Tag Archives: medicare

This Is Why Your Drug Prescriptions Cost So Damn Much

by JonasStpierre Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When the Republican-controlled Congress approved a landmark program in 2003 to help seniors buy prescription drugs, it slapped on an unusual restriction: The federal government was barred from negotiating cheaper prices for those medicines. Instead, the job of holding down costs was outsourced to the insurance companies delivering the subsidized new coverage, known as Medicare Part D.

The ban on government price bargaining, justified by supporters on free-market grounds, has been derided by critics as a giant gift to the drug industry. Democratic lawmakers began introducing bills to free the government to use its vast purchasing power to negotiate better deals even before former President George W. Bush signed the Part D law, known as the Medicare Modernization Act.

All those measures over the last 13 years have failed, almost always without ever even getting a hearing, much less being brought up for a vote. That’s happened even though surveys have shown broad public support for the idea. For example, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found last year that 93 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans favor letting the government negotiate Part D prescription drug prices.

It seems an anomaly in a democracy that an idea that is immensely popular—and calculated to save money for seniors, people with disabilities, and taxpayers—gets no traction. But critics say it’s no mystery, given the enormous financial influence of the drug industry, which rivals the insurance industry as the top-spending lobbying machine in Washington. It has funneled $1.96 billion into lobbying in the nation’s capital since the beginning of 2003 and, in just 2015 and the first half of 2016, has spent the equivalent of $468,108 per member of Congress. The industry also is a major contributor to House and Senate campaigns.

“It’s Exhibit A in how crony capitalism works,” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who has sponsored or co-sponsored at least six bills since 2007 to allow Part D drug price negotiations. “I mean,” he added, “how in the world can one explain that the government actually passed a law saying that you can’t negotiate prices? Well, campaign contributions and lobbying obviously had a big part in making that upside-down outcome occur.”

Wendell Potter, co-author of a book about the influence of money in politics, Nation on the Take, likened the drug industry’s defiance of public opinion to the gun lobby’s success in fending off tougher federal firearms controls and the big banks’ ability to escape stronger regulation despite their role in the Great Recession.

“They are able to pretty much call the shots,” Potter said, referring to the drug industry along with its allies in the insurance industry. “It doesn’t matter what the public will is or what public opinion polls are showing. As long as we have a system that enables industries, big corporations, to spend pretty much whatever it takes to influence the elections and public policy, we’re going to wind up with this situation.”

While Part D is only one of the issues the drug industry pushes in Washington, it is a blockbuster program. According to a report from the trustees of the Medicare system, this year Part D is expected to spend $103 billion to serve an estimated 43 million Americans.

A paper released in August by Harvard Medical School researchers cited the size of the program and its lack of government negotiating clout as among the reasons why Americans pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. A co-author of that paper, Ameet Sarpatwari, estimates that Part D accounts for nearly 30 percent of the nation’s spending on prescription drugs.

What’s more, Part D often pays far more for drugs than do Medicaid or the Veterans Health Administration—which, unlike Part D, mandate government measures to hold down prices. One report found that Part D pays 80 percent more for medicines than the VHA and 73 percent more than Medicaid. While researchers aren’t unanimous in their views, an array of experts have concluded that federal negotiating power—if backed up by other cost controls—would bring Part D drug costs more in line.

Center for Responsive Politics/FairWarning

The drug industry and its allies acknowledge that, at least in the short term, federal intervention in the marketplace could bring lower drug prices. Yet the industry says such a step would also kill incentives to develop new medicines.

In addition, industry officials and many analysts say substantial cost reductions will come only if the Part D program refuses to pay for drugs that it considers overpriced, possibly reducing seniors’ access to some medicines. They point to the way the VHA strengthens its negotiating leverage by rejecting some expensive medicines. Instead, the veterans’ health care system limits its purchases to a list of approved drugs known as a formulary.

“If you want to have lower prices, you’re going to have fewer medicines,” said Kirsten Axelsen, a vice president at Pfizer, a pharmaceutical giant that leads all drug companies in spending on lobbying and political campaigns at the federal level.

