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Subscribe to RSSThe Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd explains how the Obama campaign will take on the Romney-Ryan ticket.
From the moment Mitt Romney announced House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate, the campaign debate has been full of charges and countercharges over some of the congressman's proposals on Medicare and the budget.
What are the facts? Here’s a guide to Ryan’s budget and his ideas for remaking Medicare.
If you are 65 years old or older and now receiving Medicare benefits, would Ryan’s Medicare proposal affect you? If so, how would it affect you?
No – if you’re receiving Medicare benefits now, Ryan’s proposal would not affect you.
His plan would gradually increase Medicare’s eligibility age from 65 to 67. But his phased-in increase in eligibility age wouldn’t start until 2023, 11 years from now.
Also starting in 2023, Ryan’s proposal would do away with Medicare’s open-ended payment system which now covers most medical costs for seniors. Ryan would limit Medicare spending for those born in 1958 and later, that is, people who turn 65 in 2023 or later.
People who turn 65 in 2023 or later years would get payments from the federal government to help them purchase private insurance; the payments would be higher for low-income people and lower for high-income people; they’d also be higher for sicker people and lower for healthier people.
The payments could grow over time no faster than the nominal annual growth rate in per capita Gross Domestic Product, plus 0.5 percentage points, but they might not keep pace with the increase in the cost of medical care.
Democrats have been on the offensive ever since Paul Ryan was announced as Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick. Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., responds to attacks from the left over Ryan's budget plan.
So Ryan’s proposal would not have any effect on seniors, that is, on people who are now receiving Medicare?
His Medicare proposal would not affect today’s seniors.
But – and this is a crucial point – Ryan’s proposal for another federal program – Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor – would have an impact on those seniors who rely on Medicaid to help pay for nursing home care.
As the Kaiser Family Foundation has noted, “Medicaid is the nation’s largest source of coverage for long-term care, covering more than two-thirds of all nursing home residents” and the elderly and disabled “account for roughly two‐thirds of (Medicaid) spending.”
Ryan proposes to convert the federal portion of Medicaid into grants to each state, allowing each to tailor its Medicaid program to its own population’s needs.
The federal payments to the states would be indexed both to the inflation rate and to the growth in state population. But overall federal outlays on Medicaid would be cut by roughly one-fifth over ten years.
According to an assessment by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the spending path as designed by the Ryan’s plan might allow states to “improve the efficiency” of Medicaid in delivering health care to low-income people. But “even with significant efficiency gains,” states would need to increase their spending on Medicaid, CBO said, (and perhaps raise taxes in order to do that) or “make considerable cutbacks” in Medicaid.
“Cutbacks might involve reduced eligibility for Medicaid” or lower payments to health care providers, “or increased cost-sharing by beneficiaries – all of which would reduce access to care.”
If you are 45 years old how would Ryan’s Medicare proposal affect you?
The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd is joined by Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs to discuss Mitt Romney's running mate and his stance on Medicare.
Since Ryan’s proposal, if enacted, would limit Medicare spending for those born in 1958 and later, a person who is 45 years old today would – once he or she became eligible for Medicare – receive benefits that would be less generous or less comprehensive than those now enjoyed by today’s Medicare recipients.
And since Ryan wants to gradually increase the age at which people are eligible for Medicare, a 45-year-old would need to wait longer to get covered by Medicare.
If Ryan’s Medicare plan became law, then starting in 2023, the CBO said, “Most elderly people would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system.”
What’s Ryan’s argument for treating future retirees – those born in 1958 and later – less generously than today’s Medicare recipients?
Ryan says the future costs for Medicare and Medicaid are unsustainable and will lead to tax and debt burdens that will be unbearable.
“We need to preempt and avert a debt crisis” which would force immediate cuts in Medicare and other programs, he told NBC’s David Gregory last year on Meet the Press. “And the way we propose to do that is do it on our terms and prevent people who are currently retired and people about to retire from having severe disruptions in their lives.”
Republicans have charged that President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul is now cutting Medicare spending by more than $700 billion. Obama, not Ryan, is the one hurting seniors, they say. Is this true and if so, are Obama’s Medicare “cuts” similar to or different from Ryan’s proposed reductions in future Medicare spending?
According to the CBO, if Obama’s health care law were repealed, then $711 billion in reductions in Medicare spending over the 2013–2022 period would not occur.
Even Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday referred to “the $700 billion cuts in Medicare that the president achieved through health care reform.” She said these cuts are “taking subsidies away from insurance companies, taking rebates away from prescription drug companies.”
But that’s not where all of the cost savings will come from: a significant portion of the $711 billion will come from curbing payments to hospitals and other health care providers. Other cuts may be ordered by the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an outside group mandated by the Affordable Care Act.
In contrast to Ryan’s future reductions (starting in 2023) Obama’s reductions in Medicare spending are taking place now – at least the Affordable Care Act orders them to occur and the CBO assumes they will occur.
But it is too soon to judge whether these reductions are providing the same level of care to seniors as before, but simply providing it more efficiently, or whether some seniors are getting (or will get) inferior care as a result of these reductions.
Republican national chairman Reince Priebus said on Meet the Press that Mitt Romney “appreciates and admires the work and the ideas that Paul Ryan has done. But Mitt Romney has his own plan” to reform Medicare. What is that plan?
As presented on Romney’s campaign web site, his proposal – although not fully detailed – includes most of the same ideas Ryan has proposed: not changing benefits for anyone now retired or close to retirement. But for future retirees, he would change Medicare from an open-ended payment system into one in which future beneficiaries would get a payment from the government to buy insurance coverage.
Romney’s proposal says, “If seniors choose more expensive plans, they will have to pay the difference between the support amount and the premium price; if they choose less expensive plans, they can use any leftover support to pay other medical expenses like co-pays and deductibles
Is Ryan’s budget plan, which was OK’d by the House last March, now in effect?
No, it isn’t. The House approved Ryan’s fiscal year 2013 budget resolution in March by a vote of 228 to 191, with no Democrats voting for the proposal and 10 Republicans voting against it. But the Senate has not adopted any budget resolution for FY 2013, which begins on Oct. 1. So in the coming fiscal year, as in the current fiscal year, Congress will operate without any budget. But spending will of course continue.
Apart from turning Medicaid over to the states and redesigning Medicare for future retirees, what else would Ryan’s FY 2013 budget proposal do?
It would cut overall spending by about 12 percent over the ten-year budget window, as compared to the spending plan proposed by Obama; it would cut cumulative deficits by more than 50 percent. Among other things it would limit federal aid to college students and concentrate it on lower income students.
Does Ryan want to cut taxes for rich people, as Democrats charge, and if so by how much?
His FY 2013 budget proposal seeks to have only two income tax rates: 10 percent and 25 percent. The current top income tax rate is 35 percent – so this rate reduction could mean a tax cut for some people -- but Ryan also says he wants to “broaden the tax base” and get rid of “the burdensome tangle of loopholes that distort economic activity” by abolishing many tax breaks. He hasn’t specified which ones he’d seek to eliminate.
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Common sense 4 U
A simple question for you since you so well informed. How many Marine battalions did Obama recalled last week from Afghanistan to be trained as police for his new military police authority?
Don't know
Here's a question for you......
If Obama added 1 million fed government jobs like Reagan and Bush did would it help his jobs numbers?
So should Obama add 1 million jobs like Reagan and Bush did?
Really simple question you should be able to answer.....let's see if you are a coward or not.
Common Sense
It takes roughly 5-6 taxpayers to fund a government job. You do the math.
Good thing Obama has cut government jobs
Why did Reagan and Bush add 1 million each?
Right wingers love government when right wingers grow it?
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
Duh
I'm not afraid to to answer you. Obama has increased the size of government by 1/3. How many new government jobs that is I don't know, but I do know that Obama added at least 16,000 new workers to the IRS.
I also know that rather than implement his Job creating tax reform when Obama had a democratically controlled congress, he choose to extend the Bush tax cuts to the rich.
I also know that in the Obama job numbers which his campaign is boosting about, Obama included the numbers from the summer part time hiring season and holiday season not once, but 4 times.
I know that Obama took a $10 trillion national debt to $16 trillion in less than four years and doesn't have a thing to show for it other than a possible shut down of our government in November.
But you keep supporting Obama. You want to ignore his record that's okay, just please stop posing your nonsense. You're not impressing anyone with your ignorance of the facts.
