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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (54229)	8/15/2012 11:52:49 PM
From: greatplains_guy	Respond to of 71588

The GOP's Medicare Advantage Democrats have long had an issue edge on Medicare. Republicans cowered in fear. Here's why it's different in 2012. August 15, 2012, 6:47 p.m. ET. By KARL ROVE Predictably, Democrats went after Mitt Romney's new running mate immediately, describing Paul Ryan as a "certifiable right-wing ideologue" whose views are "extreme" and "radical." They focused on Medicare, warning that Republicans "would end Medicare as we know it," making it "a voucher system" that costs seniors "thousands of dollars in health care costs." Some Republican hand-wringers moaned. They failed to consider that Democrats were going to level these charges no matter whom Mr. Romney picked as his running mate. And they ignored the ammunition the party has to turn the issue against Democrats. For one thing, the GOP doesn't cut Medicare spending. This fiscal year, Medicare outlays will total $503 billion. Even under the House GOP budget—considered the most parsimonious plan out there—Medicare spending would be $855 billion annually 10 years from now. That just 3% less than what President Obama proposes, hardly enough to justify Vice President Joe Biden's claim that Republicans are "gutting Medicare." Mr. Romney also has advantages in the contest with Mr. Obama. The president's legislation cuts Medicare by $716 billion to pay for ObamaCare. But because so many baby boomers are turning 65, Medicare is going broke. (Thanks in part to ObamaCare cuts, Medicare's hospital trust fund will be insolvent by 2024, according to the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees.) Rather than steal from the health-care program for seniors to finance expanding health care for younger Americans, Mr. Romney would repeal ObamaCare and return that $716 billion to Medicare to shore up its ragged finances. More important, Messrs. Obama and Romney differ on how to moderate the growth of future heath spending. Mr. Obama relies on a board of unelected bureaucrats—whose decisions cannot be appealed—to decide which procedures will be covered and at what prices. This will lead to rationing and slow down innovation in new therapies, procedures and devices. Mr. Ryan's plan has a different approach. While there would be no changes in Medicare for those 55 or older, starting in 10 years younger Americans would have a choice. They could either pick traditional Medicare or use the average amount of money the government spends on each Medicare enrollee to buy private insurance. The reasoning is based on a reliable truth: Competition will lower costs by using market forces to spur innovation and improvement. This approach is nothing new or radical. Called "premium support," it was recommended in 1999 by Louisiana Democratic Sen. John Breaux, chairman of President Bill Clinton's Medicare Reform Commission. There's evidence of how effective—and popular—this approach would be. In 2003, Congress structured Medicare's prescription drug benefit by using the "premium support" concept. Though more seniors signed up and used it more than expected, the Congressional Budget Office now says the 10-year cost of this popular drug benefit will be 43% less than it estimated in March 2004. Premium support can also make good politics. This spring, Resurgent Republic (a conservative polling group I helped organize in 2009) offered 1,000 registered voters the choice between a candidate who echoed Team Obama's recent Medicare arguments and a candidate who backed allowing those aged 55 and younger to choose between traditional Medicare and private insurance backed up by premium support. The poll's respondents picked the candidate favoring choice and premium support by 48% to 40% with independents preferring him 48% to 41%. Republicans must make these persuasive arguments for Medicare reform, which brings us back to Mr. Ryan. He has been doing so successfully back home, winning re-election with between 63% and 68% in a congressional district carried by Bill Clinton (twice), Al Gore and Barack Obama. Some Republicans worry that fighting about Medicare takes valuable time from talking about jobs, growth and deficits. True, but this fight was coming anyway. Better to debate it now in ways the Romney campaign can control rather than see it raised in the campaign's final moments through under-the-radar robo calls and mailers to seniors by Democrats. It is said that in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing. That's not always true. Sometimes when you're explaining, you're reassuring voters and undermining your opponent's credibility. That's the case with this issue now. It's why Team Romney was smart to quickly run an ad attacking Mr. Obama for robbing Medicare to pay for ObamaCare. Democrats have long had an issue advantage on Medicare. Republicans cowered in fear. This time it's different. The Romney-Ryan ticket is not only talking about Medicare, it is putting Mr. Obama on the defensive. If Republicans succeed, politics will never be the same. online.wsj.com

