A Message for Teabaggers over 65 !!!!!!!!!!!

If you don't like socialism give up your social security and medicare!

That makes them hypocrites in my book. Personally I don't think they even care about healthcare reform. I think that there is more racists in the over sixty crowd and that's their real problem.

that's a disconnect they don't seem to understand.

they started paying into medicare in 1966. After age 65 they are still paying $100 into medicare every month. Plus they pay another $50-$175 to private insurance carriers to have coverage for everything (which is a lot) that medicare does not cover. Medicare now officially sucks - that is what they are angry about.

I paid into the fund.

these things though.

A big help to the "suck" part of Medicare would be to simply open it to the young and healthy - expand the risk pool. Then the over 65s wouldn't need to be hit so hard on the premiums.

I just think most people I see posting at DU think its a free ride and great coverage.

Over and over again Obama and others have said that it is on the verge of going broke. The part they don't tell you is the problem was caused by the programs added into medicare it was not designed to support.

And they don't tell you people over 65 are still paying a great deal of money out of pocket each month for what they are getting. My comments above don't even address how much they pay for medication each monthly.

But I agree that Medicare sucks and needs an overhaul. It is truly sad to see the not so wealthy seniors allocate so much of their fixed income to supplemental insurance. The supplement business has done pretty well over the years. Seniors pay as high as $400/mo in some states for supplemental insurance. Depending on the risk pool, that $400/mo would naturally rise like the sun. If the senior is healthy, they don't realize that they're paying $4800 to cover $1250 in deductibles plus the 20% that Part B doesn't cover (and that's really doesn't amount to much.) But boy do they still love their med supps. And the insurance companies love them more.

And what did the corporatist politicos propose to address the situation? Medicare Part C and Part D, administered by their sponsors, insurance companies. That $100 that seniors pay in Part B premiums is diverted to the insurance companies. And to keep premiums artificially low, the insurers get subsidies. I would guess that the insurance companies easily get $400/mo. WTF! See the hypocrisy? Corporatist politicians are willing to subsidize corporations but not the people.

For decades now, repuglicans, being the masters of one-line generalizations that they are, have touted that govt has been the problem. Well duh! If they're in power, sure they're gonna mess things up. Govt per se is not the problem. The problem is corporate interests who have bought so much influence in govt that renders govt impotent.

HR 676 is a good start. It looks better than medicare because it covers one thing that Medicare no longer covers - long term care.

We need to break this cycle once and for all. I commend the democrats who have openly spoken out against the health insurance industry.

some seniors have never considered social security and medicare to be socialism . They just thnk it is their due "I am just getting back what I paid in"


Smarts and wisdom does not necesarily come with age.

Because it's what the government promised them, and the rest of us. In layman's terms it looks something like this - "You pay into this social security fund during your working years and we will make sure you are taken care of from a health care standpoint after you reach the age of X"

You're right that many of them never saw it as socialism, they saw it as an interest bearing savings account. Which we can blame partly on insidious design on the part of the government and partly on the ignorance of people paying into it.

I am 68 and I could not live without my SS and Medicaid. If I live as long as my parents did I will draw out more than I paid in. My husband however died at 67 , and barely touched what he paid in .

I benefit from that , and what others have paid but didn't live long enough to benefit from and that is socialism.

:toast: