Call 1-800-710-8049 TODAY and tell Congress: Don't harm Medicare or Social Security

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**BrassScorpion**

Almost no ordinary working person can afford health insurance when they are out of work or elderly. The largest cause of bankruptcy in the US is due to medical bills even among people with health insurance. And now Congress may pass a budget that would reduce Medicare and Social Security benefits for millions while they continue to pass tax breaks for the richest people and corporations in America. Almost no jobs have real pension plans and now the only one that people pay into their whole lives, Social Security, is being threatened as well.

Call 1-800-710-8049 TODAY and tell Congress: Don't harm Medicare or Social Security.

The message is simple: Don't harm Medicare or Social Security. Right now, Congress is considering making a deal to pay the nation's bills (or in Washington-speak, raise the debt ceiling) that could include reduced Medicare benefits and millions left without secure health care.

Congress needs to understand that Medicare protects real people. It is not simply numbers on a balance sheet – and they need to hear that people like you are against drastic cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

Calling just takes a minute, and it's critical your members of Congress know you're counting on them to stand up for Medicare and Social Security – and protect both from harmful cuts. Here's how to make your call:

* Dial 1-800-710-8049, and follow the prompts to enter your zip code. Then press "1" to connect to your senator.
* A staff person will answer the phone. Just tell that person where you're calling from, and that you strongly urge your member of Congress to protect Medicare and Social Security from harmful cuts.
* Your call could end here. However, if you like, you can add that:

o Congress should reject any proposal that would deny retirees secure health coverage, and dramatically drive up their health care costs.
o We must protect the benefits that are earned over a lifetime of hard work.

* Since all your members of Congress have a stake in this debate, please call 1-800-710-8049 again to get connected to your second senator's office. Once again enter your zip code, then press "2" to be connected with your second senator. Then please call back a third time and press "3" to be connected to your representative.

There's a lot at stake in the weeks to come. Make sure your members of Congress know where you stand in this fight. Dial 1-800-710-8049 to make your call today.

**biccat**

"Thank you for calling AARP's advocacy hotline..."

I lolled.

edit: I also appreciate that they mispronounced Boehner's name as "Boner."

Stay classy AARP. Gotta keep the money rollin' in.

**ShumaGorath**

Almost no ordinary working person can afford health insurance when they are out of work or elderly.

Ding ding ding. Too bad theres no public option thanks to the elderly worrying about death panels! It's as if the near dead are invested in the status quo regardless of whether or not it kills the rest of us!

Less medicare/medicaid or much higher taxes. Chose your faustian bargain. You ain't gettin' neither.

**sourclams**

I'll take lower taxes. I have health insurance via my employer, and while I realize there are those less socially fortunate than myself (due to a multitude of reasons related to education, opportunity, and personal initiative), I do not feel a strong need to subsidize them.

**sexiest_hero**

Old people get what they deserve. Bet they wished they had death panels now.

**Manchu**

Temporarily locked.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
And now unlocked!

**daedalus**

sexiest_hero wrote:Old people get what they deserve. Bet they wished they had death panels now.

Do the people who serve on death panels get health insurance?

**daedalus-templarius**

This won't make it anywhere in the senate.

But seriously, wheres the public option? Also would take health-insurance companies being non-profit. In my opinion, you shouldn't be able to make a profit off of someone's (poor)health.

**agnosto**

I say just give me my money back and stop taking it out of my check. I'll sign anything and we just shake hands and walk away.

Social Security and Medicare, the ultimate Ponzy Scheme...

**sexiest_hero**

Sorry for my outburst. I wish the elderly would have paid attention to what was going to happen instead of fear. Now they will lose some of their Medicaid and SS, and only have themselves to blame.

**Frazzled**

No, they have Obama to blame. He took $500Bn out of Medicare for Obamacare.

**agnosto**

Frazzled wrote:No, they have Obama to blame. He took $500Bn out of Medicare for Obamacare.

Yeah and the Republicans didn't push for more than that, right? C'mon at least pretend to be fair.

**Frazzled**

agnosto wrote:
Frazzled wrote:No, they have Obama to blame. He took $500Bn out of Medicare for Obamacare.

Yeah and the Republicans didn't push for more than that, right? C'mon at least pretend to be fair.

Don't blame Obamacare on the Republicans. Thats your burning tire, not theirs. Wear it with pride.