2009 was Bush's budget
tone
What are you trying to say? Was it Bush's Budget or Bush's democratically controlled congess's budget that was carried over to 2009.
What happ?
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
Obama has increased gov by 1/3?. Dude, you pulled that number out of your arse.....or your brain...one in the same for you.
How stupid are you? On a scale from one to ten, do you rate yourself an 8 or above?
Obama has kept spending constant from what Bush handed him......in a depression
So how does a president take a $1.3 trillion deficit and take it to zero?
You don't know and I won't even try to educate you because you want to remain a clueless moron.
You'll find out how impossible it is if Romney gets elected and implements his plan to add $500 billion a year to that number.
On March 11, 2009 Barack Obama signed the budget. It wasn't Bush's budget.
The stimuls spending in the early 2009 budget was
Hey what happen.....
I like education, you obviously hate being informed...
So tell me about this new Obama police authority you talk about
Or is this some paranoid right wing circle jerk fantasy?
Let's hear it..
Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance. YOU are what the Obama campain call an Obama wet dream.
Why am I not surprised you don't know about the Bill Obama signed into law on December 31, 2011 that creates a military police authority. You should be ashamed of yourself for being so uninformed about what the man you support is doing.
Stay ignorant but be warned, when you discover what Obama has been doing behind your back and you utter the words "what happened" I will be suing you for copy right infringement...LOL.
What happ
So your post earlier says it was signed 2 weeks ago.......
Now you say it was last year?
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
Dude, right wingers like you usually get desperate when their lack of intelligence starts to manifest to the profoundly embarrassing
So which is it?
Two weeks or last year?
Hahahahhaahhahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Pretty amazing that Obama has keep the deficit down as much as he has. Any increase in the deficit is due to Medicare and SS increases because of Bush's recession and millions of lost jobs. Also due to stimulus spending. Again because of Bush's recession. Then we can talk about ME wars. Geesh.
Tone
You don't know that the stimulus was 40% tax cuts do you?
No you don't
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
Keep right wingers ignorant and clueless and the GOP has a future
Yes, I should have mentioned the Bush tax cuts as a factor on the deficit.
it's his infamous brown shirt peeps that he has said he wants to be as well trained and funded as the us military but they would answer to him not the people look it up from past speeches
I feel really bad for most senior citizens or newly retired boomers at the moment. I think they have earned their retirement benefits, including social security and medicare. A lot of ideas are floating around about how to save Medicare, but I am not inclined to trust private health insurance industry because they will and have been profiteering from their Ponzi schemes.
Matter of fact, how come any time xxxx talk about Medicare and Social Security, it is called a Ponzi scheme, but nobody is making that same label for the health insurance industry, who are certainly running another type of Ponzi scheme? I mean they are taking in more money than they pay out and pocketing the profits! They have been doing this for a while.
If Medicare is in trouble, we need to do something to fix it. Why not leave it in place the way it is now for all people and cut, cut, cut unnecessary services and purchases? In order to be fair, maybe each service area that Medicare normally covers needs to cut something. From then on, that service is not provided by Medicare, but needs to be covered by maybe a supplemental insurance policy? Is this idea possible? Does anyone think it might work? Why can't Medicare keep its most crucial services, but cut the perks if that's necessary to protect our seniors, we should do it. I can't see treating them the way they are being treated now after they built this country!
No one has a bigger ponzi scheme then the unregulated federal gov't at least insurance companies and the like go through audits etc.. who is auditing what the fed does.
So NBC spent some time and effort to analyze the Ryan plan but where is the side by side comparison to the Obama plan. No mention of the $700 billion cut in Medicare that Obamacare imposes.
they do mention the 700 billion in obamacare, what they don't mention is the 700 billion in ryan plan.
What cuts to Medicare did Obama make again? Does anyone have a list of what was cut in Medicare to tally over 700 billion in cuts?
It's in the ACA. Go read it. It's only 2700 pages...
Waste and spending increases that should have been cut along time ago.
That's what has been cut.
The GOP loves waste and spending increases, that's why they hate the AHCA
liz, the cuts were mostly to the private profits that didn't exist before Bush medicare moderization act....and ryan plan also cuts about 700 billion from medicare, passing the costs onto seniors or their kids.
