medicare

During anAi??appearanceAi??on Fox News, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was asked about raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67. She strongly rebuked the idea, saying that beneficiaries aren’t going to “evaporate from the face of the earth for two years”:

PELOSI: Those people are not going to evaporate from the face of the earth for two years, they’re going to have medical needs and they’re going to be attended to. And the earlier the intervention for it, the less the cost will be and the better the quality of life. I do think we should subject every federal dollar that is spent to the harshest scrutiny. I do think the challenge in Medicare is not Medicare it’s health care costs in general. […] There is money to be saved there, I don’t think it has to come out of benefits or beneficiaries, and I don’t think you have to raise the age.

Watch it:

Recall that raising the Medicare age to 67 wouldAi??pass on costs to seniors of $11.4 billionAi??every year.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

(Photo source: Flickr user DonkeyHotey)

Social Security is fully solvent until 2037 and is not in crisis. But one way to make sure there are no cutbacks in benefit cuts after that is to lift the payroll tax cap so wealthy Americans contribute more into the system.

A new survey from the National Academy of Social Insurance finds that most Americans want to do just that. When survey respondents were asked how they felt about the statement “It is critical to preserve Social Security even if it means increasing Social
Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans,” 87 percent of them agreed, with 62 percent of them strongly agreeing.

It’s worth noting that this number includes even 71 percent of self-identified Republicans (and 86 percent of self-identified independents).

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has just put out a proposal to cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits. In the text of the proposal, his first recommendation is raising the Medicare age from 65 to 67.

To justify this, he cites “bipartisan” support:

BIPARTISAN SUPPORT:Ai??This policy was supported by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.Ai?? It was also included in the bipartisan Biden-Cantor deficit reduction negotiation, the bipartisan Obama-Boehner negotiations, and the Coburn-Lieberman Medicare proposal from last Congress. Prominent Democrats, such as Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), suggested that this policy should be part of the discussion to reform entitlements.Ai?? The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has provided this as an entitlement reform option.

Hatch’s statement makes it seem like Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) would accept a hike in the Medicare age. While the congressman did once suggest that it would be part of the discussion, he later backtracked and flatly said he will not accept a raising of the age, because it would just result in “transferring” costs to seniors.

And while Hatch can cite some elites who support raising the Medicare age, among the general public the proposal is only bipartisan in the opposition to it. A Washington Post poll last year found that American voters, by a margin of two-to-one, oppose raising the Medicare age.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

Some right-wing politicians want to raise the Medicare age to 67. This would reduce the deficit by $5.7 billion each year but pass on costs to seniors of $11.4 billion every year as well.

Rather than making health care more expensive for seniors, here’s a progressive deficit reduction idea. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office saidAi??we could raise $114 billion over ten years — twice as much as raising the Medicare age — by limiting corporate tax deferrals.

The way to do this would be to subject all income earned by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to U.S. tax laws by limiting or eliminating deferrals for overseas profits. Right now, large corporations like Microsoft will shift their profits to overseas locations — such as remote islands in the Caribbean or Switzerland — to avoid paying taxes on them.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Corporate lobbyists and their allies in Washington want to cut Medicare benefits by raising the eligibility age. This would cost seniors an additional $11.4 billion every year.

In an interview with the local press, Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley also points out that this would have a huge human cost:

ai???Across Oregon, at town hall after town hall, I hear stories like what we heard today — stories from seniors who are just trying to hang on to get to age 65 and access Medicare,ai??? said Merkley.

ai???And now, some folks in Washington are proposing raising the Medicare age from 65 to 67 or possibly higher. This is unacceptable. This hurts our seniors. For some seniors, raising the Medicare age would be a death sentence.ai???

