The RNC is circulating a spurious poll designed to scare seniors with questions like, "Are you concerned that the Democrat's Health Plan will deny coverage to Republicans?" Damn, one longs for the horsewhip, tar, feathers and rail of yore.
Here from Obama's Organizing for America, "President Obama's plan for health insurance reform is good for seniors, because reform......
will STRENGTHEN Medicare. Reform will improve Medicare's quality of care by cutting down on paperwork, focusing on wellness and prevention, and rewarding doctors for the care they provide instead of how many procedures they do. This all adds up to more choices and better care.
... will NOT cut our Medicare benefits. President Obama has clearly said, "nobody is talking about cutting Medicare benefits." And AARP agrees that reform will simply eliminate billions in giveaways via the Medicare Advantage program that boost insurance company profits -- but don't help folks like us.
...will SAVE us money. Reform will close the doughnut hole in Medicare Part D that's costing people so much money for prescription drugs, and eliminate co-pays for preventative care like cancer screenings and immunizations.
... will SAVE Medicare in the long run. If we do nothing, costs will keep rising and the Medicare trust fund will be at risk of going bust within a decade. Reform will save Medicare from bankruptcy and ensure we get the care we need for years to come.
... will HELP our loved ones. Reform will extend coverage for young people, stop insurance companies from charging women more or cutting care when you need it most. And most importantly, reform will make it illegal to deny coverage because of a pre-existing condition.
In so many ways, reform will help every American struggling with our health insurance system -- especially seniors. But insurance companies that want to protect their profits and partisan attack groups that want to weaken President Obama at any cost are spreading rumors to scare folks like us into opposing the reform we need. It's outrageous.
28 August 2009
27 August 2009
Health Reform Inaction Would Cost Seniors Dearly!
ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS
815 16th Street, NW, 4th Floor ¨
Washington, D.C. 20006 ¨ (202)637-5399 ¨
www.retiredamericans.org
For Immediate Release: Contact: David Blank (202)637-5275
August 27,2009 dblank@retiredamericans.org
A new Report Shows Seniors to Benefit from Health Care Reform
Retiree Leader Calls for End to “Scare Tactics”
The following statement was issued today by Edward F. Coyle, Executive Director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, in response to a new report, America’s Seniors and Health Insurance Reform: Protecting Coverage and Strengthening Medicare, issued today by the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Today’s report, available at http://healthreform.gov/reports/seniors/index.html shines a bright light on why retirees have a lot to gain from health reform. Moreover, it shows the wholly unacceptable medical and financial consequences of inaction. “According to the study, if no action is taken, Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket costs will soon eat up more than one-third of a retiree’s Social Security benefits.
A typical older couple would need to save $300,000 for medical bills not covered by Medicare.
“I hope that deeply disturbing findings such as these will move the health care debate away from divisive, insurance industry-backed scare tactics and toward swift passage of a health care bill that will help older Americans. “Health reform is an opportunity to close the Medicare Part D ‘doughnut hole,’ lower prescription drug costs, help early retirees afford health care coverage, and assist middle-class families with the costs of long-term care.
A strong public plan option will hold insurance companies accountable and keep their premiums and business practices in check. “Medicare is a great American success story - it has reduced senior poverty by two-thirds.
Today’s report shows how health reform can both expand Medicare’s benefits for seniors, and also strengthen Medicare’s finances by eliminating wasteful taxpayer subsidies to the big insurance companies. “I urge Congress to act swiftly to pass a health care reform bill that helps Americans of all ages. The dire consequences of inaction give us no other choice.”
# # #The Alliance for Retired Americans is a national organization that advocates for the rights and well being of over 3.5 million retirees andtheir families.
815 16th Street, NW, 4th Floor ¨
Washington, D.C. 20006 ¨ (202)637-5399 ¨
www.retiredamericans.org
For Immediate Release: Contact: David Blank (202)637-5275
August 27,2009 dblank@retiredamericans.org
A new Report Shows Seniors to Benefit from Health Care Reform
Retiree Leader Calls for End to “Scare Tactics”
The following statement was issued today by Edward F. Coyle, Executive Director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, in response to a new report, America’s Seniors and Health Insurance Reform: Protecting Coverage and Strengthening Medicare, issued today by the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Today’s report, available at http://healthreform.gov/reports/seniors/index.html shines a bright light on why retirees have a lot to gain from health reform. Moreover, it shows the wholly unacceptable medical and financial consequences of inaction. “According to the study, if no action is taken, Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket costs will soon eat up more than one-third of a retiree’s Social Security benefits.
