Medicare’s Poison Pill  Read more 

Constituents denied entry to Congressman’s Office following Medicare Birthday Party :

Following the celebration, Rosemary Prostko, a senior citizen and volunteer with the Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare, headed south to the Mt. Lebanon district office of her U.S. Representative, Tim Murphy, where she was joined by three other supporters. Their goal: to deliver an enormous “Happy Birthday Medicare/Support Improved Medicare for All” cookie, visible through hard plastic, along with single-payer information and an over-sized Medicare Birthday card containing hundreds of signatures in support of single-payer legislation.

What follows is Rosemary Prostko’s account:  Read more 

Birthday Party for Medicare 30JUL2008

You are invited to join me, Barabra DeVane, at Congressman Boyd’s office at 11AM on Wednesday, July 30 for a birthday party complete with cake and noisemakers (that would be our Healthcare coalition calling for Boyd to sign on to HR 676).

We will celebrate the 43rd birthday of Medicare and ask Congressman Boyd for his support in extending Medicare to All through Universal Single Payer Healthcare—HR 676.

Boyd is very conservative, so they have their work cut out for them.

Means Testing, for Medicare

Shorter version of this article, the biggest items in our federal budget are entitlement programs, therefore they must be cut, therefore we need to means test Medicare, which really means turn it into Medicaid. And we should not move to single payer because it lacks transparency. At no time does the author express an interest in providing quality healthcare to all Americans.  Read more 

Forum set Thursday on reforming health care

A free public forum on reforming health care in California will be held Thursday at 7 p.m. in Mountain View’s City Hall, 500 Castro St.

Local health care experts and advocates for a new “single-payer” system for the state will discuss accessibility problems of today’s health care and a “Medicare-type” plan designed to make health care more accessible.  Read more 

Kevin Drum

This would be the same Medicare Advantage that supposedly harnesses the power of the free market to operate more efficiently, yet still requires sizeable subsidies because it costs considerably more per person than good ’ol big government Medicare. What’s at issue here is cutting those subsidies so that private Medicare costs only a little bit more than standard Medicare instead of the whole lot more that it costs now.

But that’s not in the cards. Forcing private insurers to operate as efficiently as the federal government is apparently asking too much of the GOP’s free market acolytes. Better to cut doctors’ fees instead.  Read more 

Prediction — A Major Assault By The Health Insurance Industry Will Be Launched To Destroy the Medicare System Before BUSH Leaves Office  Read more 

The battle to save Medicare

Reader Jack Wajda, 69, of Orlando, a retired AT&T executive and financial planner, identifies the single greatest problem with the American health-care system as well as anyone. He writes: “To allow private for-profit insurance companies to decide whether and what type of care we receive is incomprehensible to me.” …

… Now, as Wajda correctly writes, taxpayers pay the private Medicare Advantage plans at least $9,000 a year more per patient than for traditional Medicare, with salespeople getting commissions. On top of that, the prescription benefit, Part D, has also been given to the insurance companies, which are earning high profits.  Read more 

Atrios on the subject of Social Security

One camp includes people like me who think the system is financially sound and it isn’t a pressing problem. More than that, no matter how fiscally sound it’s made to be long run, conservatives and the Right won’t stop trying to destroy it. Then there are the group of people who believe the system is something to worry about, at least a bit, and that the way to end the Social Security debate forever and destroy prevailing “IT’S DOOOMED” Beltway conventional wisdom is to put enough more money into the system so that’s 100% sound 4evah.  Read more 

Matt speaks for me. It’s so good to know that even when I’m too tired or beat down to express myself, I’ve got friends in the blogosphere with the outrage and eloquence to do it for me. So good I’m posting the whole thing:

“Now, after she shaved her head in a bizarre episode that culminates a months-long saga of controversial behavior, it’s the question being asked by her fans, her foes and the general public: What was she thinking?”— Bald and Broken: Inside Britney’s Shaved Head, Sheila Marikar, ABC.com, Feb. 19

What was she thinking? How about nothing? How about who gives a shit? How’s that for an answer, Sheila Marikar of ABC news, you pinhead?

I’m not one of those curmudgeons who freaks out every time that Bradgelina moves the war off the front page of the Post, or Katie Couric decides to usher in a whole new era of network news with photos of the imbecile demon-spawn of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. I understand that we live in a demand-based economy and that there is far more demand for brainless celebrity bullshit than there is, say, for the fine print of the Health and Human Services budget.  Read more