The Tennessean Editorial - "Let's dispel illusions on Medicare" - Nice Article In A Red State

[TomCADem]

Here is a nice article that also discloses that the Republican debt bill is more than just a plan to end Medicare in the future. It immediately guts many benefits now for lower and middle class Americans. Of course, being in a red state newspaper, the article just blames Ryan, not all the Republicans who voted for it, which is about everyone.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110605/OPINION01/306050022/Let-s-dispel-illusions-Medicare

First, to Ryan’s plan. Its supporters want people now 55 and older to breathe easy. Their Medicare coverage will be grandfathered in, and the limited subsidy plan wouldn’t kick in until 2022 anyway. However, as the nonpartisan National Journal reported last week, Ryan’s plan also repeals the Affordable Care Act enacted last year. That law closes the “doughnut hole” in the Medicare prescription-drug benefit — three-quarters of seniors’ drug costs are covered until they reach $2,840 and after they reach $4,550. In between, they must pay 100 percent.

Right away, nearly 4 million of today’s seniors would see drug costs go up significantly if Ryan’s proposal passes. But wait: There’s more. All the seniors’ preventive-care services covered under the Affordable Care Act, such as mammograms, colonoscopies and smoking-cessation programs, would go away. This, even though Republican leaders have stressed personal responsibility measures as the preferred alternative to universal government care.

Another severe hit to the elderly lay in the Ryan plan’s $744 billion in proposed cuts to Medicaid, the Journal report explained. Nine million elderly, low-income Americans qualify for Medicaid as well as Medicare, and it is through Medicaid that they receive coverage for long-term care.

Ryan would turn the reduced amount of money for Medicaid into block grants administered by the states, many of which have poor records on long-term care. Home- and community-based care, considered preferable by health experts and by patients themselves, already have been cut back in Tennessee this year. That would only worsen with this proposal. A step backward, to “warehousing” of elderly in crowded, understaffed nursing homes would be inevitable.

And none of this addresses another core concern about Ryan’s plan: People who are now 55 and older do not want generations of younger Americans to have lives of illness and neglect when they reach 55, either. Those are their children and grandchildren. It is not all self-interest where illness and aging are concerned. It’s just that today’s seniors are the ones who already know how it feels.

It all comes back to the inequity of the GOP plan: When they speak of sacrifice, they mean middle- and lower-class Americans and the elderly on fixed incomes. A fair and workable budget-cutting plan can no longer ignore the tax breaks and tax shelters that the richest Americans enjoy as a result of being shielded by congressional Republicans, or the costly taxpayer bailouts for now-profitable corporations.

[Tennessee Gal]

1. Wow!

Hard to believe that is in the Tennessean.

[socialist_n_TN]

6. I agree. It was hard for me to believe also when I

read it this morning. The Tennessean is a center right newspaper and this is pretty unheard of. Not on the issue so much as the tone.

As I said downthread, I expect them to be accused of "class warfare" by the end of this coming week.

[EC]

7. They already are screaming class warfare

in the comments...some really dense people there.

[socialist_n_TN]

8. Well remember that the Tennessean covers the entire

middle Tennessee area and that includes some outlying areas that are EXTREMELY RW.

I'll have to look at the comments at the link. I didn't actually click the link because I read the editoral in the paper myself this morning.

[underpants]

2. Working with it every day I can tell you that the 50% discount in the donut hole is HUGE

BTW - BigPharma is absorbing that cut not the insurance companies

Anyone who is on MediCARE and MediCAID pretty much gets meds for free - as they should. The cuts in Medicaid will severely hit not only those living in "assisted living" but the assisted living industry as well.

[spedtr90]

3. Democrats NEED to support the Progressive Caucus budget - NOW

The editorial ends with:

"Meanwhile Democrats, the president included, cannot simply wait for Republicans to implode. They have had as much time to come up with a plan for fiscal responsibility as their GOP counterparts. Americans would like to see a courageous proposal that spreads the austerity around, one in which the most vulnerable and underserved citizens are not asked to bear the brunt simply because they do not have money and the access to influence elected officials.

If this were to happen, we’d find ourselves well on our way to fixing what ails our country."

IF?? The Progressive budget is just that. It should be in press releases to every newspaper in the country. It is the best campaign advertising democrats have. At the very least it is a great counter and could bring about a compromise that is actually moderate.

http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70

[socialist_n_TN]

4. I'm meeting with Jim Cooper tomorrow..........

along with my MoveOn group and that's going to be MY question for him. Why didn't he support this budget? I've had a couple of letters from him in response to my phone calls of support of this budget and his answers didn't address my issues. Hopefully, I can get him to give me a REAL answer tomorrow.

[socialist_n_TN]

5. Congrats to the Tennessean...........

and I'm sure before the week's out they'll be accused of "class warfare". :) We TRY here in Nashville, but it's pretty difficult with the whole state around us batshit crazy. Even when we do something progressive like the antigay provisions for companies that do business with the city, we get overruled by the Teabagger legislature and of course, Haslem signs anything put in front of him by that same legislature.