Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (90960)	9/13/2010 9:48:32 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224729

How Medicare And Social Security Are Both In Obama's Cross Hairs By LARRY HUNTER AND PETER FERRARA Posted 07:00 PM ET Buried deep in the data tables of the Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees last month is the authoritative documentation of the full amount of the draconian cuts to Medicare included in the ObamaCare health care takeover legislation. Medicare's own chief actuary has already publicly reported that the Medicare payment rates for the doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next three years. By 2019, those Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid, which leaves the poor often unable to find doctors and hospitals willing to serve them. Medicare's chief actuary reports that ultimately, under ObamaCare, Medicare payment rates will be only one-third of what will be paid by private insurance and only half of what is paid by Medicaid. The data buried in the Medicare Trustees report reveal that still further Medicare cuts adopted in the ObamaCare legislation add up altogether to $818 billion over the first 10 years of full implementation, and $3.223 trillion over the first 20 years, just for Medicare Part A (HI). Counting the cuts for Medicare Part B brings the grand total in cuts to $1.048 trillion over the first 10 full years, and $4.95 trillion over the first 20 full years. Ultimately, by the end of the projection period, Medicare Part A is cut by 60%, Part B by 43%. These draconian cuts were the basis for the CBO score repeatedly cited by President Obama that ObamaCare would actually reduce the deficit while expanding or adopting three entitlement programs. Too bad the President never disclosed that. Such draconian Medicare cuts would create havoc and chaos in health care for seniors. Indeed, the Medicare chief actuary reports that even before these cuts, already two-thirds of hospitals are losing money on Medicare patients. Health providers will either have to withdraw from serving Medicare patients, or eventually go into bankruptcy. But in his Saturday radio address on Aug. 14, President Obama revealed he is already moving on, to cut your Social Security. In that address, he denounced the idea of solving Social Security's problems by allowing young workers the freedom to choose to save and invest some of their taxes in their own personal accounts. At standard, long-term investment returns, such accounts would enable these workers to enjoy much higher benefits than Social Security even promises, let alone what it can pay. By taking some of the long- term burden off of Social Security for financing future benefits, these accounts can also solve the program's long-term financing crisis. That is shown by reports from the chief actuary of Social Security still available on his Web site. Such personal accounts would also do far more to reduce government spending over the long run than any other possible alternatives. But the ideologically far-left Obama can't stand the idea of workers and retirees supporting themselves more through the private sector. He calls that privatization, which means too much filthy capitalism for his tastes. If he rejects that idea, however, then how is President Obama going to solve Social Security's long-term financial crisis, which even his own Presidential Debt Commission realizes is real? The only alternatives are to raise payroll taxes or cut benefits. Raising payroll taxes is out because President Obama pledged over and over to get elected that he would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. If he refuses even to consider personal accounts as inconsistent with his socialist ideology, that leaves only cutting benefits. And this is exactly what his Presidential Debt Commission is plotting to reveal right after the election. Leaks indicate that among the options being considered are delaying the retirement age, changing the basic benefit formula, and delaying or slashing cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs). Personal accounts for younger workers are a better idea, for the young, for seniors and for America. Apparently, President Obama's concept of spreading the wealth includes sacking both the Medicare and Social Security systems on which America's seniors have come to rely, in favor of others the president's progressive vision deems more worthy. • Hunter is president of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity. • Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, and General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union.