The Obama cuts also rely on grinding, year-after-year reductions in payments to doctors and other providers. This is a way to maintain that there are technically no changes in “benefits,” though access to and quality of care inevitably will be affected.
No one concerned with the health of Medicare would go about it in this fashion. But “Obamacare” was helter-skelter legislating, a desperate attempt to make the numbers temporarily add up.
Medicare’s actuaries consistently sound the alarm about the consequences. A May 2012 report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said, “The large reductions in Medicare payments rates to physicians would likely have serious implications for beneficiary access to care.”
It also noted the punishing effect on hospitals, nursing facilities and home-health agencies, which “would have to withdraw from providing services to Medicare beneficiaries, merge with other provider groups or shift substantial portions of Medicare costs to their non-Medicare, non-Medicaid payers.”
Oh, is that all? If a Republican president had done this, The New York Times would have called for impeachment proceedings.
Is the Republicans’ counter-assault on Medicare hypocritical? No. How — not whether — to restrain Medicare is the question. The Democratic approach, now and in the future, is blunt-force price controls. Republicans want to get savings through competition and choice.
Leftists hate competition and choice. It doesn’t give them enough power over our lives.
I know what it looks like. I’ve felt its hands on my skin, seen the look in its eyes, felt the burn of its words. It is deliberate and it is real. Racism is not disliking our black President because of his socialist leanings. Racism is the scar I carried near my lip for decades after one particularly harsh punch in the mouth from a kid screaming “NIGGER!” at me while swinging away. Racism is that guy in the diner, the hoses and dogs turned on folks from my grandparent’s generation just looking to drink at a decent water fountain. When you accuse a person of racism, THAT is the legacy of hate you are laying at their feet. It’s every bit as heinous as accusing someone of being a child molester arbitrarily. When you accuse Mitt Romney and other conservatives like me of being racist based on no other proof besides the fact that we vehemently disagree with this President and his policies, you dilute the history and experiences of people like me. You cheapen that word – nigger. You rob it of it’s true horror – a horror we should never forget or take for granted.Not only that, Toure; but you cheapen yourself. You make it clear to blacks like me that you, indeed have no clue in hell what real racism is or where it can be found.
These people are truly vile. He is a child, and a vicious one.
As Ed Morrissey says, there is real racism out there, and this kind of political tactic trivializes it.
The University of Colorado is going to have segregated dorms for CCW holders. This is just going to spur another lawsuit against the hoplophobes. Here’s a similar story with the actual CU press release. But this is the first time I’d heard this:
Less than 1% of CU’s student-body population is believed to have concealed-carry permits.
One such permit holder, a graduate student at CU-Denver, catapulted into notoriety last month after allegedly carrying out a midnight massacre at a crowded suburban Denver theater. There has been no indication that accused Aurora shooter James Holmes brought guns to campus.
I haven’t done an extensive search, but I can’t find anything to back up the “fact” that Homes had a permit. I would have thought this would have been a huge part of the story if true, and used to bash permit holders.
The president flunks it. Hey, that’s probably why he doesn’t want to show us his transcripts. Anyway, he was probably told there would be no math.
And this graphic should be shown every day until the first Tuesday in November.
Because the message is that Obama and his economic team didn’t know WTF they were doing then, and they still don’t. That’s generously assuming, of course, that their goal actually was to grow the economy, and not just hand out our grandchildrens’ money to their cronies and political allies.