A typical older couple would need to save $300,000 for medical bills not covered by Medicare.
“I hope that deeply disturbing findings such as these will move the health care debate away from divisive, insurance industry-backed scare tactics and toward swift passage of a health care bill that will help older Americans. “Health reform is an opportunity to close the Medicare Part D ‘doughnut hole,’ lower prescription drug costs, help early retirees afford health care coverage, and assist middle-class families with the costs of long-term care.
A strong public plan option will hold insurance companies accountable and keep their premiums and business practices in check. “Medicare is a great American success story - it has reduced senior poverty by two-thirds.
Today’s report shows how health reform can both expand Medicare’s benefits for seniors, and also strengthen Medicare’s finances by eliminating wasteful taxpayer subsidies to the big insurance companies. “I urge Congress to act swiftly to pass a health care reform bill that helps Americans of all ages. The dire consequences of inaction give us no other choice.”
# # #The Alliance for Retired Americans is a national organization that advocates for the rights and well being of over 3.5 million retirees andtheir families.
26 August 2009
Ted Kennedy - At The End: Courage & Fortitude
Death is inevitable despite our best efforts at denial and delay. The piper must be paid if one expects to dance. That is the way of life...death comes.
Today we mourn the death of Ted Kennedy and that is appropriate. I sometimes think that we mourn so that we might be mourned ourselves when that time comes. Others, I suspect, would like it to bigger than that, with more meaning and implication. But me? I think not. We live and we die, both require courage and fortitude to do each well.
We'll read and hear him referred to as a "Lion". But, as one who is addicted to the Discovery and National Geographic channels, I can tell you that despite their awesome size and appearance lions, especially males, are unsavory, dandified lay-abouts. For me, Ted Kennedy was a tiger.
Tigers, you should know, are more formidable than lions and much more canny and wise than lions. They are certainly more ferocious than lions.
Some time ago, I watched a special about a tiger who ruled his area in a forest in India. He was a brave beast who kept in line the other tigers of his region. Tigers are more solitary than lions, yet this huge fellow managed to sire many offspring. And, he never lost a fight. He was an incredibly beautiful specimen of "tigerness".
In the wild, a male tiger's life expectancy is a mere 15 years. When this tiger was about fifteen and a few months he fought and lost his last battle. He was injured and his beautiful coat was torn and he was blinded in one eye. Certainly tiger's survive with worse injuries and come back to fight other battles. Yet, this one chose to do that which tigers in the wild so often do if left with a choice at the end--he went to his lair in the cliffs and curled up in the darkness and died. If he could not be that which he had been he chose not to continue.
That, to me, was meeting death with courage and fortitude. I hope that I can meet my own demise in such a way.
That is why I think of Ted Kennedy as a tiger rather than a lion. For at the end, wounded and losing to a dreadfully debilitating disease, he went home and waited for death with courage and fortitude. Just days ago, he summoned the strength to issue one last roar in a letter to Massachusetts's Republican governor, Mitt Romney, telling him that he should appoint a democrat, not a republican, to replace him as interim senator. And then he died.
Like that tiger in India, Kennedy is gone from this earth, but we still inhale and exhale the same air that he breathed and like the offspring of that tiger, there are those of us who will step forward into the vacancy and carry on the fight. Each, in his own way, remain even if as memories of greatness.
But, as to Kennedy, like that tiger of India, there will never be another like him.
Today we mourn the death of Ted Kennedy and that is appropriate. I sometimes think that we mourn so that we might be mourned ourselves when that time comes. Others, I suspect, would like it to bigger than that, with more meaning and implication. But me? I think not. We live and we die, both require courage and fortitude to do each well.
We'll read and hear him referred to as a "Lion". But, as one who is addicted to the Discovery and National Geographic channels, I can tell you that despite their awesome size and appearance lions, especially males, are unsavory, dandified lay-abouts. For me, Ted Kennedy was a tiger.
Tigers, you should know, are more formidable than lions and much more canny and wise than lions. They are certainly more ferocious than lions.
Some time ago, I watched a special about a tiger who ruled his area in a forest in India. He was a brave beast who kept in line the other tigers of his region. Tigers are more solitary than lions, yet this huge fellow managed to sire many offspring. And, he never lost a fight. He was an incredibly beautiful specimen of "tigerness".
