Thread: Who you gonna believe - Obama or Webster ??

Originally Posted by Bahet

Not necessarily. When DH came home from Iraq we weren't eligible for any sort of government programs even though he was a war veteran with no income. We lived in MI at the time and the economy there was dying. So we moved to AZ where we knew the prospects would be much better. It still took a few months to find a job but we managed. We also couldn't sell our MI house so we had 2 houses and no income for nearly 6 months. But we didn't get any assistance because we were new to AZ so we weren't eligible. We had left MI so we weren't eligible there. I posted that before and a few people chose to criticize our decision to move. Apparently they would have approved of our staying in MI and going on welfare and medicaid. Except we weren't eligible for those until our income was nothing for several months. No one gets laid off on Monday and gets food stamps and medicaid on Tuesday.

There's a reason so many of our troops and reservists are reenlisting. It's the only job they can find. They can be completely mentally and physically messed up from their 1st tour and the military will still take them back as long as they can walk.

Welfare isn't emergency help. Emergency help comes quickly. Welfare takes a long time to be approved for. One person in MI even tried to tell us we weren't eligible since DH hadn't physically resided in MI in the past year. That was about the clincher in deciding to move.

Bahet could your dh have gotten VA ins? I know a lady whose dh got that when he came back from compat (serving) and is still on it. Its just for him. NOT the family. But they have their kids on that schip. So all she has to do is pay for her own. I don't know how any of that stuff works. I know he goes to a va place for his meds scripts etc. Thats basically all I know. But its free for him. Everything the meds etc. He pays NOTHING. Maybe you could check into it. All he did is had a torn rotaters cuff or something like that......

Originally Posted by Bahet

No one gets laid off on Monday and gets food stamps and medicaid on Tuesday.

If one is laid off on Monday, Tuesday they can apply for unemployment.....is it 2 weeks before the 1st check? (I forget)

There's a reason so many of our troops and reservists are reenlisting. It's the only job they can find. They can be completely mentally and physically messed up from their 1st tour and the military will still take them back as long as they can walk.

This applies to everyone right now, not just ex-military......the job market is rough. But I agree, it's doubly a shame as these people served our country and deserve better.



Bahet, I may be confused about something. I know your DH was in the service at one time (enlisted). The last stint he did in Iraq, was it military (enlisted) or I recall something about working as a private contractor over there (not enlisted)? I'm not looking to pry but I know it's been mentioned before.

CBO contradicts Obama on healthcare – again
Posted by: Sister Toldjah on September 23, 2009 at 9:56 am
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...lthcare-again/

This is getting to be a pattern:

WASHINGTON – Congress’ chief budget officer on Tuesday contradicted President Barack Obama’s oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn’t see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.

The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee. The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.

Elmendorf said the changes “would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans.” Finance Committee aides emphasized that core Medicare benefits wouldn’t be cut because the plans are required to offer the benefits available under traditional Medicare fee-for-service coverage.

Federal subsidies to private Medicare plans average about 14 percent higher than those involved in fee-for-service coverage. The health care bills pending in Congress would reduce or eliminate the difference in part by introducing a competitive bidding system to pay the plans. The private plans cover around 25 percent of Medicare beneficiaries.
The Finance Committee bill along with other health care legislation in Congress would cut around $500 billion in projected Medicare payments to providers over a decade, including around $125 billion from Medicare Advantage.

Obama has pushed the cuts to providers even while repeatedly insisting they won’t reduce seniors’ benefits. “Nobody is talking about cutting Medicare benefits,” Obama said during an online AARP forum in July.

Well ... nobody that they want you to listen to at any rate ... just like this "mandate" is NOT a tax ...

Ed Morrissey, noting that Elmendorf is not the only one in DC contradicting Team Obama’s lies about cuts, adds:

Only an idiot would conclude that $500 billion in cuts to Medicare over 10 years would mean no reduction in benefits. We budgeted $413 billion for this year, which makes a $50 billion “savings” target about 12% of its budget. Obama keeps talking about how efficient Medicare is compared to private health insurance, but how efficient can it be if he can slice 12% out of the budget without affecting benefits? In comparison, private health insurers spend 96.7% of all income on care and administrative costs, with only a 3.3% average profit margin.

Elmendorf is speaking not just from hard data but also common sense.

Any attempt to get that level of “savings” from Medicare will necessarily cut the benefits going to its recipients. Trying to cast that as a myth is either an indication of mathematical incompetence, political dishonesty, or both. It’s also worth noting that when previous administrations attempted to cut Medicare spending by much lower amounts, Democrats would scream from the rafters about Republicans trying to steal Medicare away from seniors. In this case, the CBO confirms that Democrats have engaged in projection.

Absolutely. And I will also note that most of the so-called “efficiency” of Medicare comes on the administrative end. If Obama were telling the truth that care wouldn’t be “cut” under his plan, then that would mean the “savings” would have to come from the administrative end – which would hurt the efficiency numbers which would, down the line, impact the quality of care as well.

Where the administration really needs to focus is on the waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare that costs this country billions every year. They’ve paid the issue lip service, but as I’ve noted before, their real goal isn’t to combat abuse in Medicare – think about it: if it was their goal to combat Medicare waste and fraud, they wouldn’t be advocating for more government control over it. Their emphasis is going to be primarily on the “EOL counseling” – code for “you’re too old/sick and not worth saving,” taxing private health insurance companies out of business, and on forcing those who don’t sign up for any healthcare plan after all is said and done with this bill into paying a “fine.”

