And Also, the Senior Citizens Are Being Prortrayed by Actors! For Shame!
“The only pattern here is that you have no facts!”
Polifact’s pathetic failed critique of the perfectly fair Democratic ad about the Republican vote to end Medicare as it currently exists must be the most entertainingly botched would-be fact check since FactChuck admonished the Democrats for not making it clear that Janice Rodgers Brown did not literally believe that Social Security entailed grandparents eating their grandchildren. I have to agree that the “whole analysis is hard to interpret as anything other than an expression of the view that criticizing any proposal that reduces spending on Medicare or Social Security is inherently foul play.” And that certainly what Republicans need the press to believe.
Politifact can be so smarmy.
“Changing” Medicare from comprehensive single-payer health care to private insurance partially subsidized by direct infusion of government cash is ending Medicare and replacing it with SchMedicare.
Here’s what I don’t understand. The Ryan Plan says that private insurers have to accept all SchMedicare patients and charge them all the same rate.
The government payouts to insurance companies will increase at GDP +1%–even though we know health care costs are rising much faster.
How are private insurers supposed to make money from insuring 67-year-olds for a fraction of what it costs to provide their medical care? Insurance is a form of legalized gambling. The government is offering insurers the chance to bet against a sure thing, namely, the certainty that most 67-year-olds will need a lot of expensive health care, sooner rather than later. They’re not going to take the bet.
I’ve read claims that insurers will have to accept everyone. Does that mean that any company that sells health insurance to anyone must cover all SchMedicare patients?
Or does that mean that all companies participating in SchMedicare must accept all patients, and no high grading! Because if it’s the latter, no insurer is going to participate.
It will work like this (start at 2:15):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2R_DDZPCM
My understanding is that you have to offer everyone of the same age the same rate. Community rating, in effect. The problem is that the rates will be substantially higher than government stipend. And I expect that as healthy (relatively) seniors drop out because they can’t afford it, those rates will skyrocket.
If you take the position that this plan will deliver the magical pony of cheap health care for the elderly, then, yes, the ad is off base. But the ad is expressing a pretty reasonable statement about what to expect from Ryancare: no health care for many seniors without substantial additional income. You have to be a mendacious @sshole to understand what’s going on and claim that the ad is a lie.
Healthy (relatively) seniors won’t drop out; presumably they lose the stipend if they drop out. So the insurance carriers provide a base package that the stipend can purchase. The base package will not cover as much as Medicare does now, and it will cover less as time goes on. (This accords with the Republican belief that seniors are consuming too much health care.) If you want additional coverage, that’s on your nickel.
Of course, when the rubber meets the road, the seniors will demand (and receive) a bigger stipend than is envisioned right now, which means that this will turn out to be a huge boondoggle for the taxpayers (and a windfall for the insurance companies).
Thanks, mpowell.
Of course, Politifact didn’t touch the central factual claim of the ad, which is that future seniors will have to pay thousands of extra dollars a year under the Ryan Plan.
So, I agree, Politifact has rejected the Magic Pony Projection in favor of disingenuous assholery.
I love these three-part names with a verb in the middle like Janice Rodgers Brown and Cora Masters Barry. Any more come to mind?
Oil Can Boyd
LOL!!!
Try as I might, I don’t think I can ever top that one!
Maybe someone else can. I look forward to seeing it.
It’s only a two name, but my favorite is “Ophelia Bumps.”
http://www.toonopedia.com/ophelia.htm
I also remember reading in Readers Digest about 35 ot 40 years ago that this was a real name. It was listed in an article on the worst & funniest names of all times.
Ima Hogg, the “first lady of Texas,” wins the 2-part names.
No love for her sister Eura?
Geez, don’t do a Google search for Mike Hunt, you’ll bust a gut.
John Wayne Gacy
Serial killers and assassins.
Wow, that article completely skates over the obvious reason for the three-names-for-notorious-people rule–to reduce the grief for people that happen to have the same first and last name–by noting that some assassins happened to use their middle name before their notoriety.
The library I work for has several books written by a gentleman named Thomas Bangs Thorpe.
William Makepeace Thackeray?
Jesus Fucking Christ
Death to the two-name boy.
[...] “hell, yes”), I thought I’d highlight what is the very dumbest argument in the thoroughly ridiculous PoliFact piece I discussed yesterday: And finally, the ad neglects another critical fact: The Republicans voted [...]