In the wild, a male tiger's life expectancy is a mere 15 years. When this tiger was about fifteen and a few months he fought and lost his last battle. He was injured and his beautiful coat was torn and he was blinded in one eye. Certainly tiger's survive with worse injuries and come back to fight other battles. Yet, this one chose to do that which tigers in the wild so often do if left with a choice at the end--he went to his lair in the cliffs and curled up in the darkness and died. If he could not be that which he had been he chose not to continue.
That, to me, was meeting death with courage and fortitude. I hope that I can meet my own demise in such a way.
That is why I think of Ted Kennedy as a tiger rather than a lion. For at the end, wounded and losing to a dreadfully debilitating disease, he went home and waited for death with courage and fortitude. Just days ago, he summoned the strength to issue one last roar in a letter to Massachusetts's Republican governor, Mitt Romney, telling him that he should appoint a democrat, not a republican, to replace him as interim senator. And then he died.
Like that tiger in India, Kennedy is gone from this earth, but we still inhale and exhale the same air that he breathed and like the offspring of that tiger, there are those of us who will step forward into the vacancy and carry on the fight. Each, in his own way, remain even if as memories of greatness.
But, as to Kennedy, like that tiger of India, there will never be another like him.
25 August 2009
Glenn Beck, Advertisers Bail Under Pressure - Second Thoughts
Next to outliving that little butt-head who used to beat me up everyday on the way home during the fifth grade, I can't think of anything that gives me more glee and delight than watching as Glenn Beck takes it in the neck as advertisers leave him quicker than Pabst beer-drinking, pick-up truck-driving, white socks wearing, nose-picking, butt-scratching, crotch-adjusting, good old boys cutting out of a Dixie Chicks' concert.
So far as we now know, the Clorox Company, Wal-Mart, Sprint, CVS and UPS stores have cancelled their advertising schedules on his show. Beck, who often appears in tearful, emotional melt-downs similar to that of a sixteen year-old girl who finds out that her dad will be the chaperon at the dance, recently characterized President Obama as a racist "with a deep-seated hatred of white people", averages 2.4-million viewers each day.
Yes, it was inflammatory. Yes, it was hateful, stupid and outrageous. Yes, it was just one in a whole series of provocative remarks by a man who grows increasingly unstable before our eyes. Yes, it contributes to a climate of violence and mistrust, which very well contributes to people showing up strapped at presidential appearances; and yes, it probably does contribute to the crazed actions of mentally unbalanced people who assassinate abortion providers and kill, at church, liberals.
Yes, yes, yes, and yes to all that. I know. I even, recently, signed a petition to Wal-Mart asking that it withdraw its advertising from the Glenn Beck Show. I now, wish that I had not.
Here's why. On one hand we leftists, progressives and liberals are outraged by the right's tactics of shouting down at town hall meetings those they disagree with. We wring our hands and pule about these heavy-handed (read Storm Troopers, Brown-Shirts, Nazis) assaults on that most basic demonstration of democracy in action. We do that. Admit it.
Is not dissent and civil disobedience part of our arsenal? Have we not, in our youth, called police officers pigs, did we not call LBJ a baby-killer, do I not, every damned chance I get, characterize George W. Bush as a dry-drunk sociopath? And, do we, and do I, not do these things expecting full protection under our right to Freedom of Speech? Huh? We do, don't we?
So what I think, at the moment anyway, is that there should be no glee taken in any attempt of those who disagree to stifle the voice of dissent--regardless. If we legitimize the squelching of dissent from the others, then haven't we also legitimized the squelching of our own dissent.
Understand this. Swords mostly have two edges. Or more succinctly, in the words of the great British Philosopher and Peer of the Realm, Sir Mick Jagger, "What goes around, comes around!"
So far as we now know, the Clorox Company, Wal-Mart, Sprint, CVS and UPS stores have cancelled their advertising schedules on his show. Beck, who often appears in tearful, emotional melt-downs similar to that of a sixteen year-old girl who finds out that her dad will be the chaperon at the dance, recently characterized President Obama as a racist "with a deep-seated hatred of white people", averages 2.4-million viewers each day.
Yes, it was inflammatory. Yes, it was hateful, stupid and outrageous. Yes, it was just one in a whole series of provocative remarks by a man who grows increasingly unstable before our eyes. Yes, it contributes to a climate of violence and mistrust, which very well contributes to people showing up strapped at presidential appearances; and yes, it probably does contribute to the crazed actions of mentally unbalanced people who assassinate abortion providers and kill, at church, liberals.
Yes, yes, yes, and yes to all that. I know. I even, recently, signed a petition to Wal-Mart asking that it withdraw its advertising from the Glenn Beck Show. I now, wish that I had not.