Naked Capitalism’s Matthew StollerAi??runs the numbers and estimates that raising the Medicare age to 67 could lead to as many as an additional 1,261 senior deaths each year even if the Affordable Care Act is implemented on time.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

Some politicians want to raise the Medicare age, which would save little money for the government and be painful for seniors. In Politico this morning, progressive Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown (OH) flatly objected to the idea and castigated its proponents:

ai???That is such a Washington, Heritage Foundation construction,ai??? Brown said of raising the eligibility age.

Reminded that some of his own colleagues are open to it, he shot back: ai???Theyai??i??re wrong.ai???

And he wondered, speaking of both Democratic and Republican advocates of such reform, ai???Do they not ever talk to factory workers, construction workers, people that work in diners?ai???

Raising the Medicare age would cost seniors approximately $11.4 billion annually.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

Progressive activists fired a shot across the bow of congressional Democrats on Wednesday, warning them to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid or face a primary challenge. Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Democrats would face a “nuclear war on the left” if they supported cuts to the safety net programs. “We will probably have a fractured party for the next two years” if Democrats cave to Republican demands, Green said on CSPAN, “which would be to the detriment of this president and very unfortunate. There will absolutely be Democratic primaries in the next round of congressional elections. We would probably start right away recruiting challengers.”

The liberal advocacy group that helped draft Elizabeth Warren into the US Senate campaign in 2011 is now trying to make Barney Frank her junior senator. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee sent an email to 25,000 Massachusetts members Wednesday afternoon asking them to sign an online petition urging Governor Deval Patrick to appoint Frank as the state’s interim senator. The group also launched a website, AppointBarneyFrank.com.

Adam Green talked about the work of his Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and the organization’s agenda for the 113th Congress.*He also outlined what progressives would like to see from President Obama in his second term.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)

On Wednesday, we reported that Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) said on MSNBC that Republicans should be willing to shut down the government to get Democrats to agree to radical cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Today, BondBuyer’s Jen DePaul reports that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) made a similar threat:

We can only imagine what Cornyn means by “the long-term fiscal health of our country,” but it seems he is willing to go to incredible lengths to secure his right-wing ideological vision.

Democrats should not fear staring down Republicans over a government shutdown. Recall that in the 1990’s, Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-GA) shut down of the government resulted in a dive in the polls.

When Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren and the rest of the 2013 class of liberal senators start work this month, they’ll have to do more than figure out the byzantine ways of getting things done in Washington. They’ll also have to decide how seriously to engage a progressive movement that sees their assent a historic opportunity to shift the Democratic Party to the left.

“The cavalry is arriving,” said Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “A lot of news coverage after the election focused on Democrats winning two seats, but the big story for us is the composition of the Democratic caucus has moved in a massively progressive direction.”

Image from Americans for Tax Fairness

The corporate front group “Fix The Debt” still wants to cut Social Security benefits and lower the corporate tax rate. Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is working with the group, and he appeared on MSNBC today and made the remarkable claim that Obama needs to hike the Medicare age and cut Social Security benefits with a chained CPI, comparing it to President Lincoln leading on the 13th amendment and freeing the slaves:

RENDELL: Give the President credit, he said he would consider chained CPI, he said back in 2011 that he would raise the Medicare age, with carveouts. […] Those are things he’s going to have to deliver. […] He has to lead. And boy I’d love the whole Congress, this new Congress and the President, they should all go see a screening of Lincoln together, because Abraham Lincoln led on the 13th amendment when everybody on both sides told him he was crazy.

Watch it:

Hiking the Medicare age to 67 would cost seniors 11 billion dollars every year. Meanwhile, a chained CPI would cut a senior’s benefit by over $1,100 every year by time they hit age 85.

It is simply difficult to see the comparison between harming our seniors and freeing the slaves.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA)

Republicans are already threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless their demands are met. On MSNBC this morning, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) said that Republicans should be willing to shut down the government if Democrats don’t agree to a “restructuring the entitlement programs” — code for cuts to benefits:

TOOMEY: We Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown, which is what that could mean. And get off the road to Greece because thatai??i??s a road that weai??i??re on right now. We can only solve this problem by getting spending under control and restructuring the entitlement programs. This president doesnai??i??t want to go there. Weai??i??re going to have to force it, and weai??i??re going to have to force it over the debt ceiling.

