One of the last remaining honest politicians in America, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, (D-OH) has an idea he thinks will create 1 million new jobs, fast. His piecemeal solution to the employment crisis: get the old people to retire and bring in some "new blood." His piecemeal solution to the employment crisis: get the old people to retire and bring in some "new blood."
By providing government incentives for workers to retire at the age of 60 instead of 65, Kucinich believes all the newly open positions would create a surge of fresh employment.
"Nearly 70 percent of workers elect to take early retirement under current rules, which allow eligible individuals to begin receiving a reduced Social Security benefit starting at age 62," a media advisory from the Congressman's office claimed. "The Kucinich Plan would reduce the eligibility age to 60 for the first million workers who want to take advantage of an earlier retirement date."
With some 4.2 million U.S. workers between ages 60-65, Kucinich believes at least 1 million will take advantage of early retirement, even though the Social Security payout would be at a reduced rate. Additionally, instead of Medicare, Kucinich proposes early retirees received health coverage through the COBRA program.
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How The President's Plan for Health Reform Will Benefit Seniors
"I want to speak directly to seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.
More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years. That's how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. And that is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.
The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies -- subsidies that do everything to pad their profits but don't improve the care of seniors. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.
Now, these steps will ensure that you -- America's seniors -- get the benefits you've been promised. They will ensure that Medicare is there for future generations. And we can use some of the savings to fill the gap in coverage that forces too many seniors to pay thousands of dollars a year out of their own pockets for prescription drugs. That's what this plan will do for you. So don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut, especially since some of the same folks who are spreading these tall tales have fought against Medicare in the past and just this year supported a budget that would essentially have turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will not happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare."
— President Barack Obama
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Canadian Doctors for Medicare hosted a celebration of Medicare in Canada. The speakers included Roy Romanow, former Saskatchewan Premiere and Commissioner on Health Care in Canada. They tell Americans that Canadian universal health care works and encourage Americans to implement a single payer universal health care system. The video also features Dr. Steven Lewis a health policy and research consultant, Dr. Danielle Martin, Dr. Ryan Meili and Dr. Robert Woolard representing the Canadian Doctors for Medicare and Linda Silas President of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.
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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
President Barack Obama calls health insurance reform critical to our nations long-term economic strength and dispels the outlandish rumors being promoted by those who are defending the status-quo. Obama is warning Americans not to believe “rumors” that the health reform initiative he’s pushing will lead to a government-run health care system or push Medicare recipients to die rather than running up a hefty tab for medical services.
"Let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, or cut Medicaid, or bring about a government takeover of health care. That's simply not true," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address released Saturday morning.
"This isn’t about putting government in charge of your health insurance; it’s about putting you in charge of your health insurance. Under the reforms we seek, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan,” Obama insisted.
Obama’s message about rumermongering dovetailed with an effort that the White House launched on the Internet this week to collect and refute what Obama aides said was misinformation being spread about Democratic health reform proposals.
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The Republicans, the party of NO, has now reached an even new low for them. Republicans are trying to rally opposition to President Obama’s health care plan by suggesting it will literally kill people. One GOP legislator said the reform plan is a way to advance assisted suicide. Can scare tactics like this prevent Congress from voting on the health care bill? MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT to discuss these recent developments Tuesday night.
Earlier Tuesday, President Obama fielded a question at a town hall hosted by the American Association of Retired Persons.
“I have been told there is a clause in there that everyone that’s Medicare age will be visited and told to decide how they wish to die,” a woman named Mary hailing from North Carolina asked the president. “This bothers me greatly, and I’d like for you to promise me that this is not in this bill.”
Maddow remarked, “The president of the United States today answering whether or not he wants health care reform because it’s secretly a plan to kill old people. This is one of those moments where you go, ‘Huh, any questions?”’ Most of all, it‘s just a big misunderstanding, right? It‘s like a ‘Three‘s Company’ plot line.”
“It‘s a whole new crazy conspiracy theory, unfolding where the craziest of them seem to be unfolding these days—among Republican members of Congress speaking on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives,” Maddow said.
Maddow played some clips of lawmakers and pundits advancing the “deather” argument.
