Posted by James O'Rourke on May 12, 2009
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
Published: May 12, 2009
WASHINGTON — The financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security has significantly worsened, as the bad economy and mounting job losses have pushed both programs years closer to insolvency, according to a grim report issued Tuesday by the Obama administration.
The new projection, in an annual report from the programs’ trustees, says that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2017, just a year after President Obama would leave office if re-elected to a second term. Last year the trustees said they expected the fund to last until 2019.
The trustees also said that Social Security’s reserves now face depletion in 2037, four years sooner than the previous projection of 2041. The projections assume that there are no changes in current benefits, policies and tax rates.
The two programs, which serve more than 50 million people, are caught in a difficult dynamic linked largely to the recession: Millions fewer people are working and paying the taxes that support the programs; yet health care costs are continuing to soar, millions of baby boomers have begun receiving Social Security retirement benefits, and Americans are living longer.
Medicare expenses are now expected to surpass Social Security’s in 2028.
The report comes a day after President Obama embraced a pledge from health-care providers to slow the increase in their costs over the coming decade. The new projections will add to the urgency of controlling those costs.
The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said in a statement on Tuesday that the new projections underscored the need for a bipartisan approach to shoring up the two programs, through what he said would be “difficult but achievable changes.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by James O'Rourke on May 12, 2009
By JACKIE CALMES
Published: May 11, 2009
WASHINGTON — Struggling to find ways to pay for the president’s signature health care overhaul, the administration on Monday proposed to raise nearly $60 billion more over 10 years mostly from tightening rules for inheritance taxes affecting the wealthiest estates.
The Treasury Department’s proposals, and several others affecting taxation of life insurance and some other financial products, are intended to fill a gap that has opened up in President Obama’s health care plans.
Revised estimates show that his main idea for financing the initiative — a 28 percent limit on deductions for Americans in the top two tax brackets — would raise $266.7 billion over a decade, not $318 billion as he had projected in his overall budget blueprint last February. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by James O'Rourke on May 12, 2009
Center for American Progress
Public Opinion
By Ruy Teixeira | May 11, 2009
There’s no doubt about it: President Barack Obama is quite popular with the American public. As a recent report from Gallup notes: “Nearly all major demographic categories of Americans are pleased with his job performance.” As just one example of this broad support, Obama receives 76 percent approval among those in households with less than $24,000 in income, 62 percent approval in households from $24,000 to $59,999, 57 percent approval in households from $60,000 to $89,999 and 61 percent approval in household with over $90,000 in income.
This approval extends to Obama’s ambitious plans for the country as he moves into his second hundred days. In a late April NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the public backed all five Obama proposals mentioned by the survey: 76 percent approved of making it easier for schools to dismiss poorly performing teachers; 68 percent approved of spending $120 billion over the next decade to develop clean energy technology; 62 percent approved of talking directly to the Iranian government; 58 percent approved of charging a fee to companies that emit greenhouse gases and using that money to provide middle class tax cuts; and 56 percent approved of using government funds to expand health care coverage and raising taxes on the wealthy to help provide that coverage.
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Posted by James O'Rourke on May 12, 2009
Dear MoveOn member,
Last week Republicans on Capitol Hill held a strategy summit on how to defeat key parts of the president’s health care plan.
At one point, Republican pollster Frank Luntz declared, “You’re not going to get what you want, but you can kill what they’re trying to do.”1
Luntz wrote a confidential memo that laid out the Republican strategy: Pretend to support reform. Mislead Americans about the heart of Obama’s plan, the public health insurance option. Scare enough people to doom real reform.
Since most people don’t know much about the public health care option, these lies could take root if we don’t fight back.
5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OBAMA’S PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE OPTION
The choice of a public health insurance plan is crucial to real health care reform. But right now, it’s being smeared by conservatives and insurance-industry front groups. Here’s what you really need to know:
1. Choice, choice, choice. If the public health insurance option passes, Americans will be able to choose between their current insurance and a high-quality, government-run plan similar to Medicare. If you like your current care, you can keep it. If you don’t—or don’t have any—you can get the public insurance plan.2
2. It will be high-quality coverage with a choice of doctors. Government-run plans have a track record of innovating to improve quality, because they’re not just focused on short-term profits. And if you choose the public plan, you’ll still get to choose your doctor and hospital.3 Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by James O'Rourke on May 12, 2009
| No Social Security cost-of-living increase next year means higher costs for some beneficiaries and states
By: Patricia Barry | Source: AARP Bulletin Today | May 7, 2009
For the first time in 35 years, older Americans will receive no cost-of-living increases (COLA) in their Social Security checks in 2010 according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. The forecast is based on expected low inflation, in contrast to 2009 when the COLA added 5.8 percent to Social Security benefits.
Next year’s zero COLA is bad news enough for many retirees living on fixed incomes during a recession. But millions of them also face much higher Medicare Part B premiums next year.
Under an obscure “hold-harmless” provision of federal law, basic Part B premiums in any year cannot rise higher than that year’s COLA. So a zero COLA means that the basic premium (currently $96.40 a month) must stay the same. “The intent of the policy is to protect the amount of the Social Security payment from being reduced by an increase in premium costs,” says Peter Ashkenaz, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
The hold-harmless policy gives this protection to the majority of people enrolled in Medicare Part B who also receive Social Security, Railroad Retirement or Civil Service retiree benefits. Read the rest of this entry »
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