Archive for the ‘health insurance’ Category
September 20th, 2011 | 
Author: Obama Medicare Cuts Target Providers, Then Beneficiaries For …
WASHINGTON — President Obama wants to extract $320 billion in savings from the health care system in his push to trim the deficit, starting with cutting payments to Medicare and Medicaid providers and ending with making …
Publish Date: 09/19/2011 15:51
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/19/president-obama-targets-p_n_969991.html
Obama to Pitch Higher Taxes, Means-Testing Medicare – Politics …
Political News and Headlines From ABC News Radio.
Publish Date: 09/19/2011 9:54
http://abcnewsradioonline.com/politics-news/obama-to-pitch-higher-taxes-means-testing-medicare.html
President Obama tried for months to convince critics on the far left that entitlement programs such as Medicare had to be cut in order to save the programs.
"With an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program", he said.
"And if we don’t gradually reform the system while protecting current beneficiaries, it won’t be there when future retirees need it. We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it".
But after those speeches, several Democratic groups and lawmakers sent letters, held news conferences and even staged protests, including one in front of the White House by activists challenging the idea of any cuts in Medicaid benefits.
The president appears to have heard the objections, because in his Rose Garden speech Monday, he proposed only half as much in savings as he did in debt talks this summer, offering $320 billion in changes instead of $650 billion, and he took a very different tone:
"We will reform Medicare and Medicaid, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment that this country has kept for generations", he said.
Alison Fraser, of the conservative Heritage Foundation had this to say;
"He’s pulled way back on those proposals specifically on Medicare, Medicaid".
"Even on Social Security, which at one point was in the mix, now it’s completely off the table. So it’s a disappointing step, rather than an encouraging one".
"If we continue with even more of these provider crackdowns, you know, you’re going to have a lot more doctors, hospitals, pharmacists, and so forth, dropping out of the program".
Will Obama’s Backtrack Help Him?
His recent comments on Medicare may or may not soften criticism from the left however, and the liberal group MoveOn.org urged its members last week to call the White House, and warned in a letter,
"If the President comes out on Monday calling for cuts to Medicare and Medicaid benefits, the enthusiasm he’s built up in the last week will disappear in an instant".
Many Doctors Are Already Quitting
90% of the changes that Obama has proposed so are in the form of cuts to providers, such as doctors and hospitals, and many policy experts are concerned about access to care for seniors on Medicare, which is a trend already under way in some areas of the country.
Many doctors in rural areas are now saying that they will either have to seek alternative employment or go work at a hospital or clinic, because they’re no longer getting enough income to continue their practices.
More Price Controls
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said,
"So what we’ve seen from the president so far is, more price controls and rationing, but no plans to save it from bankruptcy".
The Bottom Line
Taken together, the Medicare and Social Security programs are committed to $46 trillion dollars more in benefits than the government can pay for from the revenues it now receives, and cuts are inevitable.
Posted in 
The case for Jon Huntsman's conservatism « The Enterprise Blog
blog.american.com12/4/11
Jon Huntsman in the 1980s, along with President Ronald Reagan and Rep. … Jon Huntsman clearly isn't a candidate super comfortable with escalating the 2012 elections into a climactic clash of ideologies. He's too cool, too …
Jon Huntsman Won't Kiss Donald Trump's Ring, Or 'Any Other Part …
www.mediaite.com12/5/11
Jon Huntsman gift-wrapped an unfortunate visual, telling anchor Martha McCallum that he's not going to kiss his (Trump's) ring, and I'm not going to kiss any other part of his anatomy. Huntsman was responding to the claim …
This is Part 16 of a look at possible GOP candidates that might run well against Obama in 2012.
Part 1 looked at Mitch Daniels Part 2 looked at Tim Pawlenty
Part 3 looked at Chris Christie Part 4 looked at Mitt Ronney
Part 5 looked at Sarah Palin Part 6 looked at Mike Huckabee
Part 7 looked at Rudy Giuliani Part 8 looked at Michele Bachman
Part 9 looked at Donald Trump Part 10 looked at Paul Ryan
Part 11 looked at Ron Paul Part 12 looked at Newt Gingrich
Part 13 looked at Herman Cain Part 14 looked at Rick Santorum
Part 15 looked at Rick Perry
Mr. Huntsman is most often addressed as "governor" because he was the two-term governor of Utah.
