ADDENDUM::Zombies Against Medicare - The New York Times

Paul Krugman takes a look at Bush's "zombie idea" that Medicare is not working and that raising the age of eligibility is a good idea.

[W]hile raising the Medicare age has long been a favorite idea of Washington’s Very Serious People, a couple of years ago the Congressional Budget Office did a careful study and discovered that it would hardly save any money. That is, at this point raising the Medicare age is a zombie idea, which should have been killed by analysis and evidence, but is still out there eating some people’s brains.
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The real reason conservatives want to do away with Medicare has always been political: It’s the very idea of the government providing a universal safety net that they hate, and they hate it even more when such programs are successful. But when they make their case to the public they usually shy away from making their real case, and have even, incredibly, sometimes posed as the program’s defenders against liberals and their death panels.

What Medicare’s would-be killers usually argue, instead, is that the program as we know it is unaffordable — that we must destroy the system in order to save it, that, as Mr. Bush put it, we must “move to a new system that allows [seniors] to have something — because they’re not going to have anything.” And the new system they usually advocate is, as I said, vouchers that can be applied to the purchase of private insurance.

The underlying premise here is that Medicare as we know it is incapable of controlling costs, that only the only way to keep health care affordable going forward is to rely on the magic of privatization.

Now, this was always a dubious claim. It’s true that for most of Medicare’s history its spending has grown faster than the economy as a whole — but this is true of health spending in general. In fact, Medicare costs per beneficiary have consistently grown more slowly than private insurance premiums, suggesting that Medicare is, if anything, better than private insurers at cost control. Furthermore, other wealthy countries with government-provided health insurance spend much less than we do, again suggesting that Medicare-type programs can indeed control costs.

Zombies Against Medicare - The New York Times

Elderly woman rips Jeb in townhall: "I paid into that for years - now you want to take it away?”

A bit of and addendum to my last post:

“We’re not going to have adequate coverage for our children or our grandchildren without Medicare. I paid into that for years and years just like all these other seniors here and now you want to take it away?” said the woman, who did not identify herself and left before the town hall concluded. “Why are you always attacking the seniors?”
 
“Well, I’m not,” Bush responded. “Here’s what I said: I said we’re going to have to reform our entitlement system. We have to.”

“It’s not an entitlement,” the woman shot back. “I earned that.”

“It’s an actuarially unsound healthcare system,” said Bush, who said something must be done before the system burdens future generations with $50 billion of debt. “Social Security is an underfunded retirement system; people have put money into it, for sure.

“The people that are receiving these benefits, I don’t think that we should touch that; but your children and grandchildren are not going to get the benefit of this that they believe they’re going to get or that you think they’re going to get, because the amount of money put in compared to the amount of money the system costs is wrong.”

Elderly woman rips Jeb in townhall: "I paid into that for years - now you want to take it away?”

Jeb Bush ‘should be embarrassed’ by his overtime pay claims, economists say

Just how far out of touch is Bush version 3.0 with the everyday life of the average American,  First he and his ilk have been attacking Social Security from a variety of angles - privatization of some form [1], outright elimination based on the sound biblical principle that Noah never retired [2] because it is a Pagan concept [3] or raising the retirement age.  In their minds destroying a long standing social safety net is just one way to humiliate the poor.

Recently, Bush3.0 "began" attacking the work ethic of those of us who have to grind it out at lower paying jobs in order to survive.  Stating,

"(That) means we have to be a lot more productive. Workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families. That's the only way we are going to get out of this rut that we're in," Bush had said.

But yet this week he is against support for expanding overtime protections for mid-management working those same long hours. In other words, working longer hours shouldn't necessarily gain you more income for your family. 

“It’s this prescribed top-down approach that is the wrong approach,” Bush said. “The net effects of the overtime rule will be, if history is any guide, there will be less overtime paid, less wages earned.”

The reality, 

“If employers want to avoid overtime pay, they hire more workers on straight time and that creates new jobs,” Bernstein said. “Even staunch opponents agree with that and disagree with Mr Bush.”

So what really is your agenda Mr. Bush?
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[1] In good economic times this would make sense, over the long term stocks typically fare better. But recent history tells us how fool hardy that plan may be.  No one has been able to answer this one question:  What if the stock market goes bad just before retirement, will the government guarantee against this loss?

[2]  In regards to Greg Gianforte's comments

Montana Republican: Noah was 600 years old when he built the Ark, so why do Americans need retirement?