It took intense maneuvering by the Bush White House and GOP leaders to get Part D through Congress in November 2003, when the House and the Senate were under Republican control. The measure came up for a vote in the House at 3 a.m. on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, as lawmakers were trying to finish business before the holiday. But when the bill appeared headed to a narrow defeat after the normal 15 minutes allowed for voting, Republican leaders kept the vote open for an extraordinary stretch of nearly three hours, described in a 2004 scholarly paper as by far the longest known roll-call vote in the history of the House.

With the help of pre-dawn phone calls from Bush and a custom-defying visit to the House floor by Tommy Thompson, then secretary of health and human services, enough members were coaxed to switch their votes to pass the bill, 220-215, shortly before 6 a.m.

Part D was conceived at a time when rapidly rising US drug costs were alarming seniors, prompting some to head to Canada and Mexico to buy medicines at dramatically lower prices. With the 2004 presidential election campaign coming up, Republican leaders saw “an opportunity to steal a long-standing issue from the Democrats,” said Thomas R. Oliver, a health policy expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the lead author of the 2004 paper about the adoption of Part D.

A key aim of Part D proponents, Oliver said, was to cover seniors “in a Republican, pro-market kind of way.” That meant including “as much private sector involvement as possible,” which led to insurance companies managing the program. At the same time, it excluded federal price controls, which were anathema to the drug industry.

Today, the program remains subject to the pervasive influence of the drug industry. An analysis by FairWarning, based on spending data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research group, has found:

— There are far more lobbyists in Washington working for drug manufacturers and wholesalers than there are members of Congress. Last year the industry retained 894 lobbyists to influence the 535 members of Congress, along with staffers and regulators. From 2007 through 2009, there were more than two drug industry lobbyists for every member of Congress.

— For each of the last 13 years, more than 60 percent of the industry’s drug lobbyists have been “revolvers”—that is, lobbyists who previously served in Congress or who worked as congressional aides or in other government jobs. That raises suspicions that lawmakers and regulators will go easy on the industry to avoid jeopardizing their chances of landing lucrative lobbying work after they leave office.

Center for Responsive Politics/Fair Warning

Probably the most notorious example was the Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin. He helped shape the Part D legislation while serving as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In January 2005, just days after he retired from the House, he became the drug industry’s top lobbyist as president of a powerful trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA. He remained in that job—which reportedly paid him $2 million a year—until 2010.

“It was pretty blatant but an accurate reflection of the way pharma plays the game, through campaign contributions and, in Billy’s case, way more than that,” said US Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who has been a leading proponent of government price negotiations.

— Since January 2003, drug manufacturers and wholesalers have given $147.5 million in federal political contributions to presidential and congressional candidates, party committees, leadership PACs and other political advocacy groups. Of the total, 62 percent has gone to Republican or conservative causes.

Over the period, four Republican lawmakers from the 2015-16 Congress received more than $1 million in contributions from drug companies. (One of them, former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, resigned last October.) In all, 518 members of the current Congress—every member of the Senate and more than 95 percent of the House—have received drug industry money since 2003.

Pfizer said that since the beginning of 2003 through the middle of this year it has spent, at the federal level, $145.9 million on lobbying as well as $12.2 million on political contributions through its PACs. In a written statement, the company said, “Our political contributions are led by two guiding principles—preserve and further the incentives for innovation, and protect and expand access for the patients we serve.”

— The big money goes to top congressional leaders as well as chairs and other members of key committees and subcommittees.

The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, repeatedly a graveyard for Part D price negotiation bills, underscores the pattern. The 16 Republican members have received an average of $340,219 since the beginning of 2003.

The drug industry “knows that you really only need, in many cases, just a small number of influential members to do their bidding. That’s why you see contributions flowing to committee chairs, regardless of who is in power. They flow to Democrats as well as Republicans,” Potter said.

Proponents of negotiations say some economic and political currents may turn the tide in their favor. The main factor: After years of relatively modest price rises for prescription drugs, cost increases have begun to escalate. That’s partly because of expensive new treatments for illnesses such as hepatitis C.

According to Medicare officials, Part D payments are expected to rise 6 percent annually over the coming decade per enrollee, up from only 2.5 percent annually over the last nine years. Already, cost increases are “putting wicked pressure on our hospitals, on our seniors, and on our state governments,” Welch said.

Center for Responsive Politics/Fair Warning

At the same time, both major presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have called for Medicare drug price negotiation. So have doctor groups such as the American College of Physicians and an alliance of more than 100 oncologists, many nationally known, who last year garnered headlines with their plea for Medicare negotiations and other measures to fight skyrocketing costs for cancer drugs.