Here's why. On one hand we leftists, progressives and liberals are outraged by the right's tactics of shouting down at town hall meetings those they disagree with. We wring our hands and pule about these heavy-handed (read Storm Troopers, Brown-Shirts, Nazis) assaults on that most basic demonstration of democracy in action. We do that. Admit it.
Is not dissent and civil disobedience part of our arsenal? Have we not, in our youth, called police officers pigs, did we not call LBJ a baby-killer, do I not, every damned chance I get, characterize George W. Bush as a dry-drunk sociopath? And, do we, and do I, not do these things expecting full protection under our right to Freedom of Speech? Huh? We do, don't we?
So what I think, at the moment anyway, is that there should be no glee taken in any attempt of those who disagree to stifle the voice of dissent--regardless. If we legitimize the squelching of dissent from the others, then haven't we also legitimized the squelching of our own dissent.
Understand this. Swords mostly have two edges. Or more succinctly, in the words of the great British Philosopher and Peer of the Realm, Sir Mick Jagger, "What goes around, comes around!"
24 August 2009
No Health Care Reform Yet - Blame the Democrats
Consider this.
With a Democrat in the White House, and with a large majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives, and a simple filibuster proof majority in the Senate (and the ability to derail any Republican plans to filibuster with a 51 member vote on budgetary issues) why in the name of anything you choose are we futzing around with health care reform?
Could it be that liberals and progressives have no real voice in today's Democratic party? Or could it be that we have a gaggle of Eisenhower Republicans masquerading as Democrats? Or is it that the drug company Tsars and insurance company oligarchs have our politicians firmly gripped by their financial short hairs? Or is it that the Democratic grassroots is so out of touch with its liberal, progressive and populist origins that it has become a clueless, tentative, whimpering, apologetic shell of its former self?
I would suggest that it is each and all of the above.
I have said it before and I have said it often; Republicans will continue to rule (hey, don't rank on me with the Democrats having the WH, Congress, and Senate--it is obvious the Republicans are still calling the shots, or we'd have had health care reform before school started) until progressives, liberals and populists organize and mobilize to take back the Democratic party from the Blue Dogs, Milquetoasts, and ineffectual nabobs now in charge.
You want health care reform? Do something about it. Get together as a group and get into the streets and shut it down! That's how we got civil rights. That's how we got voter's rights. That's how we ended the Vietnam War. We went to the streets, took our lumps and shut it down!
I would suggest to you that health care reform with a public option, and ending Medicare overpayment to Medicare Advantage plans, ending the insanely complicated Part D prescription program which criminalizes Medicares bidding for low-cost bulk drug purchases, and allowing Medicare buy-in to Americans 55-64 who need to re-insure or to get insurance is as important as all those other things we liberals, progressives and populists fought for so hard not so long ago.
With a Democrat in the White House, and with a large majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives, and a simple filibuster proof majority in the Senate (and the ability to derail any Republican plans to filibuster with a 51 member vote on budgetary issues) why in the name of anything you choose are we futzing around with health care reform?
Could it be that liberals and progressives have no real voice in today's Democratic party? Or could it be that we have a gaggle of Eisenhower Republicans masquerading as Democrats? Or is it that the drug company Tsars and insurance company oligarchs have our politicians firmly gripped by their financial short hairs? Or is it that the Democratic grassroots is so out of touch with its liberal, progressive and populist origins that it has become a clueless, tentative, whimpering, apologetic shell of its former self?
I would suggest that it is each and all of the above.
I have said it before and I have said it often; Republicans will continue to rule (hey, don't rank on me with the Democrats having the WH, Congress, and Senate--it is obvious the Republicans are still calling the shots, or we'd have had health care reform before school started) until progressives, liberals and populists organize and mobilize to take back the Democratic party from the Blue Dogs, Milquetoasts, and ineffectual nabobs now in charge.
You want health care reform? Do something about it. Get together as a group and get into the streets and shut it down! That's how we got civil rights. That's how we got voter's rights. That's how we ended the Vietnam War. We went to the streets, took our lumps and shut it down!
I would suggest to you that health care reform with a public option, and ending Medicare overpayment to Medicare Advantage plans, ending the insanely complicated Part D prescription program which criminalizes Medicares bidding for low-cost bulk drug purchases, and allowing Medicare buy-in to Americans 55-64 who need to re-insure or to get insurance is as important as all those other things we liberals, progressives and populists fought for so hard not so long ago.
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