Bigtime your entire statement is an absolute lie
And is a talking point on how to defend it from the Daily Koz but uses very suspect trickery to come up with that
Hey what happ.....
This is too much fun......where did this military bill you seem so concerned about originate?
You know the one you claim that happened 2 weeks ago and then it happened in 2011.
Who sponsored it?
2 weeks ago or in 2011?
Hahahahahahhahaahahhahahahahahahaahahha
Common sense 4U
December 31, 2011 Obama signed it into law.
Look it up if you know how, but from your posts you don't seem to have mastered that skill even when you are given the site addresses.
You're getting yourself all confused. Slow down when you read my post and write things down so you can get them straight when you attack me.
Are you blaming congress for this bill? Or the president for signing it? I can't tell, you go back and forth, depending on who's in office LOL
You seem to. E all upset and paranoid but can't provide one single detail?
Other than it was 2 weeks ago but now it was 8 months ago?
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
Dude, I hope you are the biggest ass clown in your town....if not....
You live In a town full of ass clowns that nobody will ever want to visit
Tone
It take two to tangle does it not. The blame lies with both as our government is set up with checks and balances where the President doesn't have to sign the Bills congress sends it and congress doesn't have to create the Bills the President requests.
The blame for the mess this country is in comes from both Bush and Obama for requesting and signing the spending Bills and the Democratically controlled congress for creating them.
That is the reality. NO is a very powerful word and both these President and Congress had the power to use it, but didn't.
Common sense 4u
I'm not upset at all. People who are informed know that my statements are factual. People like yourself who are uninformed respond the way you do.
I tell you so you can be informed, but you choose not to be. That is your choice.
You are a living example of the statement ignorance is bliss and by your post, you revel in it.
I worked for the insurance companies for several decades. Are you people that stupid to think Ryan's voucher program is a good thing? Or do you just not give a crap about the lives of your fellow citizens? The greedy insurance companies can't wait to get their hands on those very large monthly premiums.... lol
Obamacare is real and Ryan's plan is only words. We know Obamacare won't work and are hoping that some politicians with common sense will come up with a real national health care plan that will meet the needs of the American people.
I know its like believing in Santa Clause, but some where in this country is a leader who will lead this country in solving our problems rather that just creating more with the creed of Party service, Self service before Public service that has plagued this country for decades.
Smartest thing you've said all night
Except you are 180 from realizing who is party over country.
Here's a hint.....the guy that made $250 million and pays no US taxes
Common sense 4U
OH you're taliking about Obama's good friends. The ones who keep saying they should pay more taxes, but don't.
If you were informed you know that the things I post are factual, but your not so to hide your ignorance by attacking me.
Your a loyal Obama supporter who meets the campaign qualifications. Remain ignorant, blame everyone else for Obama's failures and last but not lease, call people names when they present facts to you.
Common sense 4 U and Bruce
You both are so uniformed that you don't even know that Romney is a moderate Republican who leans to the left and Ryan is a conservative Republican that learn towards the right.
And Obama is a 1%er with a worth of $10 million who is redistributing the middle class wealth of this nation to his rich friends.
You two are a piece of work, that's for sure. You prove the truth in the saying that ignorance is bliss.
What happ
So this military blah blah you say happened two weeks ago...
Then you say it was 2011
So you can't even get a moron story straight
Hahahahahahahahahahah
Dude, you are seriously an ass clown embarrassment
You fail at every questions asked, you make up garbage you can't even back up.
You are a right wingers wet dream.
A moron who keeps on digging to be a biger moron.
Don't worry about those Obama military police.......I made a call on your behalf
Hahahahhahahaahhaahahhahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha
Romney leans to whoever is writing the check. He invented Obamacare, and has a teabagger on his ticket now.
Better a "teabagger" than a "D"-bag like Obama.
Ouch Curt... you really got us with that. LOL
what happened says...
Well, again what happened is NOT REALLY AWARE of what really happened.
Romney = Moderate? NO!
Romney = Severely Conservative? You betcha! That's what Romney says himself!
you really don't have a clue about your own candidate do you what?