PhRMA, the trade group, wouldn’t comment for this story on lobbying or campaign spending. In a written statement, however, PhRMA spokeswoman Allyson Funk said, “There is significant price negotiation that already occurs within the Medicare prescription drug program.” Pointing to the private companies that run the program, Funk added, “Large, powerful purchasers negotiate discounts and rebates directly with manufacturers, saving money for both beneficiaries and taxpayers.”

Funk also pointed to skeptical assessments by the Congressional Budget Office about the potential additional savings from federal negotiations. Repeatedly—including in letters in 2004 and 2007—the CBO has said government officials likely could extract only modest savings, at best. The office’s reasoning is that costs already would be held down by bargaining pressure from insurance firms and by drug manufacturers’ fear of bad publicity if they are viewed as jacking up prices too high.

But many analysts, particularly amid recent controversies over skyrocketing costs for essential drugs and EpiPen injection devices, scoff at those CBO conclusions. They fault the CBO for not taking into account other price controls, such as those used by Medicaid and the VHA, that likely would be coupled with price negotiation.

What CBO officials “seem to be assuming is that Congress would change the law in a really foolish way,” said Dean Baker, a liberal think tank economist who has studied the Part D program. “It seems to me that if you got Congress to change the law, you would want Medicare to have the option to say, ‘Okay, this is our price, and you’re going to take it. And if you don’t take it, we’re not buying it.”

In fact, related bills proposed during the current Congress by two Illinois Democrats—Schakowsky and Richard J. Durbin, the Senate minority whip—go beyond requiring drug price negotiations. They both provide for federal officials to adopt “strategies similar to those used by other Federal purchasers of prescription drugs, and other strategies…to reduce the purchase cost of covered part D drugs.”

The potential to reduce prices is underscored by a 2015 paper by Carleton University of Ottawa, Canada, and the US advocacy group Public Citizen. It found that Medicare Part D on average pays 73 percent more than Medicaid and 80 percent more than the VHA for the same brand-name drugs. The VHA’s success in holding down costs helped inspire a measure on California’s November ballot, Proposition 61, that would restrict most state-run health programs from paying any more for prescription drugs than the veterans agency does.

Two studies by the inspector general of health and human services that compared drug expenditures under the Part D and Medicaid programs also concluded that Part D pays far more for the same medicines. The more recent inspector general study, released in April 2015, examined spending and rebates on 200 brand-name drugs. It found that, after taking rebates into account, Medicaid, which provides health care for low-income families with children, paid less than half of what Part D did for 110 of the drugs. Part D, on the other hand, paid less than Medicaid for only 5 of 200 drugs.

Those findings provide evidence that “the current reliance on private insurers that negotiate drug prices isn’t working that well,” said Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank.

Five Democrats who are leading opponents of the status quo—US Representatives Welch, Schakowsky, and Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, along with Sens. Durbin and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota—each have introduced price negotiation bills (HR 3061, HR 3261, HR 3513, S 31 and S 1884) during the current, 114th Congress. All the measures have stalled in committee.

Schakowsky, a House Democratic chief deputy whip, said under Republican control in her chamber, “I think it is virtually impossible for this to ever go to hearings and markups.”

Take, for example, the bill that Welch introduced in the House on July 14, 2015. Within a week, it was referred to two health subcommittees, where it has sat ever since.

The closest Welch ever came to success was in 2007. He was among 198 co-sponsors—all but one, Democrats—of a bill introduced by then-US Rep. John D. Dingell of Michigan. It was approved by the House but then blocked by Republicans from being taken up in the Senate.

Lawmakers on committees where Part D bills ordinarily go—the Finance Committee in the Senate, and the Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the Ways and Means Committee in the House—tend to be well funded by the drug industry.

For instance, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who sits on the Finance Committee, has received more money from the industry since 2003 than anyone else currently in Congress, $1.3 million. Close behind is Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, (R-Utah), who has gotten $1.18 million. (The other members of the million-dollar club are Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), House Energy and Commerce chairman, at $1 million, and former House Speaker Boehner, at $1.21 million.)