REP. VIRGINIA FOXX (R-NC): Republicans have a better solution that won‘t put the government in charge of people‘s health care, that will make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans, and that insures affordable access for all Americans, and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.
REP. PAUL BROUN (R-G): A lot of people are going to die. This program of government option that‘s being touted as being this panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price, is going to kill people.
RUSH "OXYCONTIN" LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: People at a certain age with certain diseases will be deemed not worth the investment, and they will just—as Obama said—they‘ll give them some pain pills and let them loop out until they die and they don‘t even know what‘s happened.
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Half the Republicans' opposition to a public health care option comes not from policy differences with the Democrats, or fundamental philosophical differences about the role of government, but purely from a desire to score political points against President Barack Obama, a senior Republican senator has admitted.
George Voinovich (R-OH) said on CNBC Wednesday that a desire to prevent the Democratic president from scoring a historical victory with a public health plan accounts for at least 50 percent of the GOP opposition to the plan.
Squawk Box host Carl Quintanilla asked the senator: "How much of this disagreement with the administration is about the policy of health care and how to fix it, and how much of it is Republicans' ... desire to declaw the president politically?"To which Voinovich responded: "I think it's probably 50-50."
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Special interests and opponents of health care reform in Washington have made their priority clear: attack President Obama at any cost.
On Friday, GOP Senator Jim DeMint told a special-interest attack group that if they're "able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." And just this morning, Republican Chairman Michael Steele backed up DeMint's statement 100%. At the same time, the Republican National Committee is running deceptive ads to scare Americans away from the reform we need.
Their plan is simple: oppose health care reform as a political ploy to weaken the President and defeat his entire agenda of change. But if we follow the Republican "Party of No" and do nothing, we'll not only ensure more of the same, but saddle our children and grandchildren with a growing burden of exploding costs and declining care that they may never overcome.
Here is the audio of Republican Senator Jim DeMint's plans for health care for the American people:
DeMint said:
“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
Obama himself just responded to DeMint, saying the following:
“This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy. And we can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care. Not this time, not now. There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake."
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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.. 000=
While the pharmaceutical industry spends over $1 million PER DAY to spread misinformation and disinformation about President Obama's proposed health care plan despite the fact that nobody has seen the final version, the Republican Party, the party of NO, has finally come up with an idea.
Republican Senator Judd Gregg, Obama's erstwhile nominee for Commerce Secretary, has offered his solution to this crisis. He wants to force the poor to purchase inexpensive HIGH DEDUCTIBLE plans which will not cover the "insured" unless they are able to come up with the $5,000 to $25,000 deductibles, upfront. He gets even more bizarre, but why not just listen to this wingnut?
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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
While the one reform that could cure what ails America's health care system has attracted plenty of adherents in the House -- 72 members have signed on as backers of House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers' single-payer proposal and others back a plan introduced by Washington Democrat Jim McDermott's legislation -- there has not been a Senate proposal to rally around.Until now.
That's what makes Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' proposed "American Health Security Act of 2009" such an important piece of legislation. In addition to being the first single-payer bill introduced in the Senate since the mid-1990s -- when the late Paul Wellstone, D-Minnesota, sponsored a bill similar to the plan now being advanced by Sanders -- it raises the profile of the doctors, nurses, patients and other campaigners who are trying to tell the Obama administration and its congressional allies that the legislative compromises they entertain are doomed to fail.
Under the American Health Security Act of 2009:
Patients could seek care from the doctor or hospital of their choice.
The new national health care program would be paid for by combining current sources of government health spending into a single fund with modest new taxes amounting to less than what people now pay for insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.
Funding would come from the federal government, but the program would be administered by the states.
The high overhead and profits of the private, investor-owned insurance industry would be eliminated, along with the burdensome paperwork imposed on physicians and other providers. As a result, the plan would save at least $400 billion annually – enough money to provide comprehensive, quality care to all.
Community health centers would be fully funded, giving the 60 million Americans now living in rural and underserved areas access to care.
To address the critical shortage of primary care physicians and dentists, resources for the National Health Service Corps to train an additional 24,000 health professionals would be provided.