What does the Ryan plan have to do with the Romney for President campaign. The answer is nothing unless of course you are some ideologue progressive who wants to talk about something your party would not even look at nearly two years ago. Because of the passage of time it is not even a workable plan anymore--why discuss it? The answer is so you can be like every other pos minion President Obama sends to Florida and other states to accuse someone who is an honorable father, husband, and son of wanting to kill children, women, and old people with legislation he wants to enact. And he'll kill your little dog Toto too! Wake up sheeple!
I want to see Romney's tax returns. In fact I'd like to see the tax returns for all the wealthy people that received the Bush Tax cuts. Since they keep saying cutting taxes for the rich creates jobs I'd like to see how many jobs Romney has created in the last 10 years.
common sense 4 U
Thank for the fun evening but it getting late so I will leave you with words Obama spoke to the world at accepting a Nobel Peace Prize and the $1.4 million in prize money.
" I neither earned it nor do I deserve it and there were others who deserved it more than I."
Truer words were never spoken.
And he paid taxes on it
Read Ayn Rand's journal and her outline for her novel, Atlas Shrugs. She refers to working people as "parasites" and business owners as "creators." Sound familiar? Well, it should. Hitler referred to certain segments of German society as "parasites," and today you see right wingers use it often. And we all know who throws the word "creators" around.
Paul Ryan idolizes Ayn Rand and admires her philosophy. This is NOT what we want in the White House. This man has no place in public service at all.
Paul Ryan has such an affinity for Ayn Rand "philosophy" that his own Catholic church admonished him for it.
You won't find this on MSNBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbzpuqWo6yU
You won't find this on Faux:
Tea Party Racism - What the Media Won't Show You (on Youtube)
Well there's ONE thing Paul Ryan has in common with Ayn Rand. He got his start on social security benefits; she spent her last years as a social security recipient. Parasites!
I remember a business professor in a course I took 15 years ago when I started an MBA program (but did not finish, business not for scientist me) jokingly state "and the retirement pension accountants are going nuts with people living so long, we are living so long they don't know when to predict their benefits don't need to be paid which drives them crazy..." So maybe Romney and Ryan want seniors to worry themselves to death earlier with heart attacks and stokes, saves the rich repubs their money rather than wasting it on our lives and living it to our fullest.
You WISH Obama was a huge failure. RepubliCONS failed the American people when they fought our president every hour of every day because they HATED giving up power to him. They wanted him to fail.
But he did not fail and I know its not republicons who have my best welfare at heart.
Under Ryan's plan, Romney would have paid 0.82% tax on his $21 million income in 2010. Realclearpolitics....How's that for fairness
mikeSanJacinto says…
But Bo-1925019 correctly reminds us that
So whereRthejobsBoehner aptly warns
And BrianJ concludes that
So, when you put that all together you get...
LATE BREAKING NEWS UPDATE ...........
Steve Baker-338532 says…
Cogito Ergo Sum 1 confirms
and Zardoz8238 informs us that the The Romney Ryan Express is
So there you have it folks. Officially verified confirmed reports that ...
The truth brought to you by all our intrepid reporters!
Uninsured medical costs was the biggest reason people filed for bankruptcy. In response to the problem of millions of Americans having no health insurance and being unable to pay for medical care if they got sick; President Obama proposed and passed the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009" (Obamacare). However, this was not a single payer system, based on Medicare, but rather it was based on a plan supported and signed by Mitt Romney in 2006 when he was Governor of Massachusetts. Both programs had individual mandates to require people without health insurance to purchase it from private companies, in many cases with financial assistance from the government. This makes no sense to me, why not expand Medicare to cover everyone. Why force people to buy insurance from the hodgepodge of insurance companies, each with their own administrative costs and policies, trying to maximize profits? The cost of this bureaucracy means that medical care in the United States costs almost twice that of any other country with a single payer system. Why not have the insurance companies offer a Medic-gap type and gold plated wrap-around policies? The government provides a safety-net floor which people can voluntarily build on. Mitt has promised to repeal Obamacare, a program he drew the blueprint for, and replace it with a "market based solution"; yet he has not specified what it would be.