Burr also is the Senate leader so far in the 2015-16 political cycle, collecting $229,710 from the drug industry. In the House in the current cycle, John Shimkus (R-Ill.), a member of the Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, has snagged $189,000, trailing only Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy ($292,550) and House Speaker Paul Ryan ($273,195). A Burr spokeswoman declined to comment. Hatch and Shimkus did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Amid the EpiPen controversy and growing concerns about prescription drug prices, Park sees signs that more lawmakers are willing to buck industry opposition to government price negotiation. “There’s a lot of industry opposition. This would affect their bottom line,” Park said. “It doesn’t mean, however, that industry is all-powerful.”

But Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, was skeptical about the prospects for reform. “I think it’s pretty clear what you’re seeing is, there’s an industry group that stands to lose a lot of money, and they’re basically using all of the political power they can to make sure that it doesn’t happen.”

This story was reported by FairWarning, a California nonprofit news organization that focuses on public health, safety, and environmental issues. Additional reporting was contributed by Deborah Schoch, a freelance health and science writer, and Douglas H. Weber, a senior researcher for the Center for Responsive Politics.

Link: 

This Is Why Your Drug Prescriptions Cost So Damn Much

Posted in alo, Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Is Why Your Drug Prescriptions Cost So Damn Much

Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?

by BeatrizMackenzi Posted on September 18, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

According to the latest New York Times poll, Gary Johnson is supported by 26 percent of young voters.1 Of these Johnson supporters, how many are liberal former supporters of Bernie Sanders who would normally be expected to switch to Hillary Clinton? No one seems to have explicitly polled about this, but various pieces of evidence suggest that it’s around half. If you make some reasonable assumptions and do a bit of arithmetic, this suggests that somewhere around a fifth of young liberal voters are casting their lot with Johnson.

In one sense, this is easy to understand. Johnson favors legalization of marijuana. He’s good on civil liberties and wants to cut way back on overseas military interventions. He’s moderate on immigration. He’s pro-choice and supports gay rights. There are plenty of things for Bernie supporters to like about him.

On the other hand, Johnson is a libertarian. Here’s a smattering of what else he believes:

He supports TPP.
He supports fracking.
He opposes any federal policies that would make college more affordable or reduce student debt. In fact, he wants to abolish student loans entirely.
He thinks Citizens United is great.
He doesn’t want to raise the minimum wage. At all.
He favors a balanced-budget amendment and has previously suggested that he would slash federal spending 43 percent in order to balance the budget. This would require massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and social welfare programs of all kinds.
He opposes net neutrality.
He wants to increase the Social Security retirement age to 75 and he’s open to privatization.
He opposes any kind of national health care and wants to repeal Obamacare.
He opposes practically all forms of gun control.
He opposes any kind of paid maternity or medical leave.
He supported the Keystone XL pipeline.
He opposes any government action to address climate change.
He wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero.
He appears to believe that we should reduce financial regulation. All we need to do is allow big banks to fail and everything will be OK.
He wants to remove the Fed’s mandate to maximize employment and has spoken favorably of returning to the gold standard.
He wants to block-grant Medicare and turn it over to the states.
He wants to repeal the 16th Amendment and eliminate the income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax. He would replace it with a 28 percent FairTax that exempts the poor. This is equivalent to a 39 percent sales tax, and it would almost certainly represent a large tax cut for the rich.

Some of her weirder beliefs aside, it’s easy to see why former Bernie supporters might turn to Jill Stein. But Gary Johnson? He makes Hillary Clinton look like the second coming of FDR. Unless you’re basically a single-issue voter on civil liberties and military force, it’s hard to see why any lefty of any stripe would even think of supporting Johnson. What’s the deal here?

1Oddly enough, the story that originally reported this has been silently purged of this statistic, but let’s go with it anyway.

Continue reading here: 

Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?

Posted in Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?

Paul Ryan Wants to Increase the Medicare Eligibility Age to 67

by StaceyDowling61 Posted on June 22, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Republicans announce a lot of health care plans. All of them are essentially the same, “a familiar hodgepodge of tax credits, health savings accounts, high-risk pools, block granting of Medicaid, tort reform, and interstate purchase of health plans.” Today, after months of cogitating, House Republicans have finally agreed on yet another a health care plan. It’s not a hodgepodge, however, it’s a “backpack.” Beyond that, however, it should sound pretty familiar:

In place of President Barack Obama’s health law, House Republicans propose providing Americans with refundable tax credits….catastrophic insurance….health-savings accounts….plans offered in other states….fee-for-service insurance through a newly created Medicare insurance exchange not a voucher! not a voucher! absolutely positively not a voucher! -ed.….pay taxes on the value of whatever health insurance employers provide.

