The death toll continues to rise in Las Vegas and we still don’t have a motive. But yesterday’s mass shooting was NOT the worst in American history. That dishonor belongs to the Mormons who on September 11, 1857 committed an act of terrorism on a wagon train and massacred 120 men, women and children at Mountain Meadows, Utah.
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[House Republicans are planning to hold CHIP hostage by tying its funding to aid for Puerto Rico and raising Medicare rates for wealthier Americans. In other words, this is means testing Medicare. Oh and they’re going to shorten the enrollment period for Obamacare. Now, I was no fan of Obamacare for a myriad of reasons, not least of which that for the vast majority of people who were forced to buy it, the rates were too high, the deductibles ridiculous, the networks too narrow and the subsidy cutoffs bizarre and senseless. The worst part is it separated Americans workers into two classes: those who have employer based coverage with negotiated rates and the poor suckers who had no such protection from the free market. I have been in both classes and I have to say that based on the evidence, there is no substitute for having your employer go to bat for you. None. Let’s not try to pretend here. Currently, there is no reasonable solution for the crappy national health insurance policy we are stuck with except Medicare 4 All. But Republicans are determined to practice exploitative profit mining for their donors because some people are just not rich and irresponsible enough.
Warning: This bill is intentionally packed with stuff on Medicare so that we will forget that it is about funding for CHIP, which didn’t get renewed last Saturday. I am warning any provocateurs out there that any attempt to highjack the comments section to talk about Medicare instead of CHIP will not be tolerated. That might be the strategy but I’m not going to let it happen here. I am not Mark Zuckerberg and this is not Facebook.
I hate these people. They all need to lose their jobs.
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Weirdest Headline Today:
Semen-contaminated flutes might have been given to children, California school officials warn
No, that is not from The Onion.
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When we all get there, this will be the opening act:
The NYTimes curated a list of Tom Petty’s best songs. I’m going to download as much as I can today for my sound track at work and block the world from “draggin’ my heart around”
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
If as a retired person I was making between 500K and 6B, I would gladly pay more than 134/month for medicare.
I KNOW right? It sounds so reasonable. And that’s where it’s devious and evil. Because once you open the door to means testing, where do you draw the line? $500k this year? $50k ten years from now.
There is no way to know what future congress is going to set as the threshold to the means. Oh sure, maybe YOU don’t deserve it but I’ve paid into Medicare my whole working life and I don’t want anyone fucking around with it before I get there now that I have lost my career and had to start over making much less money in a different one.
Not only that, but then the Fox News crown will start working on you crotchety wealthy people and make you think the rest of us don’t deserve something we worked hard for simply because we had the misfortune to work in science or the IT industry and weren’t independent entrepreneurs. Why should YOU continue to pay taxes on something you don’t really need, they will ask. We’ve seen this script before.
It’s a VERY VERY BAD IDEA.
BUT, I’m not surprised that Republicans have decided fo use CHIP as bait. They’ve been dying to undermine Medicare for years. And we have seen that they absolutely no scruples whatsoever. Or empathy. Or conscience. They’ll just let a few dozen children die on the way to the E.R. from stressed out parents waiting too long. Then they’ll blame the Democrats for not eating their poison mushrooms and refusing to vote on a package with a bunch of other ugly things. They’re evil. No, seriously. I don’t say that lightly. They’re evil people.
I have paid the max into Medicare and Social Security since I started my working career… in fact I was convinced that the max was always raised to be just more than my latest raise had bumped my salary.
I agree that 50K would be a non-starter with me… 500K on the other hand sounds to me like a place where you would likely not even sign up for part B, so I have no issue with this at all.
The problem is if you open the door to this, the threshold WILL get lowered. Medicare has always been on the GOP’s target list and as soon as you introduce means testing, the whole concept is compromised.
How about this… tie it to something that likely would NEVER go down, like say 3* congressional salary (that puts it at 522K). I understand what you are saying, I just think that at some point you have enough and should not be entitled to more. A retired person with 522K in annual income is really quite well off IMHO
Ah, yes, NOW I remember why it is such a bad idea to put Medicare changes in this bill.
It’s because 9 MILLION CHILDREN ARE BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY IT.
So, NO, I’m not going to be sidetracked by this evil piece of diversion on Medicare. If you want to debate that, and have every good reason to NOT mess with means testing, then get your own Slow Death to Medicare bill.
This is about children going without treatment for asthma and no insulin pumps for their diabetes and the hardship on families when their kids are in the hospital. You know, CHILDREN.
We should not be discussing the plight of wealthy Americans. {{rolling eyes}}
Got it? Why aren’t you focused with laser like intensity on CHIP??
It expired on Saturday and some states are going to run out of money by the end of this week.
CHIP CHIP CHIP. Stick to the primary funding issue.
At least Hillary was not running any private business out of her private email server. These evil mfers are getting away with murder and mayhem with a complicit media imbeciles.