See you in 2012

**agnosto**

Frazzled wrote:
agnosto wrote:
Frazzled wrote:No, they have Obama to blame. He took $500Bn out of Medicare for Obamacare.

Yeah and the Republicans didn't push for more than that, right? C'mon at least pretend to be fair.

Don't blame Obamacare on the Republicans. Thats your burning tire, not theirs. Wear it with pride.

See you in 2012

And don't throw Obama at me. I hate all politicians equally.

Socialized medicine works; I lived in two countries with socialized medicine and never had a problem. Americans are going to have to face that fact before we break the bank paying for oldsters like you and your hip replacement surgeries.

**ShumaGorath**

Frazzled wrote:No, they have Obama to blame. He took $500Bn out of Medicare for Obamacare.

That 500 billion was leaving regardless. You know just as well as everyone else that this gak is unaffordable. They're getting three times what they put into it. Our growth rate isn't high enough to support that.

**daedalus-templarius**

Geez Frazzled, you don't really think the Republican field for 2012 is really looking that great, do you?

I don't think they will even try to run anyone serious and just leave their good candidates (whoever they may be) for 2016.

**ShumaGorath**

agnosto wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
agnosto wrote:
Frazzled wrote:No, they have Obama to blame. He took $500Bn out of Medicare for Obamacare.

Yeah and the Republicans didn't push for more than that, right? C'mon at least pretend to be fair.

Don't blame Obamacare on the Republicans. Thats your burning tire, not theirs. Wear it with pride.

See you in 2012

And don't throw Obama at me. I hate all politicians equally.

Socialized medicine works; I lived in two countries with socialized medicine and never had a problem. Americans are going to have to face that fact before we break the bank paying for oldsters like you and your hip replacement surgeries.

Americans like to pretend they have the best healthcare system in the world and they'll do it right up until the time its the worst. It comes with being a nation of over entitled children.

**agnosto**

ShumaGorath wrote:That 500 billion was leaving regardless. You know just as well as everyone else that this gak is unaffordable. They're getting three times what they put into it. Our growth rate isn't high enough to support that.

Shhhhh. Don't tell old people that stuff, they get irate.

**ShumaGorath**

agnosto wrote:
ShumaGorath wrote:That 500 billion was leaving regardless. You know just as well as everyone else that this gak is unaffordable. They're getting three times what they put into it. Our growth rate isn't high enough to support that.

Shhhhh. Don't tell old people that stuff, they get irate.

No, they just won't understand it. It's why they're so easily led. They aren't very up and up on economics (or phones). They expect to be catered too and they get used by conservatives who rarely understand the issues either.

**agnosto**

ShumaGorath wrote:No, they just won't understand it. It's why they're so easily led. They aren't very up and up on economics (or phones). They expect to be catered too and they get used by conservatives who rarely understand the issues either.

Why do your own thinking when you got Fox news to do it for you?

**ShumaGorath**

agnosto wrote:
ShumaGorath wrote:No, they just won't understand it. It's why they're so easily led. They aren't very up and up on economics (or phones). They expect to be catered too and they get used by conservatives who rarely understand the issues either.

Why do your own thinking when you got Fox news to do it for you?

Fox group aren't the only people using the elderly. Every news source and politician plays the "scare old people" card. I would say its shameful but it's how democracy has always worked. Meh, it's still shameful.

**Brushfire**

Call Congress? You are an optimist. Like they really listen.
They are going to do what they are paid to do.
Besides, most of them don't even read the bills they pass.
1000 plus page monstronties loaded with hidden easter egg provisions
having nothing to do with the issue in question.

If voting really changed anything, it would be outlawed.

**agnosto**

Brushfire wrote:Call Congress? You are an optimist. Like they really listen.
They are going to do what they are paid to do.
Besides, most of them don't even read the bills they pass.
1000 plus page monstronties loaded with hidden easter egg provisions
having nothing to do with the issue in question.

If voting really changed anything, it would be outlawed.

You made me remember this:

**Frazzled**

agnosto wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
agnosto wrote:
Frazzled wrote:No, they have Obama to blame. He took $500Bn out of Medicare for Obamacare.

Yeah and the Republicans didn't push for more than that, right? C'mon at least pretend to be fair.

Don't blame Obamacare on the Republicans. Thats your burning tire, not theirs. Wear it with pride.

See you in 2012

And don't throw Obama at me. I hate all politicians equally.