Hmmm. There’s no mention of high-risk pools or tort reform or Medicaid block grants. What the hell is going on here? Who was responsible for—oh, wait. Maybe the Wall Street Journal just did a crappy job of describing it. Let’s check in with the Washington Post:

The GOP plan floats a variety of proposals….refundable tax credit….health savings accounts….“high-risk pools”….Medicaid funds would be handed to the states either as block grants or as per-capita allotments.

Now we’re talking. Every single buzzword is there except for tort reform. But maybe I should check in with Reuters:

The Republican proposal would gradually increase the Medicare eligibility age, which currently is 65, to match that of the Social Security pension plan, which is 67 for people born in 1960 or later….The Republican plan includes medical liability reform that would put a cap on non-economic damages awarded in lawsuits, a measure aimed at cutting overall healthcare costs.

Tort reform is there after all! And as an extra added bonus, the Medicare eligibility age goes up to 67! Hallelujah!

How could this possibly have taken more than five minutes to write? It’s identical to every health care plan ever proposed by Republicans. There is, of course, no funding mechanism, possibly because Republicans know perfectly well that it will do nothing and therefore require no funding. But here’s my favorite bit of well-hidden snark from the Washington Post account:

The most significant omission from the Republican health-care plan, though, is to what degree it will maintain — or, more likely, reduce — insurance coverage for Americans….Asked about the plan’s effect on coverage, a Republican leadership aide said Monday, “You’re getting to the dynamic effect of the plan and we can’t answer that until the committees start to legislate.”

But there is a significant clue in the GOP plan that it anticipates a surge in the ranks of the uninsured. Before the Affordable Care Act, the federal government’s primary mechanism for compensating health providers for delivering care to the uninsured was through “disproportionate share hospital” payments, or DSH, which are allocated to facilities that treated large numbers of the uninsured.

Under Obamacare, DSH payments were set to be phased out because coverage rates were expected to increase dramatically….The Republican plan would repeal those cuts entirely.

Bottom line: this is just the usual conservative mush. It would accomplish nothing. It would insure no one. It would wipe out all the gains of Obamacare. Millions of people would have their current health care ripped away from them, all so that Republicans can repeal the 3.8 percent tax on high-earner investment income that funds Obamacare.

And just for good measure, it will also raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Because apparently, the old hodgepodge just wasn’t quite Scrooge-like enough.

Follow this link: 

Paul Ryan Wants to Increase the Medicare Eligibility Age to 67

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Paul Ryan Wants to Increase the Medicare Eligibility Age to 67

Can Donald Trump Get Away With Proposing to Destroy the US Government?

by FallonPratten Posted on May 15, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Today the Wall Street Journal asks a vital question:

Donald Trump’s Plans Don’t Add Up. Do Voters Care?

Oh please. Bernie Sanders’ plans don’t add up and his followers couldn’t care less. Paul Ryan’s plans don’t add up. Republicans don’t care. Mitt Romney’s plans didn’t add up. No one cared. John McCain’s plans didn’t add up. No one cared. George Bush’s plans didn’t add up. No one cared. Ronald Reagan’s plans didn’t add up. No one cared.

Now, I admit that Trump is performing a destruction test on this theory. His tax plan blows a $9.5 trillion hole in the deficit and he plans to increase spending on infrastructure and national defense and he promises not to touch Medicare or Social Security. He claims he’ll make up for this by cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and I suppose one could view this as the ultimate test of just how much waste, fraud, and abuse the public thinks the American government is responsible for. Unfortunately, the historical evidence probably doesn’t favor a rational answer.

So what does Trump’s budget look like? Someone must care, after all. At no small effort, I have created the colorful chart below. I used the CBO’s projections as my baseline. Trump says he wants to balance the budget, so that puts a firm cap on overall spending. He says he wants to spend more on defense, so I added a modest $20 billion per year to the baseline projection. He says he won’t touch Social Security or Medicare, so I left those at their baseline projections. The revenue number comes from TPC’s analysis of Trump’s tax plan. Ditto for the interest number. Trump says he wants to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure, so I bumped up the current infrastructure budget by $100 billion and carried it through each year.

