Medicare Quotes

Tea Party members go to meetings on Medicare scooters.

One quarter of Medicare beneficiaries have five or more chronic conditions, sees an average of 13 physicians each year, and fills 50 prescriptions per year.

Two, four, six, eight—Welfare rations come too late. Three, five, seven, nine—Medicare is still behind.

Every program that ever helped working people, from rural electrification to Medicare, was enacted by liberals over the opposition of conservatives.

With all the debates about whether or not God is dead, if he isn't he had better have Medicare!

They call themselves conservatives but that’s not it, either. They don’t want to conserve what we now have. They’d rather take the country backwards – before the 1960s and 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Act, Medicare, and Medicaid; before the New Deal, and its provision for Social Security, unemployment insurance, the forty-hour workweek, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve. They’re not conservatives. They’re regressives. And the America they seek is the one we had in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.

The whole idea of "leaners" and "lifters" is the central teaching of the right wing ideologue, Ayn Rand, who penned books like The Virtue of Selfishness. It’s a self-serving crock. Rand found out the hard way. After a lifetime proselytising on behalf of the "producers" and denouncing anyone needing government assistance as "parasites," when Rand became old and sick, she discovered that even a bestselling author could not afford health care in the neoliberal US. She availed herself of Medicare and ended her life on what she had despised – social security. ~ an edited extract from "The Life of I: the new culture of narcissism" ~Anne Manne~

I am an unlikely guardian. A month ago I thought the Medicare doughnut hole was a breakfast special for seniors. I am a care inflictor.

So Medicare decided to pay hospitals like ours for internship and residency training programs, get it? It’s a win-win, as they say—the hospital gets patients cared for by interns and residents around the clock,people like us who live on site, and whose stipend is a bloody fraction of what the hospital would pay full-time physicians. And Medicare delivers health care to the poor.

Suddenly being her age seemed great. She didn't have to look perfect. Hooray And think of all the senior discounts she had to look forward to not to mention Social Security Medicare and Medicaid. So what if she was afraid of getting old Big whoopdedoowho wasn't She wasn't alone everybody her age was in the same boat. She was going to relax and just let herself get older. Who cared if she wore twoinch heels instead of 3andahalf inch heels her feet hurt and not only that she was going to have a piec eof cake once in a while and she wasn't going to go anywhere she didn't feel like going anymore either. Bring on the Depends And the bunion pads and the Metamucil. And if she liked pretty music and old movies so what She wasn't hurting anyone. Hazel had always said "If you're still breathing you're ahead of the game." And she'd been right. Life itself was something to look forward to and so for whatever time she had left she was going to enjoy every minute wrinkles and all. What a concept

One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.” 골드워시, 도리도리, 바오메이, 블루위저드, 섹스드롭, 엑스터시판매, 요힘빈,

the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, a liberal immigration bill, some seventy different education bills—they’re all passed during the 1960s by President Lyndon Johnson.

Failure to plan ahead is a plan sure to FAIL!

One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.” 골드워시, 도리도리, 바오메이, 블루위저드, 섹스드롭, 엑스터시판매, 요힘빈,

One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.” 골드워시, 도리도리, 바오메이, 블루위저드, 섹스드롭, 엑스터시판매, 요힘빈,

A couple, both age seventy-eight, went to a sex therapist’s office. The doctor asked, “What can I do for you?” The man said, “Will you watch us have sexual intercourse?” The doctor looked puzzled, but agreed. When the couple finished, the doctor said, “There’s nothing wrong with the way you have intercourse,” and charged them $50. The couple asked for another appointment and returned once a week for several weeks. They would have intercourse, pay the doctor, then leave. Finally, the doctor asked, “Just exactly what are you trying to find out?” The old man said, “We’re not trying to find out anything. She’s married and we can’t go to her house. I’m married and we can’t go to my house. The Holiday Inn charges $93 and the Hilton Inn charges $108. We do it here for $50, and I get $43 back from Medicare.

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: We're not going to have a supreme court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonio Scalias and Samuel Aleatos added to this court. We're not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance. We are not going to do that. We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut. We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on. We are not going to redefine rape. We are not going to amend the United States constitution to stop gay people from getting married. We are not going to double Guantanamo. We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or Housing at the federal level. We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want. We are not scaling back on student loans because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents. We are not vetoing the Dream Act. We are not self-deporting. We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January. We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever. We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not bringing Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War. We are not going to do it. We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country. and we said no, last night, loudly.

