the ring, and take on the F'd up job of being a candidate for the President of the United States in his modern era of 24/7, 2 year campaigning/fundraising, Koch Bros financed sandbagging, gotcha politics, in the era where a lie can make it around the world before the truth can get its pants on. There is NO perfect candidate for the Democratic nomination, whomever that might be if he or she exists at all. We have to accept the fact that a good percentage of our party is too busy Keeping Up With the Kardashians to bother with knowing who the current Vice President of our country is.

There is too much at state with the way the likes of groups like ALEC and the Koch Bros have managed to turn their minorities numbers into majorities legislature office holders in so many Red States by rewriting the rules in less than a decade. And if they are permitted to take the one remaining obstacle in their way, The Presidency, there may be no way of EVER undoing the havoc they might be able to reap on this nation and the world, in my lifetime with them in charge of the SCOTUS. Get over it people. The God, Guns, and Gold Party are in it to win it in 2016. We need to get behind the one candidate who wants the job, and is capable of beating whatever candidate that other party puts out and get excited about it, and quit your bitchin.

I don't belong to any organized political party. I am a member of the Democratic Party.

If anyone still wonders why we can't ever get anything accomplish when our party is in control, you have to look no further than this message board. To all the Hillary haters here today, who are sitting on their duffs, waiting for the second coming of some "Obama-esqe" member of the Democratic Party, who is going to get off the couch and the keyboard, and step up to the Platform, and raise a billion dollars which the Kock Bros and their ilk are prepared to raise, and rally the party around themselves, and make people want to knock on the doors of strangers and try to get them excited about getting voters to the polls in 2016, than show the rest of us your plan for keeping control of the White House in 2016, until we can somehow find a way to win back the House before 2020 from a gerrymandered House of Representatives and/or State legislatures, or regain the Senate.

Until then the rest of us don't want to hear your same ole CRAP, day in and day out.

Chris Matthews on Hardball talking about what happens if Blacks don't show up and the Dems lose

control of the Senate. Chris Matthews has been knocking the President for the past year and playing into the Rights' claims and criticisms against the President about the ACA website crapola, and that he's aloof, and stories about Reagan and Tip and how they were able to sit down for a drink in the evenings, as if this Congress is the Congress when Tip O'Neil was the Speaker of the House. If the Dems lose everything Nov 4, it will be their fault that they never learned to play HARDBALL like the GOP. The Dems never learned how to stick with one coherent message (even if you're wrong) the way the Rigthwingnut machine knows how to do. As the saying goes, if you repeat a lie enough times it becomes the truth. As someone mentioned here a few days ago, a couple of years ago, the GOP was on life support. But their constant running around screaming that the house was on fire while doing nothing concrete to shore up or reinforce the house, will return them to the leadership of both houses of Congress on Tuesday and the Dems will have no one to blame but themselves.

Someone needs to explain to Sarah Palin the definition of "Humiliation" and "Humility"

Erik Cantor to 'resign early'. Wants special election.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — After a surprise primary election loss, U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor will resign his seat in the House of Representatives months earlier than expected.

The congressman will step down Aug. 18 and ask Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to call a special election to enable his successor to take office immediately, Cantor spokesman Doug Heye said Friday.

Hours after stepping down as House majority leader Thursday, Cantor told the Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1puQVLX) he would step down instead of serving his full term, which would have ended in January.

Cantor told the newspaper a special election would give the winner seniority rather than waiting until January to take office with the new Congress. ...

The difference between Dems and Repugs. They have to make crap up to be outraged about.

Raising the debt ceiling, the Deficit, Obamacare, Obama taking away their guns, trading 5 senior citizen members of Al Qaeda for 1 American POW, the IRS cracking down on 501(c)(3) abuses, Obama not pursuing illegal immigration in spite of the fact that he's deported more illegal immigrants, that all his predecessors, and of course Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.

When their guy is in the WH, we don't have to make stuff up to be outraged about. They give us more than we can ever imagine.

I guess the GOP has become the equivalent of the proverbial 'soccer player feigning injury' in order to get a penalty, whether or not it makes them look like idiots.

We don't have to impeach SCOTUS, just hold them to the same standard

as other federal judges are held to. This means that SCOTUS members couldn't be taking all expense paid trips and speaking honoraria from Koch Brothers type political activist organizations for speaking to their politically activists groups on how to thwart the law and get your bogus politically activist case heard before the SCOTUS. SCOTUS members deciding for themselves whether or not they should recuse themselves from cases in which they have a conflict of interest without any fear recourse for failure to do so.