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Showing posts with label Lyndon Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lyndon Johnson. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

50 Years of Dysfunction: The Failures of Medicare and Medicaid

Fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation creating the nation’s two largest federal health entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid.
Medicare was created as a social insurance program for seniors and those with disabilities. It is financed primarily by payroll taxes collected during a recipients working life, and secondarily by personal and business income taxes.
Medicaid was designed as a welfare program to provide health care services to vulnerable low income groups. Medicaid is jointly financed by federal and state governments.
>>> On Thursday, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute are hosting an event with leading experts to reflect on the past 50 years and look ahead to the next. Details here.
Unfortunately at the age of 50, both Medicare and Medicaid continue to suffer from problems inherent to their structure and organization.
For example both programs:
  • Limit choice
  • Are overly bureaucratic and slow to change
  • Suffer from crucial gaps in coverage and inefficient pricing
  • Are plagued with losses through waste, fraud and abuse
Medicare is the largest purchaser of health care in the nation, covering roughly 55 million persons.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates Medicare’s total annual cost at $615 billion in 2015 and it is scheduled to exceed $1 trillion by 2023.
In other words, over the next 75 years American seniors are expecting tens of trillions of dollars of Medicare benefits that are not paid for. Today, working taxpayers, mostly through business and personal income taxes, fund an estimated 86 percent of the program’s annual cost.
For Medicaid, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) Office of the Actuary estimates that Medicaid’s total (federal and state combined) spending is expected to reach $529 billion in 2015, with 68.9 million enrollees.
Fifty years later, in their July 22, 2015 memo to Senate Budget Committee staff Medicare’s Office of the Actuary reports that Medicare’s debt – the program’s long-term unfunded liability- ranges from $27.9 to $36.8 trillion.
Whether it’s the lower or higher debt number, this year’s estimates are worse than last year’s by more than a $1 trillion.
For Medicaid, cost and enrollment is expected to continue to grow, in particular due to the expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act.
By 2023, total Medicaid spending is projected to climb to $835 billion and enrollment will near 80 million.
The President’s answer is to cut Medicare payments to medical professionals and institutions.
Under Obamacare, the Medicare Trustees warn,
“By 2040, approximately half of hospitals, 70 percent of skilled nursing facilities and 90 percent of home health agencies would have negative total facility margins, ” adding that this creates the “possibility of access and quality of care issues for Medicare beneficiaries.”
For Medicaid, access and quality of care is already a top concern.
A recent CDC study found that only 68.9 percent of physicians would accept new Medicaid patients.
For the next 50 years, Congress could initiate transformative changes through a defined contribution ( “premium support”) financing in both programs, giving patients direct control over the flow of health care dollars and compelling health plans and providers to compete for patients’ dollars on a level playing field.
Intense competition among health plans and providers would stimulate innovation in benefit design and care delivery, improve patient outcomes and enhance patient satisfaction, and save serious money for both seniors and taxpayers alike.
Via: The Daily Signal
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Labels: 50 years, fraud, Heritage Foundation, Lyndon Johnson, Medicaid, Medicare

Monday, June 22, 2015

Charlie Daniels on Socialism: Do You Think This Can't Happen in America? by Charlie Daniels

The government of the United States of America was not formed and instituted for despots to rule over, spy on, dictate to, nor in any other way dominate its citizens. Rather, it was formed to protect and serve. It was created to patrol the borders, control the flow of immigrants and international commerce, insure the civil rights of its citizens and build and maintain infrastructure to keep the wheels of progress turning.
In the days since the inception of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, much of America has come to perceive the federal government as an entity for all seasons, whose purview includes lifelong entitlements, health care and the guarantor of cradle-to-grave security.
In the broader sense, this is known as socialism. It has been tried in many corners of the world, and it has miserably failed in all of them. The reason being is that it discourages individual initiative, encourages sloth, laziness and total dependence on an outside source.
But there are other even more sinister fruits of socialism.
When a society becomes so dependent on government for every need, they begin to incrementally give up their freedom, to turn over more and more responsibility for their lives to their benevolent uncle and by the time they realize what is happening, every facet of their lives are observed, controlled and basically dominated by a government who has granted themselves a license to do anything they dang well please.
They can confiscate your land, claiming that it is needed for the greater good or put you in jail without any representation or outside contact. Has anybody heard anything from the guy the government arrested who supposedly produced the video they said started the boondoggle in Benghazi?
Did you know that there are pieces being put in place, having already begun with The Food Protection Act, that give the government the power to prevent you from planting a garden or keeping food animals because the pollination could "endanger the food chain”?
Via: CNS News
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Labels: Charlie Daniels, Food Protection Act, Great Society, Lyndon Johnson

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Obama: Bloated Social Welfare Programs Are What Makes America A “Great Country”…