So let me get this straight – this is a long sentence. We are going to be gifted with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which reportedly covers 10 million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman doesn’t understand it, passed by Congress, that didn’t read it, but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that is broke. So what the blank could possibly go wrong?

For [Stephen] Harper, a national daycare plan bordered on being a socialist scheme, a phrase he had once used to describe the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. For [Paul] Martin, whose plan would have transferred to the provinces $5 billion over five years, the national program was what Canadianism was all about. "Think about it this way," [Martin] said. "What if, decades ago, Tommy Douglas and my father and Lester Pearson had considered the idea of medicare and then said, 'Forget it! Let's just give people twenty-five dollars a week.' You want a fundamental difference between Mr. Harper and myself? Well, this is it.

Consider the case of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Its elderly residents have unusually low end-of-life hospital costs. During their last six months, according to Medicare data, they spend half as many days in the hospital as the national average, and there’s no sign that doctors or patients are halting care prematurely. Despite average rates of obesity and smoking, their life expectancy outpaces the national mean by a year.

New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked on CNN if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. Well, the station was flooded with emails, and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad, because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which (a) proves my point, and (b) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him. Now, before I go about demonstration how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness that's dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life-and-death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, seventy percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Six years later, thirty-four percent still do. Or look at the health-care debate: At a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross-country to protest highways. This country is like a college chick after two Long Island iced teas: We can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls, and replace them with study halls. Listen to some of these stats: A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. Twenty-four percent could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket. Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators, and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only three got their wife's name right on the first try. People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes more twenty-four percent of our budget. It's actually less than one percent. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen ad a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence, because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge." Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll say eighteen percent of us think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. And I haven't even brought up religion. But here's one fun fact I'll leave you with: Did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which came first. I rest my case.

Before Medicaid and Medicare existed, writes the American politician and former doctor Ron Paul, ‘every physician understood that he or she had a responsibility towards the less fortunate, and free medical care for the poor was the norm’.

Would Jesus build a wall? Would Mother Teresa? No, of course not. They would welcome the refugees and give them free universal healthcare.

Jesus was a socialist.

One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.” 골드워시, 도리도리, 바오메이, 블루위저드, 섹스드롭, 엑스터시판매, 요힘빈,

One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 텔 - KrTop "코리아탑" 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.

Teabing hobbled over. "You were rescued by a knight brandishing an Excalibur made by Acme Orthopedic.

In 2010, 70 percent of federal tax revenue was consumed by three entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security)

To be accepted by the public, transformative legislation—Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare—needed at least some level of bipartisan congressional support.

Medicare, which pays hospitals based on their costs, plus overhead and a small profit margin, for providing each service, would have paid about $825 for all three tests. Also

Medicare reimbursement code for maggots: CPT 99070.

One of the reasons why fraud controls were not properly built into the Medicare system, for example, was exactly this issue—nobody wants to say or imply that they don’t trust doctors.

The coronavirus pandemic is exactly the kind of cataclysmic event that brings about drastic changes. I think Medicare For All and UBI are now inevitable. It's either that, or complete chaos.

Many people do not even know the difference between Medicaid and Medicare and simply consider them "entitlement program," as if tax breaks and corporate subsidies aren't entitlements by another name.

Unlike the Medicare provisions, which were brought in by negotiation between the two principal parties, ‘Obamacare’ was the initiative of a single party, did not have the consent of the opposition and was concealed within 2,000 pages of legislative jargon that was never properly explained either to the public or to the members of Congress. Not surprisingly, therefore, the legislation has led to a polarization of opinion and a breakdown in the political process, each side claiming to represent the interests of the people, but neither side convinced that ‘the people’ includes those who did not vote for it.

Indeed, this massive and well-funded force is turning the party it has occupied toward ends that most Republican voters do not want, such as the privatization of Social Security, Medicare, and education.35

Shortly after Medicare was passed, Americans were told it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Actual cost? $98 billion. Americans were also told that the cost of Medicaid would be less than $1 billion in 1992. Actual cost? $17 billion.

Studies have showed that hospitals charge patients who are uninsured or self-pay 2.5 times more than they charge covered by health insurance (who are billed negotiated rates) and three times more than the amount allowed by Medicare.

I hope you're appreciating the rich irony here: hospitals and doctors are using the Medicare subsidy (Medicare is the federal agency that doles out the HITECH dollars) to buy computer systems that allow them to bill Medicare more effectively.

Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; to the person fortunate enough to own a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension, and viable public transportation doesn’t even compute. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare?

