VP debate!!!

I don't know how much that Intelligence gaffe will hurt Biden since I really don't know how many people care about it, but it irritated my wife, who cut off the TV after Biden said that.

Of course we're dorks with an NSA refrigerator magnet, so we may not be representative.

 

Look at them for what ? So we can see how much time he's willing to spend to dig up Ryan supporters and their quotes ? In my post # 399, I could have posted 5 times as many if I wanted to be stupid and rummage through the Google results under "Biden won the debate", for an hour or more. Man, sometimes these posts get downright juvenile.

 

You know how you can tell a debate tie?

Some polls say one guy won, and other polls say the other guy did.

Obama did not win.

You can't claim a legitimate win in a debate unless you change the numbers.

Obama and Romney are going at it again next Thursday, and then all this will be forgotten.

One thing that raised my eyebrow.....is that the right's only real complaint today about Biden was "smirks and smiles"...nothing about the facts he presented...or at least I haven't heard any yet

 

I'm not sure where you are getting this Romney restarts the draft and goes to war with Iran thing. Is this just made up?

 

You thought wrong. Ryan is an idiot that comes off as a nice guy, and Biden is a smart guy that comes off as a jackass

 

Like the free pass Syria is getting? The death toll is what, 20,000 to 27,000?

 

I'm sorry, but this is total bollocks. The money that has been cut is subsidies that are given to private insurance organizations (HMOs, PPO, etc.) that provide Part C - Medicare Advantage. These subsidies have only existed since 2003 (with the passage of the MMA). Additionally, this cut is being used to fund traditional Medicare Part A (the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund). In 2009, the date of expected zero balance for this trust fund was 2018. Now, after these cuts, the expected zero balance is estimated at 2024. So, the cut subsidies are being used to fund Medicare, not the ACA.

 

No, you're right the subliminal message was..."Hey dictator's feel free to slaughter your people"....this is classic liberal speak. GO FOR THE EMOTIONAL THINKING PEOPLE....NOT THE PEOPLE WITH COMMONSENSE AND INTELLIGENCE.

 

There is nothing we can do about that.

Syria is this kind of netherworld, where our intel people are at the mercy of the Turks and Israelis.

Mitt Romney says we should cultivate relationships with people we can trust to be the good guys after they beat Assad.....and the Turks and Israelis don't even know who those guys are.

Aghanistan and Syria are two good examples of places we should not care about. No oil, and they won't thank us if we help them.

 

The point is that I was responding to Defengar's post that it would be open season on genocide under Romney. I was just pointing out that it's open season on genocide now.

 

I agree.

I personally don't see the US's post WWII military machine fitting well into the war on terrorism, and our national security realities in the middle east.

What we need is a bunch of SEALs and bunch of drones, and not so much with the tanks and ground troops

 

OK... not sure what that had to do with genocide...

 

Nothing. I never was talking about genocide.

 

This misses most of the truth. Yes, the cuts are essentially to the providers, and the assumption is that they are just going to be OK being paid less, and all will be happy otherwise. Yet common sense says that there will be less providing when the compensation is less.

Which brings us to what Ryan illuminated in the Obamacare summit. The "Doc Fix". Where Congress appropriates money on the side to compensate the providers of Medicare. Just a simple gimmick that keeps the cost of Medicare "reduced", but where the taxpayers are on the hook either way.

Which brings us to the real reason Obama raided Medicare in this way. It was soley to reduce the appearance of the cost of Obamacare. The higher cost of the "Doc fix" will not be on the Medicare, or Obamacare, ledgers. Medicare was only extended because it will now have to be funded even more by the Doc fix.

There were no savings here. And the Doc fix will still compensate a little less. And coverage will suffer for Medicare recipients.

 

Sorry but YOU are posting total bullocks. $716 billion IS being taken for obamaSCAM. What you are talking about is the $139 billion cut from insurance company BONUSES for MA plans. Those bonuses were the govt's doing in the first place. For an insurance company to offer a Medicare Advantage plan in an area [sometimes a zip code] the insurance company, MUST BY LAW, bid a figure LOWER than Medicare spends per patient in that specific area. Say Medicare's cost pp in Podunk is $10,000 and "Olde Faithful Insurance" bids $9,500. And they are the low bidder. They get paid by Medicare $9,500 for every beneficiary they TAKE OFF the Medicare rolls. And Medicare saves $500 pp. Then the govt got worried that these companies might SKIMP on care to save money, so to "PROTECT" the consumer, the govt listed specific quality care goals for the insurance to meet and EARN a bonus. Since the insurance companies going in can and DO offer better care at lower costs, they all qualified for the bonuses. Thus the govt drove their own savings program into a COST program. All obama did was eliminate those performance bonuses. That has NOTHING to do with the $716 billion going to obamaSCAM. At first it was thought that insurance companies would no longer be interested without the bonuses, but they routinely provide better care at a lower cost so they look to continue with MA plans. A good thing since 23% of Medicare beneficiaries have elected to go the private insurance way instead of Medicare. 1 in 4.02 beneficiaries have opted out of Medicare.