Lastly, I find it interesting that Obama now has his wife out there giving speeches about how ObamaCare is a “woman’s issue” because women are allegedly being “crushed” by our current healthcare system. Why interesting? Consider her active involvement in a patient-dumping scheme in Chicago, an appalling issue that has generated next to no MSM attention:

The First Lady helped create a notorious program that dumped poor patients on community hospitals, yet the national media ignore the story.

Imagine if her husband were a Republican....

The University of Chicago Medical Center has received a good deal of justly opprobrious press over its policy of “redirecting” low-income patients to community hospitals while reserving its own beds for well-heeled patients requiring highly profitable procedures. Substantial coverage was given to a recent indictment of the program by the American College of Emergency Physicians. ACEP’s president, Dr. Nick Jouriles, released a statement suggesting that the initiative comes “dangerously close to ‘patient dumping,’ a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act, and reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor.”

Oddly absent from most of the unflattering press coverage of UCMC’s patient-dumping scheme is any mention of the role our new First Lady played in devising the program. A laudable exception has been the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported last August that “Michelle Obama — currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital — helped create the program.”
>snip<
Mrs. Obama first hatched the UCMC program as the “South Side Health Collaborative,” which featured a gang of “counselors” whose job it was to “advise” low-income patients that they would be better off at other hospitals and clinics. The program was so successful in getting rid of unwanted patients that she expanded it, gave it a new name, and hired none other than David Axelrod to sell the program to the public. According to the Sun-Times, “Obama’s wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center’s board, backed the Axelrod firm’s hiring.” Axelrod helped the future First Lady formulate a public relations campaign in which the “Urban Health Initiative” was represented as a boon to the community actuated by the purest of altruistic motives.

The resultant PR campaign was a study in Orwellian audacity.

Chicago’s inner city residents soon began hearing that UCMC’s patient dumping program would “dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents” and that the medical center was generously willing to provide “a ride on a shuttle bus to other centers.” Likewise, the people who ran the community hospitals to which these unwanted patients were being shuttled began to read claims in local media to the effect that the Urban Health Initiative was good for them as well. Dr. Eric Whitaker, the Blagojevich crony who succeeded Mrs. Obama as Director of the program, repeatedly assured gullible reporters that the financial impact on these hospitals would be positive: “The initiative actually is improving their bottom lines.” The CFOs of those hospitals were no doubt relieved to learn that treating Medicaid and uninsured patients is profitable.

That, along with this administration’s emphasis on savings among the elderly and the chronically ill – who ObamaCo emphasizes make up 80% of healthcare costs in this country, should make any starry-eyed lefty who still believes this administration “cares” about the health of the sick and less fortunate to seriously reconsider. I won’t hold my breath.
















More on Congressional Transparency : http://spectator.org/blog/2009/09/23...mendment-requi

Originally Posted by janelle

That is too true. I don't know why people are arguing about health care. If Obamacare passes it will be a lot worse than it is now. Doctors retiring, insurance companies going out of business and laying off those who work in that sector. It would be nice to cover everybody for everything but not possible. That is all a fantasy.

Jolie, have you ever talked to the hospital about the bill? I took a financial course and they advised people to make a deal with the hospital to pay so much of the bill and the rest will be written off by them. That is what my hubby did when he was laid off. He called their billing department and said if he could pay a certain amount right then would they take it as full payment, and they did. The woman took it and made it good. Believe me hospitals want their money and if you can pay an amount up front they may just take it.

They did that twice for me on two different emergency room visits. I asked them if I paid now would they knock any off. They knocked a little less than half off both times. It doesn't hurt to ask.

Not to be a party pooper, that's great that they were able to write some people off but those write-offs result in higher prices for those that can pay or have insurance creating an entirely different set of problems. The hospitals don't just take a loss, they pass a portion of it onto the consumer.

Originally Posted by janelle

I don't mind helping pay for people who really need help, I don't like paying for people who go to the emergency room for a cold. That is what a health care system that puts everyone on the rolls will do.

That's what's happening now. Everyone of those people that go to the ER and don't pay, we are paying for in the cost of treatment and premiums going up. That problem has lessened here with our state sponsored insurance plan.
We have a large number of walk in type places that have opened for non-emergant care. The ER's aren't clogged with the sniffles.

Originally Posted by speedygirl

Not to be a party pooper, that's great that they were able to write some people off but those write-offs result in higher prices for those that can pay or have insurance creating an entirely different set of problems. The hospitals don't just take a loss, they pass a portion of it onto the consumer.

In my case i think they charged way too much for what they did too me. I went for infections and all they did was draw blood and take a skin culture. Take my blood pressure, test my sugar level and take my temperature. And send me home saying they didn't handle what I had there but they could refer me somewhere else and the bill was over $980. And seriously they didn't do anything to help me. I left there in as much psin as I went in with and them telling me they couldn't help me. I paid almost $560 for nothing. I then had to go to two other doctors and pay again before I got help for what I had. I feel like that $560 was just thrown away for nothing.