The cost spikes for the government programs that protected the elderly and the poor were even worse. Better medical care kept people alive longer, and that meant Medicare had to pay for more complicated and more expensive treatment during those prolonged lives.

Social Security and Medicare were sold to the public as insurance programs. They are not. As such, they now rely mostly on the “contributions” of younger workers and massive federal borrowing to subsidize them. Despite repeated and dire warnings about their unsustainable fiscal condition from the trustees appointed to oversee them, younger workers are compelled to continue to pay into these programs, from which they are unlikely to benefit upon their retirement and for which future generations will bear the brunt of their eventual collapse.

Compassionate conservatism recognized the success of Bill Clinton in portraying the Republicans as enemies of education, Medicare, and the environment. It was an attempt to take back the moral high ground from the Democrats (there was no need to take it back from Clinton).

These and other measures, however, seemed relatively inconsequential in 1965 compared to a Big Four that passed by the end of the session: federal aid to elementary and secondary education, Medicare and Medicaid, immigration reform, and a civil rights act to guaranteee voting rights.

Those who subscribe to the libertarian philosophy believe that the only legitimate role of government is to ensure the rule of law, guarantee social order, and provide for the national defense. That is why they have long been fervent opponents of Medicare, Medicaid for the poor, and, most recently, Obamacare. The House budget chairman, Paul Ryan, has explained that such public provision for popular needs not only violates the liberty of the taxpayers whose earnings are transferred to others, but also violates the recipients’ spiritual need to earn their own sustenance.

Their aim is to divide and conquer: pit unionized workers against nonunionized, public sector workers against nonpublic, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the middle class against the poor.

According to a 2009 Public Policy Polling survey, 39% of people in the United States believe that the United States government should stay out of Medicare (a government-run program). Ten percent of people are not certain or do not believe that Hawaii is a state, and 7% believe that Barack Obama is from France.[51]

It is a veritable revolving door of jobs between the USDA and Big Ag and Big Food. Americans should insist on the establishment of a new Department of Food run through the Department of Health and Human Services, which is paying for the consequences of harmful dietary recommendations through Medicare and Medicaid. In

whenever I got a paycheck, they took out money for Social Security and Medicare. I never bothered wondering what that meant, given that I knew I had no access to the funds. Crazy as it sounds, since I wasn’t even supposed to be working in the first place, I figured paying into the system and not benefiting from it was some kind of penance.

The twin shocks of 9/11 and the Great Recession seem mentally to have unhinged a portion of the American people and much of the political class. The following years were consumed by crazy arguments about the president’s birth certificate, death panels, and voters shouting that the government must get its hands off their government-provided Medicare.

Harvard Medical School surgery professor and recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant Dr. Atul Gawande notes that 25 percent of all Medicare spending is for the 5 percent of patients in their final year of life. Most of that money goes to treatments that are of little lifesaving benefit and often just put the person through more unnecessary suffering.

For while white conservatives use government assistance copiously--whether it be Social Security, or mortgage tax relief, low-interest federal college loans or Medicare--in their political discussions they tend to define their benefits as not being "welfare," in contrast to the somehow less noble assistance provided to their black and brown neighbors.

How Republicans think: Healthcare for peasants is too expensive. Just let the sick ones die and tell the healthy ones to have more kids. Problem solved.

When Carter finally agreed to a debate, the date was set for October 28, one week before the election, and we were delighted. The debate went well for me and may have turned on only four little words. They popped out of my mouth after Carter claimed that I had once opposed Medicare benefits for Social Security recipients. It wasn’t true and I said so: “There you go again . . .

They chose to spend money the government didn’t have,” Pastor Pete said. “They chose to let the country get into ridiculous debt. They chose to expect a lavish lifestyle, like a perfect retirement where they’d have plenty. So they demanded more and more from the government, like Social Security and Medicare, to make sure their high expectations about retirement would come true.

True, the Christian Bible is a mass of contradictions; but what could be more contradictory than the term "Christian Atheist"? If prominent leaders of the Christian faith are rejecting the past interpretation of God, how then can their followers be expected to adhere to previous tradition? With all the debates about whether or not God is dead, if he isn't he had better have MEDICARE!

The reason we have a single-payer health-care system for the elderly (Medicare) but not for children is simple: seniors vote, and children don’t. So while American children die at 55 percent higher rates than children in other advanced countries, Americans who make it to age sixty-five and qualify for Medicare then have a remaining life expectancy similar to that of our peer countries.

