SOTU Open Thread

So Robert Gibbs was just hired to join Tweety on MSNBC and bitch about the "professional left".

SOTU should be renamed SOTFU.

comment on this policy pronouncement (snark intended!).

Affluent Seniors Could Take A Hit On Medicare

By Mary Agnes Carey and Marilyn Werber Serafini
KHN Staff Writers
Nov 13, 2011

In the scramble to come up with a deficit-reduction deal by Thanksgiving, members of Capitol Hill's super committee appear to have one group squarely in their cross hairs: high-income Medicare beneficiaries. . . .

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has left the door open to asking wealthy seniors to pay more, and public opinion polls show support for the idea. . . .

Current law already requires seniors with annual incomes of $85,000 and above ($170,000 for couples) to pay more than others for Medicare Part B, which covers doctor bills and other outpatient costs. In 2012, the standard premium will be $99.90 per month. Premiums for wealthier seniors will range from $139.90 to $319.70 per month.

About 5 percent of seniors fall into the higher-premium group now. President Barack Obama wants the share of beneficiaries paying more for their coverage to grow over time to one quarter of all beneficiaries. If that were the case today, people with incomes as low as $40,000 a year would be paying higher Medicare premiums, according to Tricia Neuman, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

Great, huh!

Interesting. Raising the retirement age looks like an opening gambit. It's been shelved for now, but moving to the chained CPI is as far as I know still in play. And now means testing Medicare. I wonder if the Obama strategy is to use these as wedges that, as Alexa suggests with Medicare, can be expanded over time. Removing the protective aura around these programs before taking an axe to them.

proposed (by the President) to the Supercommittee in 2011.

What sickens me is that had I never read this proposal, his "six words" tonight, would have gone right by me.

Right from the transcript, he said: "We’ll reduce taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies and ask more from the wealthiest seniors."

BTW, Lambert, have you had a chance to see why my "signature" line disappeared?

If there's been a programming change, I really need to change my avatar, since it is technically only permissible to use it, with attribution.

I can always use a dog picture. :-) It's not a major deal to me--just don't want someone suing me over their pic, LOL!

Thanks. BTW, my eyes "do better" for very short comments in scroll box.

The President's plans for increasing jobs ain't gonna happen, even if gets the Rs to vote for it. I explain why here.

These neoliberal putzim (the plural of putz for the uneducated) never learn! As long as they're running things, we're going down the drain!