 

FALSE! Afghanistan is critical for at least 2 main reasons.

1. To deny al Qaeda a place to have training camps for bomb-makers.

2. To be in place to move quickly into PAKISTAN to secure Pakistan's 100+ nuclear warheads, in the event that the fragile Pakistani govt were to fall, only to be scooped up by al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar e-Toiba, Jamaat al Fuqra and other radical Islamist loon groups.

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/terroristoutfits/group_list.htm

 

In short, no. MA plans cost more money than traditional Medicare and don't provide better quality care, that is why the government is getting rid of the subsidies.

"In theory, these plans are supposed to manage health care spending better than fee-for-service Medicare. But they don’t actually save the federal government any money. They cost, per patient, 14% more than traditional Medicare. The ACA eliminates this subsidy and pegs Medicare Advantage payments to quality metrics."

http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/16/fact-check-obamacares-medicare-cuts/#ixzz299C8jOhl
http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/2052-12.pdf
http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7948-02.pdf

"The G.A.O. said the project “dwarfs all other Medicare demonstrations” in its impact on the budget, but is so poorly designed that researchers could not tell whether the bonus payments led to improved care. As a result, it said, it is unlikely to “produce meaningful results.” . . . More than 12 million people are in Medicare Advantage plans. About one-third of them are in plans that would receive bonuses under the 2010 law. By contrast, under the demonstration program, 90 percent are in plans eligible for bonuses, the report said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/h...e-test-project-is-wasting-8-billion.html?_r=0

 

The subsidies provided to MA plans must be used for things like lower premiums, lower deductibles and more benefits. However, those benefits and lower payment amounts are not part of traditional Medicare, which 75% of beneficiaries receive. So, all you're doing is making MA plans equal to traditional Medicare. That traditional beneficiary threshold is still there.

Additionally, one cannot "raid" Medicare to pay for Medicare. The cut in subsidies is being used to fund the HI Trust Fund (which is Medicare Part A).

 

Let's not forget the real reason we're there....the POPPY FIELDS.

 

Maybe this should be the subject of a thread but it just occurred to me why the hell we don't go ahead and declare martial law over these conquered countries : Iraq, Afghanistan Syria (soon to be conquered by Turkey), what else Libya, Egypt...
and rebuild and retrain them to be freedom loving westerners like we did the darned Japanese?
God look what we did for the Japanese economy! And we've had them as an ally ever since! Don't tell me they were easier cause they were flucking "different" back then as different could ever be. Imperialistic kamikaze loving bustards!
Even the war lobbyists could see the positive features of this scenario. Beat those darn swords into iPods and bridges (to paraphrase the Bible- no insult intended).
I get so tired of our politicians thinking they can bring peace to the middle east or change the way a suicide bomber thinks. Ghad!
rant over

 

Nukes are more important than poppies.

 

They all want to go and be with Allah. We should help them get their wish, as many of as possible, as often as possible.

Once a person or group swears to kill me and all my family and everything I know. I no longer see why I should in any way respect their lives.

 

This is another example of common sense not playing out the way you'd think.

There are more medicare providers approved to practice in 2013 then there were for 2012. The reason is because there is a flood of new medical professionals coming out of colleges in Americvaaround the world. There may be fewer medicare providers named Smith, but there are a bunch more new Dr's named Singh, or Li, etc....

I get complaints all the time from medicare seniors who don't want to see doctors who have an accent when they talk, or have a "foreign" sounding last name.

I know these politicans are saying this, but it really doesn't mean anything to me here on the front lines of medicare. All I know is Obamacare will not fix healthcare in the US, especially medicare, and also know the Obama cuts to providers isn't going to ruin medicare. It's all arbitrary noise.

What you just said doesn't fit into my reality, which is assisting medicare patients 6 days a week 10 hours a day. We're busy because of open enrollment which starts monday.

 

You post links to 4 sites that have skin in the game. Post one from CMS and I'll read it.

 

What he's saying doesn't ring true to me either.

Medicare Advantage plans include part A (hospital), part B (doctor), and part d (prescription coverage.

Original medicare has an 80%/20% split for copays, and no part d coverage. Which means original medicare folks will have to pay thousands of dollars for an inpatient admit, instead of a $1400 maximum per admit under many medicare advantage plans.

There are medicare advantage plans that have no additional premium over what the member would pay medicare, and they add part d, and have lower copays than the 80/20 split