And that cause, hating the evil government? Such bullshit. Did anyone in the militia fly on an airliner safely, thanks to the FAA? Did they drive on roads maintained by the feds and state and city? Did they take Social Security, Medicare or ADC checks? Did they call 911 if their house caught fire or they were in a car wreck? Did they sleep more soundly at night knowing the army defended them? Of course. They all did.

That’s because both the job title and the job itself have never existed before. We used the term ‘ground-breaking’ to describe this position because that is exactly what it is.” Leonard Scott leaned forward. “The current Administration is committed to solving the greatest problems of our time—climate change, sustainability, the deficit, the impending crisis stemming from shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare, healthcare, and the problems that our nation faces as a result of an aging population. We are implementing a plan that will address all of these issues and will revolutionize the way that this country looks at retirement. Rather than continuing on in a bankrupt, broken system that meets the needs of no one, we are going to introduce American seniors to a new way of life—a holistic community that will engage them like nothing ever has before.

The government is commonly conceptualized as a business. If it is seen as a service industry, taxes can be seen as payment for services provided to the public. Those services can include protection (by the military, the criminal justice system, and regulatory agencies), adjudication of disputes (by the judiciary and other agencies), social insurance (as in Social Security and Medicare and various “safety nets”), and so on. Under

the health care industry makes Wall Street look honest. It’s a $2-trillion-a-year business with no controls and with limited auditing. On Wall Street the crooks at least have the decency to try to hide their frauds, but those people cheating Medicare don’t even bother doing that. Wall Street is only taking your life savings, but in health care they may be stealing your life. I was surprised to discover how little “care” there is in health care.

Still, the exaggerations of Johnson and other liberals at the time came to haunt them within a few years. Talk about the "healing miracle of modern medicine" and about the capacity of Medicare and Medicaid to deliver it was as Utopian as talk about "wars" against poverty or the wonders of "compensatory education." Medicare and Medicaid survived to become important—and extraordinarily expensive—entitlements. But in time they raised widespread questions about the hyperbolic claims of Johnson and the wisdom of American liberalism.

Despite America’s first world economy, despite all the technical progress and productivity increases, there were still large numbers of people living well below the poverty line. The government had forced it. Low income citizens were addicted to minimum wage, welfare and Medicare, and it was impossible to wean them off. The secret effect was the creation of a slave class. Low level healthcare, food and shelter were provided, but what Thomas saw as he drove were people living lives worse than that of the average institutionalized prisoner.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy.

As our society grew more complex, more and more of the government’s function took the form of social insurance, with each of us chipping in through our tax dollars to protect ourselves collectively—for disaster relief if our house was destroyed in a hurricane; unemployment insurance if we lost a job; Social Security and Medicare to lessen the indignities of old age; reliable electricity and phone service for those who lived in rural areas where utility companies wouldn’t otherwise make a profit; public schools and universities to make education more egalitarian.

Privatization, of course, is based on yet another myth: that government-run programs must be inefficient, and privatization accordingly must be better. In fact, as we noted in chapter 6, the transaction costs of Social Security and Medicare are much, much lower than those of private-sector firms providing comparable services. This should not come as a surprise. The objective of the private sector is to make profits—for private companies, transactions costs are a good thing; the difference between what they take in and what they pay out is what they want to maximize.31

Crane went on to join the Libertarian Party, which had been summoned into being in a Denver living room in December 1971. Its founders sought a world in which liberty was preserved by the total absence of government coercion in any form. That entailed the end of public education, Social Security, Medicare, the U.S. Postal Service, minimum wage laws, prohibitions against child labor, foreign aid, the Environmental Protection Agency, prosecution for drug use or voluntary prostitution—and, in time, the end of taxes and government regulations of any kind.46 And those were just the marquee targets.

The nuclear thing is harder to figure. The United States, according to a 1998 study by the Brookings Institution, spent nearly eight trillion in today’s dollars on nukes in the last half of the twentieth century, which represents something like a third of our total military spending in the Cold War. Just the nuke budget was more than that half-century’s federal spending on Medicare, education, social services, disaster relief, scientific research (of the non-nuclear stripe), environmental protection, food safety inspectors, highway maintenance, cops, prosecutors, judges, and prisons … combined.

In 1963 activists demanding racial justice forced President Kennedy to come out for civil rights legislation. Within a year and a half of Kennedy's assassination in November 1963—a shocking act that intensified the pressures for change—reformers in Congress managed to enact a spate of liberal legislation, including a "war on poverty," federal aid to education, Medicare for the aged, Medicaid for the poor, reform of immigration law, creation of the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and two historic civil rights laws that would have seemed almost unimaginable a few years earlier.