Expanding Medicare would also be a benefit to Medicare, it will financially stabilize what is now the high-risk pool of the insurance industry. A substantial majority of Medicare enrollees – roughly 87% have at least one chronic condition, and nearly half have three or more. The people covered by Medicare include 1) people age 65 and older, who are the most likely to have Heart Attacks, Strokes, and Cancer, and other diseases related to age; 2) people who have permanent disabilities and receive Social Security Disability Insurance; 3) people with end-stage renal [kidney] disease which requires maintenance dialysis or a kidney transplant; 4) people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease) which is a slow wasting away of the body. The common thread between both disease specific groups is, they are expensive to treat and there is no cure. By expanding Medicare to include everyone, you would be adding 10's of millions of people under 65, the vast majority of whom are healthy and seldom require medical care. These people would have the security of knowing if they did get seriously ill, they would be treated without the rigamarole of complex rules and regulations regarding pre-existing conditions, pre-authorization, and Coordination of benefits. Medicare would benefit from the inflow of low-risk money which otherwise would go to pay premiums to private for-profit insurance companies. Medicare spreads the financial risk associated with illness across society to protect everyone, and thus has a somewhat different social role from private insurers, which must manage their risk portfolio to guarantee their own solvency. Medicare is a pragmatic program that works and is supported by a vast majority of Americans; however ideologues would call it socialism.
This sound interesting. Thanks for sharing your idea :-) I agree with you that the health insurance industry is just a group of Ponzi schemers and it makes not sense to have them in charge of medical care/health insurance because all that matters to them is the bottom line, not the person. Medicare is not socialism. It is a safety net for our elders that are no longer working...
Ryan snake oil for sale... 1 vote per bottle!
he will sell millions.
the $700 billion, well bad journalism here as robert reich points out, Ryan's plan also cutss $700 billion from medicare and guess who picks it up, the working retirees,
http://robertreich.org/post/29384825788
here is the link
from the article: "Moreover, the Affordable Care Act uses its Medicare savings to help children and lower-income Americans afford health care, and to help seniors pay for prescription drugs by filling the so-called “donut hole” in Medicare Part D coverage.
The Romney-Ryahen plan uses the savings to finance even bigger tax cuts for the very weal thy."
journalists try to tell 2 sides, well there are 2 sides, one is the fair responsible democratic side the other is the evil disgusting republican side, and that is where you story is, you will get alot of readers if you call Ryan out for the jerk he is.
Regardless of who you favor left or right the unsustainability issue is FACT. So it comes down to two choices.
1. Those who want to excessively tax the wealthy to attempt to keep things flowing (which in turn) would most likey stymie the economy and keep encouraging reckless government spending.
2. Scale back medicare and government service expenses for those of use born after 1958. All of this done without drastically raising taxes which will put a burden on our struggling economy. Unfortunately those of us who aren't baby boomers still get screwed. Our checks still get money deducted so those enjoying medicaire and benefits now can get full coverage and we get less.
So do you want to screw the economy even more or let GenX,Y,Z etc bite the bullet to fix the mess while the baby boomers get to live off the fat now? This all sucks.
FACT: The rich have NEVER had it so good, but they always want it all. Romney rich pay 13% and Ryan would have them pay ONE PERCENT.
When Eisenhower was President the rich paid NINETY ONE PERCENT in the highest income bracket and the county was BOOMING!
With that money Eisenhower paid off the war debt, built the INTERSTATE FREEWAY SYSTEM and THOUSANDS of SCHOOLS and HOSPITALS!
ALL HAIL EISENHOWER! If only we had REAL conservatives like you around today!
jind, u are so wrong, the tax increases neccessary to pay off past debt is small and won't kill the economy. lol.
The solution is not to cut back medicare and throw it to for-profit insurance companies that care about nothing except making as much money as possible. The solution is medicare for all, a single-payer system, perhaps similar to the one in Israel that Romney admired so much and that cost half as much as what we're paying now!
Not a bad thought on the "Medicare for all", Janet I agree, and, have been advocating it for several years. Keep in mind that Israel's tax picture is far different from our own. I would bet VERY few Americans would willingly go along with it. I'm thinking our own tax picture is going to change, as well. There will be large numbers of unhappy people as a result, as well. Our way lies somewhere in between the extremes presented, but something's gotta give. A tree or government benefits do not grow to the sky no matter how much money we pour in. The money to do things must come from somewhere. The piper WILL be paid.