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (54229)	10/1/2012 9:51:26 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Elizabeth Warren's Ironic Legal Past By Wall Street Journal September 29, 2012 'People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: They're right. The system is rigged," declared Elizabeth Warren in prime time at the Democratic convention—and she should know. By her own logic, she was one of the riggers. One pleasure of the Massachusetts Senate race is that we are all learning about the remunerative outside legal work on behalf of corporate defendants done by Harvard Law School's resident bankruptcy law expert. Let's just say she doesn't do this work pro bono. Everyone has to make a living, but Ms. Warren's legal moonlighting does raise a question or two about her posture as the tribune of the powerless little guy. One of her first important cases turns on Johns-Manville Corporation, which used to be America's major asbestos manufacturer and distributor, and its primary insurance company, Travelers. Tens of thousands of personal injury lawsuits drove Manville into Chapter 11, where its Travelers policies were the estate's most valuable and basically only asset. A bankruptcy court ruled in 1986 that Travelers should pay into a $2.8 billion trust facility to cover future claims, in return for immunity from "any and all" future liabilities. This arrangement was upheld by the appeals court and codified in a 1994 law by Congress, which the Constitution invests with the power to write the bankruptcy code. But in 2002, the tort bar started to bring so-called "direct actions," asking the courts to overturn this well-settled legal principle by arguing that Travelers conspired with Manville to hide the health dangers of asbestos even though the Manville estate had been worked out. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals eventually endorsed this novel theory, and in briefs in 2008 and 2009 Ms. Warren asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal from Travelers. She argued that a bankruptcy court's authority was total, as established by Congress, in the interests of "finality and repose." Endorsing the direct-action theory, Ms. Warren wrote, would give "asbestos plaintiff lawyers an 'end run' around a final federal court judgment by allowing them to do indirectly (by suing a bankrupt debtor's insurer) what they could not do directly." She even added that this legal abuse would allow defrauded investors to relitigate the Drexel Burnham Lambert investment bank's 1991 settlement, or allow the women injured by defective silicone breast implants to sue Dow Corning again. The second wave of asbestos litigation was one of the great scams in U.S. legal history, as these columns have reported for years, with thousands of fraudulent class actions. So Ms. Warren's clients were on the right side of the law. But what would Ms. Warren the Senate candidate say about all the victims wronged by a business plot to put profits before consumer safety, which is how the trial bar and its Democratic clients portray such things? What would Lilly Ledbetter think? In 2009 the Supreme Court sided with Ms. Warren, 7-2. Travelers got its money's worth. Her fee was about 40 times as large as the $5,200 the Manville trust pays today to people who can prove personal asbestos harm, while the decision relieved Travelers of paying an additional $445 million. Then there's the case of LTV Steel, in which the putative 99 percenter helped the conglomerate try to dump health benefits for tens of thousands of retired coal miners. LTV entered bankruptcy prior to the 1992 Coal Act, which required industry to pay into a general fund to cover retiree health care, and the company reorganized after the law's passage. In a 1995 brief, Ms. Warren argued that the Coal Act mandate was grounded in union contracts that were dissolved by bankruptcy, and therefore Congress was retroactively and illegally creating a new liability. She lost in court, though she was right on the merits. But we can only imagine what Ms. Warren's ads might say about this if her GOP opponent Scott Brown had represented LTV. We don't begrudge Ms. Warren's handsome earnings or her stands on legal principle, even if those principles do happen to underscore the complex nature of both the law and modern economy. But when she talks about "the millionaires and billionaires" who supposedly "wrecked our economy" and "still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them"—as she put it at the Charlotte convention—perhaps she ought to recall her own legal strutting. By the way, Harvard requires its professors to report any extracurricular consulting activities, but Ms. Warren is refusing to disclose this list so voters can decide for themselves if she's really a handmaid to the plutocrats disguised as Robin Hood through November 6. It would be instructive to learn what other corporations, and maybe even a billionaire, have had her on their payrolls. online.wsj.com