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon lent their support to such interventionist measures as Medicare and the Environmental Protection Agency. Eisenhower pushed for the greatest public works project in the history of the United States—the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which linked the nation together with four-lane (and occasionally six-lane) interstate highways covering forty thousand miles. The GOP also backed large expansion of federally supported higher education. And to many Republicans at the time, a marginal income tax rate of more than 70 percent on top incomes was not repugnant.

So far we have focused on the economic agenda of the socialists, yet any conversation with them, or visit to a socialist conference, shows that the vision of these activists is not merely economic. They are equally energized, if not more so, by cultural issues. This is especially true of socialists on campus. They are not in the workforce, so economic issues are distant to them. They are young and healthy—what do they care about retirement plans or Medicare for All? But they do care about their moral self-image, and they also care about their race, their gender and their sex organs. These are the identity socialists.

Betty, whom I recently discovered sorting through the contents of my suitcase, turns on the overhead light in my room, wrinkles her brow, and peers in like a camp counselor on an inspection tour, as if she suspects I might be entertaining someone who has paddled in from across the lake. She must keep an eye out. I am a schemer. There are things going on behind her back, plans afoot, she fears. She has no intention of cooperating with any of them. When the phone rings, she listens to every word, not sure if she can trust me with her independence. I don’t blame her. I am an unlikely guardian. A month ago I thought the Medicare doughnut hole was a breakfast special for seniors. I am a care inflictor. She’s

It’s a rather beautiful discovery: in a world where so many people seem to hold extreme views with strident certainty, you can deflate somebody’s overconfidence and moderate their politics simply by asking them to explain the details. Next time you’re in a politically heated argument, try asking your interlocutor not to justify herself, but simply to explain the policy in question. She wants to introduce a universal basic income, or a flat tax, or a points-based immigration system, or Medicare for all. OK, that’s interesting. So what exactly does she mean by that? She may learn something as she tries to explain. So may you. And you may both find that you understand a little less, and agree a little more, than you had assumed.

Liberals: Liberty-loving liberals founded our country and enshrined its freedoms. Dedicated, fair-minded liberals ended slavery and brought women the vote. Hardworking liberals fought the goon squads and won workers’ rights: the eight-hour day, the weekend, health plans, and pensions. Courageous liberals risked their lives to win civil rights. Caring liberals have made the vulnerable elderly secure with Social Security and healthy with Medicare. Forward-looking liberals have extended education to everyone. Liberals who love the land have been preserving our environment so you can enjoy it. Nobody loves liberty and life more than a liberal. When conservatives say you’re on your own, we liberals know we’re all in this together. “Liberal

What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party? I'll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water act. What did conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things, everyone. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.

Consider almost any public issue. Today’s Democratic Party and its legislators, with a few notable individual exceptions, is well to the right of counterparts from the New Deal and Great Society eras. In the time of Lyndon Johnson, the average Democrat in Congress was for single-payer national health insurance. In 1971, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, for universal, public, tax-supported, high-quality day care and prekindergarten. Nixon vetoed the bill in 1972, but even Nixon was for a guaranteed annual income, and his version of health reform, “play or pay,” in which employers would have to provide good health insurance or pay a tax to purchase it, was well to the left of either Bill or Hillary Clinton’s version, or Barack Obama’s. The Medicare and Medicaid laws of 1965 were not byzantine mash-ups of public and private like Obamacare. They were public. Infrastructure investments were also public. There was no bipartisan drive for either privatization or deregulation. The late 1960s and early 1970s (with Nixon in the White House!) were the heyday of landmark health, safety, environmental, and financial regulation. To name just three out of several dozen, Nixon signed the 1970 Clean Air Act, the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the 1973 Consumer Product Safety Act. Why did Democrats move toward the center and Republicans to the far right? Several things occurred. Money became more important in politics. The Democratic Leadership Council, formed by business-friendly and Southern Democrats after Walter Mondale’s epic 1984 defeat, believed that in order to be more competitive electorally, Democrats had to be more centrist on both economic and social issues.

Well, this was predictable. House Republicans last week acceded to an extension of the Export-Import Bank for at least the next nine months. The Export-Import Bank is far from the worst example of government-business cronyism. I just completed a history of American political corruption and actually had to leave Ex-Im on the cutting room floor. Its cronies are pikers compared with the corporate moguls that take advantage of tax preferences like the G.E. and Apple loopholes. They also cannot hold a candle to the American Medical Association, which is basically free to write the reimbursement rates for Medicare Part B. And nothing compares to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 1991-2008. The two mortgage giants kept the entire D.C. political class bent over a barrel for almost 20 years as its top executives reaped enormous bonuses while putting the broader economy at risk.