As you can see, by the end of eight years, not only are we spending zero dollars on nearly every government program, but infrastructure spending is also wiped out and we can make only a fraction of our interest payments:

So yeah, you could say this doesn’t add up. Or you could say it’s more of Trump’s usual buffoonery. Or that Donald Trump couldn’t care less about the federal budget. So why doesn’t this get more attention? Let’s take a series of guesses:

Most people find numbers confusing and boring. One trillion, ten trillion, whatever.
The press shies away from focusing on stuff like this because their readers find it confusing and boring and don’t read it.
Also because they routinely give Republicans a pass on this stuff. They figure it’s mostly just routine pandering, and all politicians do it.
In any case, the public takes tax and budget plans mostly as statements of values, not as things that will ever actually happen.

So there you have it. Trump is testing whether he can get away with literally proposing a tax and budget plan that would bankrupt the country and destroy nearly the entire federal government within just a few years. What do you think?

Read the article:  

Can Donald Trump Get Away With Proposing to Destroy the US Government?

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Can Donald Trump Get Away With Proposing to Destroy the US Government?

Donald Trump Is Just a Garden Variety Right-Winger These Days

by QuinnWayn231 Posted on December 26, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In a blog post about an entirely different subject, Jay Nordlinger says this about Donald Trump:

I am reminded of how the Left and Right can blend — although it’s pretty much impossible to locate Trump politically. Is he Left or Right or in between?

This has long been a common observation, but is it really true anymore? A few months ago, for example, I wrote that Trump didn’t favor a flat tax. But that’s true of most Republicans. And now that Trump has actually released a tax plan, we know his tax notions are entirely orthodox these days. Ditto for Planned Parenthood, which Trump is now on board with defunding completely. Ditto again for his short-lived support for an assault weapons ban.

So what’s left of Trump’s alleged populism? I count one thing:

He doesn’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Is there anything else left? He’s not stridently anti-gay, but he’s opposed to gay marriage nonetheless. Sort of Jeb Bush-ish. He refuses to say that he still supports affirmative action. His foreign policy is…um…a little hard to get a handle on, but it sure can’t be described as liberal these days. He claims to have opposed the Iraq War, but that’s just a lie—and ten years in the past anyway. He sometimes sounds a populist note on trade, but his real position is that he’s smarter than all the dimwits in Washington and could negotiate better terms than they do. He doesn’t seem to harbor any real leftish views on trade.

So really, his support for Social Security and Medicare is pretty much it for non-conservative heresies—and even there his position remains unclear. Does he mean that he doesn’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare at all, or does he mean he doesn’t want to cut them for people currently in the system? After all, the standard Republican position already protects Social Security and Medicare for anyone over age 55. But since Trump has declined to provide any further detail, we don’t really know what his position is.

Trump used to have a few more quasi-liberal positions, but the campaign has sanded them all down. Today, he’s just a really loud right-winger who understands that bashing Social Security and Medicare doesn’t win any votes. That’s it.

Original post: 

Donald Trump Is Just a Garden Variety Right-Winger These Days

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump Is Just a Garden Variety Right-Winger These Days

Reports of Entitlements’ Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

by RaymundHuggins Posted on October 27, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When news of a bipartisan budget deal began to emerge Monday night, progressives immediately worried that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress would allow cuts to entitlement programs in order to strike a deal with Republicans. “The White House, every Democrat running for president, and every Democrat in Congress should make clear that any deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits would be unacceptable policy—and politically, would be wildly unpopular with voters,” the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said in a statement. House Speaker John Boehner didn’t do much to allay their fears, saying on Tuesday that the deal “is the first significant reform to Social Security since 1983.”

But budget experts say these concerns are unfounded. In fact, the deal actually shores up the finances of an important entitlement program without hurting people who have already earned their benefits.

Released Monday night, the 144-page budget deal would fund the government and raise the debt ceiling for two years, punting any showdown to 2017, after Obama has left the White House. The bill also lifts the tight federal spending caps imposed by the 2011 sequestration law.