Watch it:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Toomey has been an advocate of raising the retirement age to cut benefits for seniors.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee sent an email to Democratic senior staffers in both the House and Senate at 3 p.m. ET Monday, after word trickled out that a deal in the works would only raise taxes for households making $450,000 and above (or $400,000 for individuals.) The email, obtained by TPM, argued that Democrats have no practical reason to cave on taxes and would actually have increased leverage if Congress blows through the midnight deadline to avoid the cliff. “Democrats hold the cards, and our leverage increases in less than 10 hours if we hold strong,” the email, signed by the group’s co-founders Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, read.

Preserving Social Security should never have been all that difficult.

But it took Harry Reid to settle the issue —at least as regards the miserably long and absurdly inappropriate debate of 2012.

“We’re not going to have any Social Security cuts,” the Senate majority leader said on the floor of the chamber Sunday. “It’s just doesn’t seem appropriate at this time.”… The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which did so much to strengthen the backbones of Reid and other Democrats, responded in with the proper mix of celebration and resolve. “Democrats stood firm — and Harry Reid declared from the Senate floor that no deal would pass this year that touched Social Security,” declared PCCC co-founders Stephanie Taylor and Adam Green in a message to the hundreds of thousands of PCCC members who contacted Congress with messages opposing any cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. “Today’s victory shows that activism works. In 2013, we’ll keep fighting any proposed cuts to these benefits.”

Social Security was worth fighting for in 2012.

And because activists prevailed—with an assist from Harry Reid—it will be worth fighting for in 2013.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is urging Democrats to hold their “bright line position” on taxes and entitlements ahead of a meeting Friday in which President Obama will reportedly offer congressional leaders a scaled-back deal to avert the fiscal cliff.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says a majority of House Democrats have pledged to vote against any budget deal that includes the “chained CPI” Social Security cut. The PCCC’s conclusion is based on a count of signatures on a 2011 letter and a statement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus this week.

For Obama, these voices are significant. He is losing the allies who should be in the forefront of the fight to seal any deal he reaches with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Without a solid base of Democratic votes in the House and Senate for it, this deal won’t be done. And make no mistake: a fiscal-cliff compromise that compromises Social Security should not be done. Period. That’s the message coming from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which as usual has moved rapidly — and effectively — to build mass opposition to a cut that will only happen if Americans are unaware of the threat.

Outside liberal groups are keeping up pressure on Democrats to ward off a deal that includes any changes to Social Security. Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, threatened primary challenges for Democratic lawmakers flirting with supporting the CPI change and warned that progressives were already getting mobilized to lobby members. “People are under the kind of delusional idea that the American public would applaud cutting their own grandparents’ Social Security benefits because compromise is just that important,” Green said in an interview. “Well, it’s not. There’s a good compromise and a bad compromise.”

Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said the chained CPI plan is “unacceptable.” A labor source called it “insanity.” As Matt Yglesias pointed out this morning, the chained CPI is also unpopular, with 60 percent opposed to “changing Social Security to increase at a slower rate” and only 34 percent in favor.

The liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) on Tuesday morning circulated criticism from a handful of progressive players, signifying that politicians and interest groups on the left, who have decried any cuts to Social Security or Medicare, will coordinate at least some degree of pushback against this movement toward a compromise.

(Photo credit: Flickr user Steve Rhodes)

Many Republicans and a few Democrats have suggested an idea corporate lobbyists love — raising the Medicare age and dumping millions of seniors into private insurance. This would cost seniors $11.4 billion annually.

Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman decided to look at how much doing this would reduce the deficit versus President Obama’s tax proposal of ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and returning the estate tax to 2009 levels (it was cut by President Bush as well). Here’s his conclusion:

So I thought Iai??i??d look at the dollars and cents ai??i?? and even I am somewhat shocked. Those tax hikes would raise $1.6 trillion over the next decade;Ai??according to the CBO, raising the Medicare age would save $113 billion in federal funds over the next decade.

So, the [tax] proposal would reduce the deficitAi??14 times as muchAi??as the [Medicare] proposal.

The choice seems clear. If you’re serious about tackling our long-term deficit, you should be for ending the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans, not harming benefits for America’s seniors.

Sign up here to pledge to hold bad Democrats who agree to cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits accountable.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) wants to cut your Medicare and Social Security benefits.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) presented his latest offer to President Obama on Friday. Boehner is offering to agree to a tax rate increase on millionaires only if Democrats agree to major cuts in Medicare and Social Security benefits through a possible combination of a benefit-cutting “chained CPI” and hiking the retirement age.

The first thing to note is that Boehner’s proposal is not particularly ground-breaking. For weeks, leading Republicans like Senators Bob Corker (TN) and Saxby Chambliss (GA) have said they would be open to some revenue increases in exchange for cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits.Ai??So this isn’t a “cave” or a compromise on behalf of House Republicans. It’s the position they’ve been bargaining towards for the past month.

Second of all, the plan asks seniors to pay for debt problems they did not cause. Two wars, tax cuts for the richest Americans, and Wall Street’s irresponsibility are responsible for our long-term deficits. It is simply unfair for them to have to pay for debt that they did not cause.

As the New York Times’s Paul Krugman writes, “Why on earth would Obama be selling Medicare away to raise top tax rates when he gets a big rate rise on January 1 just by doing nothing?” Furthermore, these tax increases would include rich Americans earning $250,000 or more, not just millionaires.

We should look instead to Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren for a credible approach to dealing with the deficit over the long term.

Warren has an alternative, truly “balanced approach” to tackling the deficit. During a campaign debate last month, she laid out a popular vision for dealing with the deficit: cut back on wasteful military …

Corporate lobbyists and their allies on Capitol Hill have a terrible new idea: hiking the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. This would save the federal government about $5.7 billion a year, but cost seniors $11.4 billion over the same period.

There are a better ways to cut Medicare costs, and they wouldn’t cost a single penny of anyone’s benefits. Here’s three possible choices for how we can do that:

1. Empower Medicare To Negotiate For Lower Drug Prices:Ai??One policy option that would be very simple to enact and would not require any sort of increased spending or expansion of government would be to simply allow Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate withAi??drug makersAi??for lower prices. The program isAi??currently bannedAi??Ai??from doing so, thanks to the clout of the drug industry. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) estimates that doing this could save as much asAi??$156 billionAi??over 10 years.

2. Allow Drug Re-importation From Canada:Ai??One of the major costs in the U.S. health care system that drives up the costs not only in the private sector but also among Medicare are the costs of prescription drugs. One very easy was to greatly relieve this cost is to eliminate protectionist barriers and allow the free importation of prescription drugs from our neighbors like Canada. A failed measure proposed by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John McCain (R-AZ) to do exactly that in 2009 estimated that doing so would save consumersAi??$80 billionAi??over ten years.

3. Globalize Medicare:Ai??Another protectionist barrier and detriment to free trade in the U.S. health care system is that seniors currently arenai??i??t allowed to use their Medicare insurance system outside of the United States. An alternative to this would be to drop these trade barriers and allow seniors on Medicare to …

When Warren laid out the approach in a debate with departing Sen. Scott Brown during the campaign, it instantly entered the progressive canon… And the plan has widespread support beyond just liberals, progressives argue. Case in point, the PCCC polled voters in two swing states (Virginia and New Hampshire), and in Obama’s home state of Illinois, about Warren’s plan. The poll, conducted by PPP and shared with Salon before its release, didn’t mention Warren’s name, but asked about individual components. All had broad support.