But voters who quite liked the new system gave Democrats such a strong majority in Congress that Johnson and the Democrats were able to pass eighty-four new laws to put the Great Society into place. They cemented civil rights with the 1965 Voting Rights Act protecting minority voting, created jobs in Appalachia, and established job-training and community-development programs. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 gave federal aid to public schools and established the Head Start program to provide comprehensive early education for low-income children. The Higher Education Act of 1965 increased federal investment in universities and provided scholarships and low-interest loans to students. The Social Security Amendments of 1965 created Medicare, which provided health insurance for Americans over age sixty-five, and Medicaid, which helped cover health care costs for those with limited incomes. Congress advanced the war on poverty by increasing welfare payments and subsidizing rent for low-income families.

la práctica de medicar vigorosamente la fiebre es generalizada entre los médicos e incluso demandada por los pacientes debido al alivio sintomático que provee dicha supresión farmacológica. Esta aversión profesional a permitir que las fiebres sigan su curso se debe a la posibilidad (pero muy baja probabilidad) de dañar el sistema nervioso central (SNC) en caso de convulsiones incontroladas inducidas por fiebre. Sin embargo, estadísticamente, la susceptibilidad a las convulsiones febriles entre los adultos no epilépticos es extremadamente rara. Estudios epidemiológicos exhaustivos y bastante sólidos sitúan el riesgo de convulsiones febriles en la población infantil en torno al 0,6%, con una incidencia que fluctúa entre  3,5/1000 en los países árabes y 17,4 / 1000 en las zonas rurales de Estados Unidos (14-16). El riesgo de episodios convulsivos gravita hacia niños de 6 meses a 5 años y se desencadena por temperaturas que superan el umbral de 38,3ºC, todo lo cual hace que el riesgo en la población adulta sea extremadamente bajo (17).

But then something unexpected happened. Donald Trump, a real estate mogul and television celebrity who did not need the Koch donor network’s money to run, who seemed to have little grasp of the goals of this movement, entered the race. More than that, to get ahead, Trump was able to successfully mock the candidates they had already cowed as “puppets.” And he offered a different economic vision. He loved capitalism, to be sure, but he was not a libertarian by any stretch. Like Bill Clinton before him, he claimed to feel his audience’s pain. He promised to stanch it with curbs on the very agenda the party’s front-runners were promoting: no more free-trade deals that shuttered American factories, no cuts to Social Security or Medicare, and no more penny-pinching while the nation’s infrastructure crumbled. He went so far as to pledge to build a costly wall to stop immigrants from coming to take the jobs U.S. companies offered them because they could hire desperate, rightless workers for less. He said and did a lot more, too, much that was ugly and incendiary. And in November, he shocked the world by winning the Electoral College vote.

THE BUCCAL CELL SMEAR TEST (EXATest) Using cells gently scraped from an area in the mouth between the bottom teeth and the back of the tongue provides an accurate means of measuring the amount of magnesium in the cells of the body. Measuring cellular magnesium in this way indicates the amount of magnesium in heart and muscle cells, the two major body tissues affected by magnesium deficiency. The buccal cell smear test can be used to sample many things in cells; however, IntraCellular Diagnostics has developed a testing procedure called EXATest specifically to identify the amounts of certain minerals in the cell. The company sends sampling kits to your doctor’s office, where a simple procedure, which takes about 60 seconds, is performed. Your doctor uses a wooden spatula to scrape off superficial layers of cells under your tongue. The scrapings are carefully placed on a microscope slide and sent back to the lab. A special electron microscope then measures the amount of magnesium and other minerals in the sample on the slide. The results are sent back to your doctor. The test is expensive but may be covered by Medicare and insurance.

The Libertarian Party platform on which Koch ran in 1980 was unambiguous. It included the following: • We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs. • We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services. . . . • We favor the repeal of the . . . Social Security system. . . . • We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes. • We support the eventual repeal of all taxation. • As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately. • We support repeal of all . . . minimum wage laws. . . . • Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended. . . . • We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency. . . . • We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system. . . . • We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration. . . . • We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and “aid to the poor” programs.44 The list went on from there, including ending government oversight of abusive banking practices by ending all usury laws; privatizing our airports, the FAA, Amtrak, and all of our rivers; and shutting down the Post Office.