Socialized medicine works; I lived in two countries with socialized medicine and never had a problem. Americans are going to have to face that fact before we break the bank paying for oldsters like you and your hip replacement surgeries.

I didn't say socialized medicine didn't work, if properly funded. Dealing with it first hand in the last six months I can tell you medicare has been defunded. So in many ways I don't think we're disagreeing actually.

**agnosto**

Frazzled wrote:I didn't say socialized medicine didn't work, if properly funded. Dealing with it first hand in the last six months I can tell you medicare has been defunded. So in many ways I don't think we're disagreeing actually.

Yeah, the recent "piece of legislation" is just a waste of paper because the Dems didn't have the cajones to keep the public option in it or just push through a full-bore socialized system.

I keep reminding myself that I have to keep it in perspective since our nation was founded by a bunch of right-wing nutjobs anyway. It'll probably be another 300 years before we can progress past that as a nation.

**Orlanth**

From our experiences with the NHS I can only say that Obama has this one right.

Not often I actually have much nice to say about your current president, but credit where credits due. Big medicine has spared no expense on the propoganda efforts to halt social medicine, although social medicine schemes are a large part of what separates developed countries from the third world. The US is strangely backward in this critical area of societal development and Obama is right to challenge this.

When you have got your equivalent of the NHS you will see for yourself what we already know in the UK, France Canada and elsewhere, and will want to keep it. It will be expensive, it may grow as dinosaur like bureaucracy, but it will be worth it.

**sebster**

The great public concern over Medicare being defunded is exactly as serious as the great public concern over death panels. It's all just political bs, neither is actually a real possibility, they're just their to make you fear the other side. Sure, Ryan's budget called to pretty much dump Medicare, but it was a stupid, transparently impossible budget designed for political manouvre, not as a genuine proposal.

The level of general support for Medicare and Social Security among the general population is overwhelming. No elected representative would dare cut them, even if he was dumb enough to think it was a good idea.

The actual question is how to control medicare and other health costs without dropping services, and even with flatter healthcare costs, how do you produce a balanced budget.

**Brushfire**

When you have got your equivalent of the NHS you will see for yourself what we already know in the UK, France Canada and elsewhere, and will want to keep it. It will be expensive, it may grow as dinosaur like bureaucracy, but it will be worth it.

Even then, the paradox of a western national heath care system means you have an ever-increasing aged population to take care of, with a decreasing birth rate. This means fewer citizens able to work and support it with taxes. Japan is having this problem right now. National health care is a victim of its own success. If inflation continues, and wages do not keep up, no social program can sustained itself for very long on the taxes of a decreasing work force of younger people. Especially as you admitted as it is expensive and bureaucratic, and wastes money.

The only reasons the countries you mention have been able to sustain their national health programs is because they have not spent the same proportion of money of their national budgets on military adventures like the US has—which in my mind is a good thing. Even so, it will become unsustainable as the youthful work force decreases.

**sebster**

Orlanth wrote:When you have got your equivalent of the NHS you will see for yourself what we already know in the UK, France Canada and elsewhere, and will want to keep it. It will be expensive, it may grow as dinosaur like bureaucracy, but it will be worth it.

It's actually cheaper than the US system. Cheaper by about half, and it delivers better health outcomes across the board. And no-one goes bankrupt because they got sick.

But the cheaper by about half is the important thing. Sure bureaucracy is expensive, and anyone who's dealt with a public health system knows there's plenty of it, but it's a lot cheaper than a doctor being given a direct profit incentive to over-prescribe treatment.

**dogma**

Brushfire wrote:
If voting really changed anything, it would be outlawed.

Voting is the means by which the populace expresses its will. It isn't the only factor in government decision making, nor should it be, but pretending that it has no effect at all is just rhetorical nonsense.

Brushfire wrote:
Even then, the paradox of a western national heath care system means you have an ever-increasing aged population to take care of, with a decreasing birth rate.

That's what immigration is for, and its probably the single biggest asset the US has going forward. At least provided xenophobia and protectionism don't conspire to kill it off.

Brushfire wrote:
The only reasons the countries you mention have been able to sustain their national health programs is because they have not spent the same proportion of money of their national budgets on military adventures like the US has—which in my mind is a good thing. Even so, it will become unsustainable as the youthful work force decreases.

Sure, but all social arrangements eventually change. The argument that something will eventually cease to be sustainable isn't a particularly compelling reason not to do it.