Even though the deal saves money by making small cuts to Medicare and Social Security disability insurance (the main part of the program beyond the standard retirement benefits), the budget mostly tinkers around the edges. “The agreement doesn’t have any changes in disability eligibility standards,” says Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It doesn’t change the level of benefits. The small amount of savings are achieved through program integrity measures, which are just efforts to make sure the Social Security Administration is doing the best possible job of who’s actually eligible for benefits.” These sorts of technocratic tinkers are simple measures to ensure the integrity of the programs’ goals, something pushed by both conservatives and progressives.

Primarily, the deal shuts down a pilot program that allows 20 states to dish out benefits without requiring a prior medical sign-off. “To a very small degree, that would reduce the number of people awarded benefits, well less than a percent of the number of people getting benefits,” Van de Water says. “This is designed to produce better decisions, not to make the program more restrictive or less generous.” By awarding benefits slightly less frequently, the deal lengthens the solvency of the disability benefits program.

For Medicare, the deal cuts costs by reducing the amount the government spends on payment rates for providers. When it comes to recipients, the deal stabilizes premiums for a group of seniors who were due for a large rate spike in 2016. Because Social Security isn’t scheduled to get a cost-of-living bump this year, premium rates won’t rise for most people who receive Medicare. For the 30 percent of Medicare Part B recipients for whom rates would have jumped 52 percent next year, the budget deal keeps the current rates in place. But everything evens out for beneficiaries in the end, as the people who benefit this year will have to pay higher premiums down the road. “It’s a good way of spreading out the costs and meaning people aren’t hit by a huge increase this year, and they can budget for it,” Van der Water says. “But it’s not a net benefit over time. It’s simply smoothing things out.”

Original article – 

Reports of Entitlements’ Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Reports of Entitlements’ Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Bernie Sanders Wants DOJ to Investigate “Potential Fraud” by Exxon Over Climate Research

by Myrna Posted on October 21, 2015

The presidential candidate argued the company’s actions could “qualify as a violation of federal law.” Albert H. Teich/Shutterstock Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday joined a push for the Department of Justice to investigate allegations that ExxonMobil hid research confirming fossil fuels contribute significantly to climate change. In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Sanders accused the oil giant of a ”potential instance of corporate fraud,” which he added could “ultimately qualify as a violation of federal law.” “Exxon Mobil knew the truth about fossil fuels and climate change and lied to protect their business model at the expense of the planet,” Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, wrote. Last week, two House Democrats sent Lynch a very similar letter, pressing her to launch an investigation into Exxon’s actions. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, another Democratic presidential candidate, has also indicated support for an official inquiry. The requests come after in-depth reports by the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News revealed that decades of research conducted by senior Exxon scientists warned burning fossil fuels could lead to increasing global temperatures. […] Last week, Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said the company “unequivocally” rejects the allegations outlined in the articles and letters being sent to Lynch. “Suggestions that ExxonMobil suppressed its climate research are completely without merit,” Jeffers said. Read the rest at The Huffington Post. Jump to original –  Bernie Sanders Wants DOJ to Investigate “Potential Fraud” by Exxon Over Climate Research ; ; ;

Continue reading – 

Bernie Sanders Wants DOJ to Investigate “Potential Fraud” by Exxon Over Climate Research

Posted in FF, GE, OXO, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bernie Sanders Wants DOJ to Investigate “Potential Fraud” by Exxon Over Climate Research

Science Just Proved That Donald Trump Is Totally Wrong

by Myrna Posted on October 21, 2015

This September was the hottest on record. Donald Trump loves to tweet about how climate change is a hoax, especially when he personally feels cold. Because, you know, if global warming is really real, then it will never be cold anywhere ever again. (Just kidding. Winter is still a thing.) He was at it again on Monday, tweeting that since it was “really cold outside,” we “could use a big fat dose of global warming!” Sick burn, Donald! Indeed, it’s been kind of cold on the East Coast over the last week. But, Trump’s local weather report notwithstanding, 2015 is still on track to be the warmest year on record, globally. And today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data showing that this September was the hottest September on record (the records go back to 1880), following an August that also experienced record-breaking heat. Here’s NOAA’s latest map, showing that in September, much of the globe had record or above-average temperatures: NOAA The dark red blob off the US West Coast is El Niño, which is continuing to strengthen and is expected to produce above-average rain and snowfall in California this winter (although probably not enough to end the state’s epic drought). Sorry, Donald. I think we have a big enough dose of global warming already. Originally posted here:  Science Just Proved That Donald Trump Is Totally Wrong ; ; ;