Go away.” I stick my elbow in his ribs and force him to step back. “Sit on the couch and keep your hands to yourself,” I instruct, then follow him to the sofa and grab my Dating and Sex for Dummies books off the coffee table and shove them into my sock drawer while he laughs. “You’re making me miss my show,” I gripe as I toss things into the suitcase. “Your show? You sound like you’re eighty.” He glances at the TV behind me then back to me. “Murder on Mason Lane,” he says. “It was the neighbor. She was committing Medicare fraud using the victim’s deceased wife’s information. He caught on so she killed him.” I gasp. “You spoiler! You spoiling spoiler who spoils!” Then I shrug. “This is a new episode. You don’t even know that. It’s the daughter. She killed him. I’ve had her pegged since the first commercial break.” “You’re cute.” “Just you wait,” I tell him, very satisfied with myself. I’m really good at guessing whodunnit. “Sorry, you murder nerd, I worked on this case two years ago. It’s the neighbor.” “Really?” I drop my makeup bag into the suitcase and check to see if he’s teasing me. “I swear. I’ll tell you all the good shit the show left out once we’re on the plane.” I survey Boyd with interest. I do have a lot of questions. “I thought you were in cyber crimes, not murder.” “Murder isn’t a department,” he replies, shaking his head at me. “You know what I mean.” “Most crimes have a cyber component to them these days. There’s always a cyber trail.” Shit, that’s hot.

The phone rang. It was a familiar voice. It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do. In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk." O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in. "Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, to do the things we've always talked about." The jocular tone was gone. This was a serious discussion. They digressed into some things they'd "always talked about," especially reforming Medicare and Social Security. For Paul and Alan, the possibility of such bold reinventions bordered on fantasy, but fantasy made real. "We have an extraordinary opportunity," Alan said. Paul noticed that he seemed oddly anxious. "Paul, your presence will be an enormous asset in the creation of sensible policy." Sensible policy. This was akin to prayer from Greenspan. O'Neill, not expecting such conviction from his old friend, said little. After a while, he just thanked Alan. He said he always respected his counsel. He said he was thinking hard about it, and he'd call as soon as he decided what to do. The receiver returned to its cradle. He thought about Greenspan. They were young men together in the capital. Alan stayed, became the most noteworthy Federal Reserve Bank chairman in modern history and, arguably the most powerful public official of the past two decades. O'Neill left, led a corporate army, made a fortune, and learned lessons - about how to think and act, about the importance of outcomes - that you can't ever learn in a government. But, he supposed, he'd missed some things. There were always trade-offs. Talking to Alan reminded him of that. Alan and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, White House correspondent for NBC news, lived a fine life. They weren't wealthy like Paul and Nancy. But Alan led a life of highest purpose, a life guided by inquiry. Paul O'Neill picked up the telephone receiver, punched the keypad. "It's me," he said, always his opening. He started going into the details of his trip to New York from Washington, but he's not much of a phone talker - Nancy knew that - and the small talk trailed off. "I think I'm going to have to do this." She was quiet. "You know what I think," she said. She knew him too well, maybe. How bullheaded he can be, once he decides what's right. How he had loved these last few years as a sovereign, his own man. How badly he was suited to politics, as it was being played. And then there was that other problem: she'd almost always been right about what was best for him. "Whatever, Paul. I'm behind you. If you don't do this, I guess you'll always regret it." But it was clearly about what he wanted, what he needed. Paul thanked her. Though somehow a thank-you didn't seem appropriate. And then he realized she was crying.

It has become fashionable in some no-win Negro circles to decry the white liberal as the main enemy (his hypocrisy is what sustains racism); by virtue of this reverse recitation of the reactionary's litany (liberalism leads to socialism, which leads to communism), the Negro is left in majestic isolation, except for a tiny band of fervent white initiates. But the objective fact is that Eastland and Goldwater are the main enemies--they and the opponents of civil rights, of the war on poverty, of medicare, of social security, of federal aid to education, of unions, and so forth.

The second bomber went after a Tennessee Republican state senator who’d voted down the Medicare expansion, despite his campaign promise to make sure that “every Tennessean who wants insurance will get insurance.

Medicare supplement plans, just like Medicare Parts A & B, are good anywhere in the 50 US states and possessions. The plans I recommend also have a $50,000 lifetime benefit for emergency treatment in foreign countries.

people born in Cuba represented less than 1% of the U.S. population but committed 41% of Medicare fraud.

When your asset counts as an investment, it’s not subject to self-employment (Medicare and Social Security) taxes of 15.3 percent, which comes on top of ordinary income taxes.