Noah Was 600 Years Old When He Built the Ark So Americans Don't Need Retirement 

[3] From Right Wing Watch,  "One of the great indications that something is not part of what God wants is the fruit that accompanies it," he continued. "And one of the things that I’ve always believed is Deuteronomy 6:24, He says, 'Everything I tell you is for your benefit, that you can enjoy a long life, that you can prosper,' and so if we see something in the way of statistics or science that shows that we don’t have a long life, that will diminish our life, then we know that’s not part of what God wanted us to do."

For a bit more snark on the matter:  ‘God Hates Retirement’ Is Wingnuts’ Hot New Reason For Killing Social Security

Jeb Bush ‘should be embarrassed’ by his overtime pay claims, economists say

How The Conservative Obsession With Policing Poor People's Shopping Carts Got Started | ThinkProgress

In the long run, this is what it boils down too,

The law would also make it harder to buy spaghetti sauces and spices to flavor recipes, a constraint seemingly at odds with conservative rhetoric about what’s wrong with public assistance programs.

“We hear an awful lot in the post-welfare reform era about moving people to self-sufficiency,” Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) legal director Ellen Vollinger told ThinkProgress. “Telling adults they can’t make the same choices within the grocery store that others make, and then prepare the meals they want with the ingredients they want, doesn’t seem at all consistent with the argument that these changes move people to self-sufficiency. I always thought that was a little strange.”

I call it the "complication factor."  Make things complex and confusing, that individuals who honestly need the help will give up in frustration; too many unnecessary hoops to jump through.  Those "gaming-the-system" not so much, it is a game to them; they have nothing to lose.

But most of all, the administrators argued that even a perfectly-designed ban would fix a non-existent problem. “[I]mplementation of this waiver would perpetuate the myth that participants do not make wise food purchasing decisions,” the rejection letter said, when “research has shown [they] are smart shoppers” whose nutrition intake varies little from that of higher-income people.

Instead of focusing on how much soda one drinks, or whether I supplement my protein intake with seafood on occasion (I don't eat beef), finding a workable solution should be paramount.  “It isn’t the case that SNAP clients are less interested in good nutrition than anybody else,” Vollinger said. “They’re very interested in it. They just can’t afford it.”  Instead of cutting budgets, programs that show a promise of working should be encouraged.

The agency’s more recent attempts to incentivize healthy shopping and eating in SNAP are more aggressive than education. Food stamps recipients can swipe their EBT cards at farmers’ markets and get twice as much to spend in market-only voucher tokens, thanks to a $100 million program tucked into the 2014 Farm Bill. (Mississippi rescinded its request for a junk food ban waiver because it decided “to focus on improving SNAP participants’ access to farmers’ markets” instead, a USDA official told ThinkProgress.)

The farmers market policy grew out of a narrowly-targeted pilot program in the mid-2000s, and the USDA has funded other incentive-based pilot programs aimed at promoting nutrition on a SNAP budget. One such program in Massachusetts credited 30 cents back to a SNAP recipient’s EBT card for every dollar they spent on a targeted list of fruits and vegetables. After about two years, the pilot program had demonstrated a significant jump in the intake of fruits and vegetables among participating families as compared to those who were left out.

How The Conservative Obsession With Policing Poor People's Shopping Carts Got Started | ThinkProgress

Critics Question Whether Insurance Card Measure is a Remedy | The Texas Tribune

That's the ticket, let's shame those of us who are poor a bit more.  Just another means to "us and them" people; a waste of time and funds. And whatever happened to the idea of small government?

But instead of Hester Prynne’s infamous “A,” insurance cards for Texans with coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act would bear the letter “S,” for subsidy.

Supporters of House Bill 1514 by state Rep. J.D. Sheffield, R-Gatesville, say it’s necessary to standardize insurance cards and clarify the type of health coverage a patient has.

The House will take up the legislation, which easily passed out of the Insurance Committee, on Friday.

Doctors’ groups say the bill would also help physicians “remind the patient about the importance of continuing his or her portion” of payments toward the health insurance premium, said Sara Austin, an Austin-based neurologist, in written testimony in favor of the bill.
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“Other than creating a group that you’re going to discriminate against, I don’t see any purpose for indicating that people are getting a subsidy,” said Jose E. Camacho, executive director of the Texas Association of Community Health Centers.

Jamie Dudensing, chief executive of the Texas Association of Health Plans, which lobbies on behalf of several major insurers, said recently that she was similarly worried the bill could create a “scarlet letter” effect where some doctors could decide not to see a patient they learned to be on an “Obamacare” plan.

“Right now, providers are not really supposed to be discriminating against consumers if they have a contract with a health plan,” Dudensing said this week at an event hosted by The Texas Tribune, adding that insurers were “very concerned” about the bill.

Critics Question Whether Insurance Card Measure is a Remedy | The Texas Tribune