Take Away Medicare

[Joanne98]

I have a wonderful solution re: single payer health care system - take away Medicare and sit back and wait for the outcry for Universal Health care.

What are Americans thinking? Don't they realize that the death panel is the insurance companies who deny care - our record for longevity is behind that of Europe and Canada; so much for the best health care in the world.
Our mortality rate at child birth is one of the worst and yet we have the most expensive health care in the world.
I believe the US is rated about 14th (Editor's Note: it is 37th according to the World Health Organization) for the best health care. These outrageous health care outbursts/ protests around the nation's town halls are orchestrated by those who primarily have Medicare (a socialized program). As said by a recent blogger "they are violent mobs spewing lies and hyperbole fomented by the well-moneyed anti-reform insurance company insiders." They are initiated by health care corporate interests who know they will lose billions if we have a Universal Health care system.
Another party to these unforgivable town hall tactic's are the right wing of the GOP, whose intention is to disrupt any health care reform via the mob as they know they have no legitimate political voice of their own. So, bring on the "Brown-shirts" - the same people they used in the 2004 election.
Let's take Medicare away and see these same people the next day protesting for socialized medicine. These old white people who have Medicare already don't want anyone else to affect their coverage - how selfish and how un-American can you be? This country needs a wake-up call before its sinks into a proto-fascist nation (about one step from it). Today we have one party in America and it's not the party of Americans.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Take-Away-Medicare-by-Robert-Edwards-090811-602.html

[sharesunited]

1. I said early on that the seniors would oppose anything resembling Medicare for All.

But everyone here at DU insisted that the seniors could be counted on to support it.

They are simply looking out for their own self interest, inasmuch as they view universal coverage as a dilution of their existing Medicare benefit.

And, of course, unless proper funding is constantly fought for (and I do mean constantly) they are right.

[Joanne98]

2. People over 65 were McCain's largest demographic..

They voted for the party that wants to take their Medicare away and now their accusing us of it. The only reason they still have Medicare is because the Dems stopped the thugs from privatizing it. This is the thanks we get? I'm not for taking it away but I'm for raising the co-payments on the middle and upper class seniors.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. Ok, but let us face the facts- no one is proposing anything that

resembles Medicare for All. That is NOT on the table, and so it is a huge leap to claim that seniors are opposing Medicare for All. The leadership opposes Medicare for All, the President opposes it, and there is no such proposal on the table, so you have no idea what anyone would be doing if Medicare For All was an actual proposal.
Claiming that this reform is Medicare for All is not an honest tactic. It is in fact, a flat out lie. Such falehoods do not help when our goal has to be informing and educating.
It is not Medicare For All. Not even close. No matter how you spin it, you can not make this into an opposition to expanding Medicare to all citizens, because this is not what is being discussed at all. Just be an honest broker. The fakery will fail. There is no proposal that is or resembles Medicare For All, so no one is opposing Medicare for All. Mandated purchase of private for profit insurance plans is not Medicare For All in any way shape or form. No matter how many times you wish to confuse the two, they are not the same.
Most of the Medicare beneficiaries I know are for Single Payer, Medicare For All and are not really interested in pushing anything less than that. The proposed 'reforms' do not interest them. Single Payer interests them greatly.
You might do well to remember that seniors and the disabled have family and friends just like other people. Many seniors have been parents and other types of caretakers that have sacrificed greatly to benefit the younger people in their charge. Many of them would still trade their life for their kid's or grandkids on the spot, and we all know that to be true. So this pretense that the older citizens and disabled citizens care only for themselves, not for their own families, their own neighbors is just a bigoted and uninformed take on things. "They only care about themselves" you say of a group of people that built the world in which you snark.
I saw Lawrence O'Donnel on Hardball interviewing a woman in her 20s who was dead set against any kind of reform. Shall I claim that 'young people' do not care about others, nor about the poor, because some of them are tea bagging idiots? Shall I look at Palin and figure all who are her age share her politics? You seen to think so.

[sharesunited]

4. Dilution of an existing benefit is behind the howling. I'm old, so now you must let me die.

It is an easy fear to play upon and manipulate.

Listen, if the seniors wanted Medicare for All it would get done.

Why ISN'T something even resembling it on the table?

Why WAS the Medicare prescription drug benefit, as inadequate as it is, able to pass with a Republican controlled Congress?

Perhaps the interests of the for-profit healthcare lobbyists and the interests of senior citizens are more aligned than you are prepared to accept.

My observation may be erroneous, but it is made without ridicule or bitterness. They are not natural allies in this struggle because they have an entitlement which it is logical for them to perceive as possibly threatened by any big changes to the overall arrangement.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. See, this routine of speaking of 'seniors' as a block of thought

is just so incorrect. You say if 'seniors' wanted Medicare for All it would be done? As if they hold that control? All props, but Seniors are not even able to get a decent Cost of Living Adjustment passed, much less a huge thing like single payer. It is not older and disabled citizens who are in the place to propose Medicare for All. We have been told non stop that such a program is impossible, out of the question and not being talked about. It was not discussed, it was not offered as an option. No voter block has has a chance to comment on Single Payer, much less reject or pass such a bill. If Obama supported Medicare for All it would pass. But you think Seniors hold that much power? They don't.


Those who get Medicare now pay for it now. Premiums and the works. They are also mostly still income tax payers. The profit in health care is the enemy of all of them. Old Republicans don't think that way, but older Democrats do. All you need to do is go out and talk with your political elders and find out what they have to say. They are able to speak for themselves, there is no need to make assumptions about them based on 'observation'. This is not anthropology, this is just talking to your neighbors.
One assumption of yours that I challenge is that those who get Medicare only think of themselves, not of their loved ones, not even their own children and grandchildren! Do you understand how many senior citizens help their offspring pay for Medical things, deep into life, paying for grandkids and the works? Do you think that when older people see their family suffer from lack of care, that they just smirk 'I got mine'? Is this really what you think of say, your own grandparents? At what age do you think Democrats switch over to being utterly uncaring about their own communities? When to they become the sociopaths you describe? Because that is what you describe, people who do not even care about their own children and grandchildren, if they got theirs.
So much ageism on this board. And that is exactly what you are doing, spouting uninformed ageism. The old people are inhuman and uncaring. That is just so twisted.