All I'm doing is I'm saying what AOC said when she was running for office... and people are going nuts about it.

Thanks in part to Trump's plan, many huge multi-national corporations pay zero dollars in federal taxes. Americans pay more for their Amazon prime subscription and Amazon pays in federal taxes. If you think that is right, vote for Trump. If you think corporations should pay their fair share, vote for a Democrat. Trump promised to protect Medicare, but he wants to pay for his corporate tax cut with hundreds of billions of dollars in custom Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

during LBJ’s Great Society campaign, when a universal single-payer program partially funded by payroll tax revenue was introduced for seniors (Medicare) and a not-so-comprehensive program based on a combination of federal and state funding was set up for the poor (Medicaid). During the 1970s and early 1980s, this patchwork system functioned well enough, with roughly 80 percent of Americans covered through either their jobs or one of these two programs. Meanwhile, defenders of the status quo could point to the many innovations brought to market by the for-profit medical industry, from MRIs to lifesaving drugs.

As an investor, you pay lower capital gains taxes on any property sale profits. As a dealer, you pay higher ordinary income tax rates plus self-employment taxes (Social Security and Medicare). If you do get stuck in this dealer category, you’ll probably be eligible for the 20 percent deduction, so check with your tax preparer.

The question is, if the United States wants to achieve more equality in healthcare, can it jump from the many tiers created by Medicine Inc. toward a more equitable single-tier system like Medicare for All?

I used to buy everything,” Gloria said, “and then one day I found out that I could simply take what I wanted. It’s much better than buying. They run a little bus once a week to the mall and we get to shop around for an hour or two and then the bus brings us back here. It’s very pleasant.” “That’s stealing,” Lula said. “Not stealing,” Gloria said. “It’s shoplifting, and if you’re a senior or destitute, it falls into the RAM program. Redistribution of Available Merchandise. It supplements Social Security and Medicare. It’s an entitlement program.” “I never heard of that program,” Lula said, “but I know a lot of people who participate. Most of them are in jail.

primarily Social Security and Medicare.

What American Healthcare Can Learn from Italy: Three Lessons It’s easy. First, learn to live like Italians. Eat their famous Mediterranean diet, drink alcohol regularly but in moderation, use feet instead of cars, stop packing pistols and dropping drugs. Second, flatten out the class structure. Shrink the gap between high and low incomes, raise pensions and minimum wages to subsistence level, fix the tax structure to favor the ninety-nine percent. And why not redistribute lifestyle too? Give working stiffs the same freedom to have kids (maternity leave), convalesce (sick leave), and relax (proper vacations) as the rich. Finally, give everybody access to health care. Not just insurance, but actual doctors, medications, and hospitals. As I write, the future of the Affordable Care Act is uncertain, but surely the country will not fall into the abyss that came before. Once they’ve had a taste of what it’s like not to be one heart attack away from bankruptcy, Americans won’t turn back the clock. Even what is lately being called Medicare for All, considered to be on the fringe left a decade ago and slammed as “socialized medicine,” is now supported by a majority of Americans, according to some polls. In practice, there’s little hope for Italian lessons one and two—the United States is making only baby steps toward improving its lifestyle, and its income inequality is worse every year. But the third lesson is more feasible. Like Italy, we can provide universal access to treatment and medications with minimal point-of-service payments and with prices kept down by government negotiation. Financial arrangements could be single-payer like Medicare or use private insurance companies as intermediaries like Switzerland, without copying the full Italian model of doctors on government salaries. Despite the death by a thousand cuts currently being inflicted on the Affordable Care Act, I am convinced that Americans will no longer stand for leaving vast numbers of the population uninsured, or denying medical coverage to people whose only sin is to be sick. The health care genie can’t be put back in the bottle.

Yes, PPO plans often offer some of these benefits as well, but HMOs expand the benefits with money that would normally be used for larger networks.

These efforts bore fruit during LBJ’s Great Society campaign, when a universal single-payer program partially funded by payroll tax revenue was introduced for seniors (Medicare) and a not-so-comprehensive program based on a combination of federal and state funding was set up for the poor (Medicaid).

It also ignored the fact that all the great social welfare advances in American history, including Social Security and Medicare, had started off incomplete and had been built upon gradually, over time. By preemptively spinning what could be a monumental, if imperfect, victory into a bitter defeat, the criticism contributed to a potential long-term demoralization of Democratic voters—otherwise known as the “What’s the point of voting if nothing ever changes?” syndrome—making it even harder for us to win elections and move progressive legislation forward in the future.