President Obama on Wednesday marked the 50th anniversary of former President Lyndon Baines Johnson's "war on poverty" address by arguing government programs on education, healthcare and jobs have had a positive impact on the nation.
"These endeavors didn’t just make us a better country. They reaffirmed that we are a great country," Obama said in a statement. "They lived up to our best hopes as a people who value the dignity and potential of every human being."
Obama credited programs like Social Security, Medicare and the Earned Income Tax Credit with lifting millions of people from poverty and preventing millions more from experiencing economic distress.
But the president also declared that the nation's work to provide a safety net is "far from over," and called on lawmakers to "redouble" efforts on the economy through an expansion of entitlement programs, government initiatives and raising the minimum wage.
"For all that has changed in the 50 years since President Johnson dedicated us to this economic and moral mission, one constant of our character has not: we are one nation and one people, and we rise or fall together," Obama said.
The anniversary of Johnson's speech dovetails with a renewed emphasis from the White House on the president's economic agenda ahead of this month's State of the Union address.
On Tuesday, the president pleaded with Congress to pass legislation that would restore emergency unemployment benefits to 1.3 million people during a speech at the White House. The measure, aided partially after the president personally lobbied swing Republicans in a series of phone calls, passed a crucial test vote in the Senate on Tuesday, although a steep climb remains for final passage.
The White House also announced Wednesday that the president would designate five "Promise Zones" — persistently impoverished communities that the government would help through tax incentives, housing assistance and education grants.
Via: The Hill

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Labels: 1965, Lyndon Johnson, Poverty, President Obama
Location: Washington, DC, USA

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Senator Mike Lee Critiques the War on Poverty

If you haven’t read Utah Senator Mike Lee’s remarks [Bring Them In] at the Heritage Foundation’s Anti-Poverty Forum you really owe it to yourself to do so. It is probably the most succinct conservative critique of modern government anti-poverty programs in recent decades.
When President Lyndon Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty” in his 1964 State of the Union address it represented, arguably, the high water mark for the acceptance on liberal ideology in America. The essence of the speech was a singleminded devotion to the “the perfectability of man”: the notion that perfection can be achieved on Earth through the efforts of man, or in the case, the federal government. Never mind that some famous guy, his name escapes me at the moment, warned us all that the poor will always be with us.
As is so often the case, federal intervention becomes a self-licking ice cream cone where the resources earmarked for the eradication of poverty do little more than sustain the bureaucracy dedicated to eradicating poverty. And for good reason, if poverty ends so do the jobs associated with its eradication.
The outcomes have been dramatic and had they not been visited upon those at the margins of society would have resulted in long prison sentences for all involved. Instead of declaring a war on poverty, by Johnson’s actions he actually began the institutionalization of poverty and hopelessness as a lifestyle.
Via: Red State
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Labels: Heritage Foundation, Lyndon Johnson, Mike Lee, Utah
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

$1.1T: CMS Sets Record for Annual Spending by a Federal Agency

Marilyn Tavenner(CNSNews.com) - The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the federal government’s major health-care programs as well as the Obamacare insurance exchange, spent $1,113,178,000,000 in fiscal 2013, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for September, which was released last week.
That sets a record for the most money ever spent by a federal agency or department in a single year.
It also means CMS spent more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the entire federal government spent in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation creating the Medicaid and Medicare programs.
In 1965, the entire federal government spent $118,228,000,000 in 1965 dollars, according to the Office of Management and Budget. That converts to $878,824,380,000 in 2013 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.
In 2010, CMS became the first federal agency to spend more than a trillion dollars, when it spent $1,035,783,000,000. In 2011, CMS spent $1,095,406,000,000; in 2012, it spent $1,052,799,000,000; and, in 2013, it spent a record $1,113,178,000,000.
Via: CNS News
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Labels: CNS, Lyndon Johnson, Medicaid, Medicare, Treasury

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Obama’s Thursday Night Secret About Jobs


When President Barack Obama takes the stage Thursday night at the Democratic convention, he’ll probably know a secret about the economy that you don’t: the contents of Friday’s employment report. But don’t expect easy clues in his big speech.
ZUMAPRESS.com
Friday’s jobs report, one of only three before the Nov. 6 election, could prove more influential in shaping perceptions about the economy than anything Mr. Obama says in Charlotte when he accepts his party’s nomination. Payroll numbers have been choppy throughout the year, and Friday’s data — released at 8:30 am Eastern time — might help clarify recent trends. (The report will also tell us whether the unemployment rate changed from July’s 8.3% and it could help the Federal Reserve determine whether to launch a new round of bond-buying next week.)
Mr. Obama doesn’t have to wait until the formal release to see the numbers. Under a decades-long practice, a select group of U.S. officials learns the contents of each month’s jobs report on the Thursday evening before its release. The Bureau of Labor Statistics delivers the information sometime Thursday afternoon to the White HouseCouncil of Economic Advisers, which analyzes the data and prepares a memo for the president. (The CEA chairman or director of the National Economic Council often informs the president in person.)
The routine is governed by a directive from the White House Office of Management and Budget. It allows top government officials — like those at the White House,Treasury Department and Fed — to know about an important report that could shake global markets. Employees of the executive branch aren’t supposed to comment publicly on the data until at least one hour after the official release on Friday morning. That’s why we don’t hear the White House’s spin on the report until 9:30 a.m., almost an hour after the opposing party has spit out its own statements. (The White House has gotten more careful in recent decades. Back in the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson caused a stir more than once when he commented on favorable numbers before they were released.)
Via: Wall Street Journal
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Labels: BLS, Democratic National Convention, Federal Reserve, Lyndon Johnson, Obama Treasury Department, President Barack Obama, Wall Street Journal
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
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