Link:

Science Just Proved That Donald Trump Is Totally Wrong

Posted in eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, horticulture, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Science Just Proved That Donald Trump Is Totally Wrong

It’s Not Just Social Security Anymore. Jeb Bush Wants to Destroy Medicare Too.

by SallyAbelfld Posted on July 23, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Republicans have been talking for years about “reforming” Social Security. Usually this involves privatizing it in some way, which they insist that people will love. In fact, they’ll love it so much that, um, Republicans don’t dare suggest that their reforms should apply to current recipients. Or to people who are within even a decade of retiring. Why exempt these folks? There’s a lot of blah blah blah when you ask, but the real reason is that these people vote, and they actually pay attention to Social Security. They know perfectly well that the current system is a better deal for them. It’s only younger workers, who don’t pay as much attention and have been brainwashed—by conservatives—into believing that Social Security will never pay them a dime anyway, who give this nonsense the time of day. Even if the GOP’s reformed version of Social Security is a lousy deal, anything is better than nothing. Right?

But I’ve never really heard this argument about Medicare. Until now. Here’s Jeb Bush:

A lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits. But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something—because they’re not going to have anything.

Boom! If we don’t gut Medicare, they’ll have nothing. When they turn 65 they’ll be out on the street dying, with no one to help them. Why? Because Democrats let the system go bankrupt. Wouldn’t it be much better to offer them some crappy, rationed system instead? At least it’s something, after all.

Jesus. You’d think we were Greece. Oh wait—these guys do think that Democrats are turning us into Greece. So I guess it makes a kind of sense.

In any case, Jeb sure picked the wrong time to make this pitch. Just yesterday we got the latest projections for Social Security and Medicare. If they’re correct, the cost of both programs will top out at a combined 12 percent of GDP by the middle of the century and then flatten out. That’s about 3 percent of GDP more than we’re spending now.

So this is what Jeb is saying: Right now the federal government spends about 20 percent of GDP. We can’t afford to increase that to 23 percent of GDP over the next 30 years. That would—what? I don’t even know what the story is here. Turn us into Greece? Require us to tax millionaires so highly they all give up and go Galt? Deprive Wall Street of lots of pension income they can use to blow up the world again?

Beats me. This whole thing is ridiculous. Over the next 30 years, we need to increase spending by 1 percent of GDP per decade. That’s it. That will keep Social Security and Medicare in good shape. Why is it so hard for people to get that?

Taken from:  

It’s Not Just Social Security Anymore. Jeb Bush Wants to Destroy Medicare Too.

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s Not Just Social Security Anymore. Jeb Bush Wants to Destroy Medicare Too.

Jeb Bush Wants America to "Phase Out" Medicare

by JulietaCastlebe Posted on July 23, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told a crowd in New Hampshire that Americans need to consider ways to “phase out” Medicare.

The former Florida governor, who was speaking at an event hosted by the Koch-brothers supported group Americans for Prosperity, also suggested “people understand” and agree with him on the issue.

“They know, and I think a lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits,” Bush said. “But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something—because they’re not going to have anything.”

Bush’s comments echo the views of former president and brother George W. Bush, who pushed to severely slash Social Security with a controversial reform plan back in 2005. That effort proved overwhelmingly unpopular and failed.

A day before Bush’s Medicare comments, a new report showing the program’s costs to be significantly under what had been previously projected nearly ten years ago, as our own Kevin Drum noted:

Beyond that, it’s always foolish to assume that costs will rise forever just because they have in the past. Medicare is a political program, and at some point the public will decide that it’s not willing to fund it at higher levels. It’s not as if it’s on autopilot, after all. We live in a democracy, and after lots of yelling and fighting, we’ll eventually do something about rising medical costs if we simply don’t think the additional spending is worth it.

Despite the resulting failure of his brother’s plan to do away with Social Security, Bush said he believes that his plan to gradually eliminate Medicare will prove to be a “winning argument if we take it directly to people.”

Source: 

Jeb Bush Wants America to "Phase Out" Medicare

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Jeb Bush Wants America to "Phase Out" Medicare