I suspect you are right.. given how the banks tanked, any president would have had to react. Certainly FDR did. The question is how did we get to that point? Credit default swaps and derivatives… and your US Treasury just bought 40 billion of them.. that’s what is underpinning your Medicare and SS Fund… crap real estate loans, That should make ya feel secure. And what did we get out of it? The banks are larger than before the meltdown, have asserted control over even more assets, and the “remedy” of Dodd Frank is so overwhelming that it is driving out any regional banks and I doubt you will see the formation of any new ones. It will take the resources of Chase, B of A, Wells Fargo and the thousands of lawyers to wade through it. It has put local and regional banks in deep freeze.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-19/big-banks-now-even-too-bigger-to-fail

actually, the ACA has already closed that donut hole. I’m a senior , on Medicare, and the most I pay for a prescription is $3.30. Sometimes less, sometimes nothing at all. Y’all wanna take that away, Kman? Really?

The pharmaceutical companies are paying for it. Ever notice the prices they charge in other countries vs. what they charge here for the same stuff? They stick it to our seniors because the govt (mainly Repub legislators) lets them get away with it. The ACA begins to correct that.

Kman…deep end…so sorry..but you are full of it this morning. I have one drug that I take that is lined with gold, actually costs $936/mo. A (yes I blame Bif Pharma for that. I know that it doesn’t cost but pennies to make). And that’s just one drug out of a few that I take. I would not be able to afford them if you take it away. You have no better plan for it than…”I don’t wanna pay”. Well..too effing bad.

“The same goes Social Security and other supposedly self-sustaining entitlement programs”

As I and others have said ad infinitum, SS is easily funded by raising the tax level from the current 110,000 to somewhere north of 175,000.

Medicare is a different story, but by reining in costs, getting everyone into the healthcare pool (ACA),and negotiating drug prices a lot of progress can be made. What doesn’t help at all is whining about “I hate govt”, “I don’t wanna pay for anybody else” and “its all a Ponzi scheme”.

SS has paid every check its put out for 75 years. Medicare has helped more seniors in its 40 years than any other program. They’re programs that need support and improvement, not destruction.

Yes, I meant raising deductions, Jan. Thanks for clarifying.

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>>As I [dobro] and others have said ad infinitum, SS is easily funded by raising the tax level from the current 110,000 to somewhere north of 175,000.

–I dunno, dobro. Ad infinitum is an awfully long time. But yes, you may have been saying that all along. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple . . .

See, raising the SS taxable base amount is essentially the same thing as the “means test” I laid out as one of the options for Medicare. It’s just that you’re putting the test at the front end (the contributions end) instead of the back.

When you raise the SS tax base to a level as high as what you’ve suggested, you are making the system solvent, but at the same time you are virtually guaranteeing that the $175k/yr worker will not receive back in SS benefits as much as he/she pays out in deductions. Which means that this person will be subsidizing other folks. But that’s not the way SS was designed to work at all.

When the SS program was started, it was sold to the public as if it were a government-run pension plan: You pay in now, we keep the money for you at interest, you get it back later. More or less.

And that’s the only way Social Security could have been sold to the American people, in fact. Because otherwise, it would have smacked too strongly of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Aka wealth transfer. Aka [gasp!] socialism.

So that’s the way the system was designed, and that’s why the base rate was initially capped where it was, so people wouldn’t be paying in too much more (or less) than what they could expect to get back out. The problem is that for a long time now, people have been getting back more than they put in, and that has led to an imbalance.

Your solution (raising the basis amount considerably) would do more than just rectify the imbalance of payments to receipts. It would tip the scale in the other direction. So, in effect, you’d now be saying to some people: We’re going to ask you to pay in much more than you can ever be expected to get back out.

OK, fine. But don’t be surprised if you get some resistance to that, because it’s going to look to a lot of folks like another “wealth transfer” scheme. –Which it is, basically. And we know how wealthy people (and poor but naive Republicans) feel about wealth transfer, don’t we?

Now I admit that one of my options for means testing (for Medicare) is the same thing: A wealth transfer scheme. And I also understand that it would probably be met with opposition for the same reason.

See why the problem is so complicated?

Medicare for all would change the cost/payout ratio for seniors substantially while increasing the level of care and decreasing individual costs substantially.

hey! maybe nikita threw that shoe at w from the UN.

Didn’t somebody say it was the most popular documentary ever made? But nobody around here has seen it? Suspicious.

I don’t want the insurance policy. Simple enough. Instead, I want the 15% to invest. If it was an insurance policy…. I would sure like to see the loss reserves.. would your health, casualty, fire, auto insurance be allowed to operate if the paid every claim with borrowed money? How long could they operate if every premium payment was spent the minute they got it and all they could do is borrow to pay off claims?

Dobro… the free market thing? Importing drugs from countries whose government negotiate national pricing? Ohhhhhh this one is going to hurt… better sit down..! Yes indeed….

http://washingtonexaminer.com/emails-reveal-secret-obamacare-deal-with-drug-cos/article/1322331#.UFnCf6RU2i0

http://blog.independent.org/2012/06/18/obamacare-cronyism-makes-bad-medicine/

Nah miws… big pharma doesn’t unionize… they have critical worker shortages… wages and benefits packages are great. Rare skills, in high demand…makes for great employment.

It’s a packaging company TanDL… assembly line production workers…. good try. But damn the wages are low… especially for NY.

Big Pharma in the USA is union free.. they are professional class workers … it’s six figure salary country. Critical skills, in short supply, don’t need union protections. I just watched a negotiation for a 20K raise… not a blink… not a moment hesitation. In fact, they are raiding each other like Vikings on the Normandy coast. Picked at random… no job shortages in this field… got a MS in Biology? Chemistry, Statistics?… PhD?

http://www.quintiles.com/careers/