If like many others you’ve never heard of him then read on:
He became fluent in Mandarin Chinese during two years he spent in Taiwan as a young Mormon missionary.
He worked in the Reagan White House.
In the George H.W. Bush administration, he worked first on trade matters and then as Mr. Bush’s ambassador to Singapore.
During the second Bush presidency, he was deputy trade representative.
And in 2004 he was elected governor of Utah, re-elected in 2008.
Then in 2009 he accepted President Barack Obama’s offer to be the U.S. ambassador to China.
His father Jon Huntsman Sr’s first company, Huntsman Container, hit the jackpot by creating the "clamshell" burger box, which was adopted by McDonald’s and he is now the billionaire founder of Huntsman Corp., a chemical company.
It should be no surprise then that a man with this résumé, which is notably similar to that of George H.W. Bush, might choose to run for president.
His immediate problem is however that the vast majority of the public have no idea who he is.
Who Is Jon Huntsman?
The Economy
If there’s a short version of Mr. Huntsman’s core message, it’s that America needs to start competing again, and very aggressively, in the global marketplace.
"We need to get back in the game", he says, citing the lapse of free-trade momentum as a primary failing of the Obama years, "because if we don’t do it, China will move ahead with free-trade agreements as they are in Latin America, built around procurement practices that benefit Chinese companies".
The Military
"Now we have one out of every six defense department dollars going to Afghanistan. We’ve achieved much of what we set out to do. We’ve been able to rout the Taliban from power. We’ve been able to disrupt to a large extent al Qaeda. We’ve had free elections going back to 2004. And we still have 100,000 troops on the ground. The future well-being of the United States is likely not going to be fought on the prairies of Afghanistan. It’s likely to be the result of our ability or inability to compete competitively across the Pacific against the rising giants".
Washington.
"I think the appropriate role of the federal government is to carefully measure out the nation’s competitiveness. When are taxes too high and making us less competitive than our major trading partners? When do we reach the point of onerous regulation and have to throttle back so we can maintain a competitive posture?". "As a country we should maintain a level playing field for the states. Equip them with what they need to survive and be competitive and then be attentive enough to learn from them when it comes to possible national models".
Health
Mr. Huntsman says he favors repeal of the Obama health-care law and he’d block-grant Medicaid back to the states.
"Let states determine what the percentage of poverty levels are, and let public officials rise or fall on how local citizens feel about those decisions. They’re in a much better position to understand their vulnerable populations than at the federal level".
Energy And Subsidies
He thinks the recent natural gas finds in the U.S. "completely change how we operate and how we view our economy. I believe this is just revolutionary. Why not take advantage of something we control, when it’s derived from our reserves, it employs our people and enhances our economic base?". Look, we’re never going to be totally energy independent. You can talk in those terms but we’re always going to be accessing raw materials from elsewhere in the world. But we can do better than 60% of imported oil".
"I don’t like subsidies. I’d like to see us phase out all subsidies. Maybe a nudge in terms of a tax incentive like we did in Utah to convert cars to natural gas".
How Will He Try To Convince The Voters?
"When people look at what we’ve done", he says, "they’re going to say, ‘He’s a conservative problem solver’, I’m going to point people in the direction of what we’ve done as governor. I’m pro-life, strongly pro-Second Amendment. I think there are enough voters who will say, ‘I may not like everything, but there’s enough here to like’".
He adds a final point on his own behalf:
"I’m not trying to make things up as we go. I’m drawing from my own experiences, where I’ve seen it work. I want to make sure that what we advocate and say we believe in can be tied back to real-world experience. So when people say, ‘What do you stand for, what do you want to do?’ I can say, ‘Here, 1,2,3, here’s what I did as governor of a state’. I think that’s going to help people to connect the dots".
