House GOP leaders announced Monday they were putting forward a “backup plan” that would extend the payroll tax cut for ten months, while cleaving it from a similar extension of unemployment insurance benefits and what’s known as the “doc fix,” a measure needed to prevent dramatic cuts in Medicare reimbursements. The plan would not be offset by cuts elsewhere, the announcement said, meaning the cost of the tax cut would be added to the deficit. – Huffington Post
…and the hits just keep on rollin’.
I’m also hoping that Sen. Mitch McConnell and congressional Republicans continue to double down on attacking Pres. Obama’s revenue-neutral contraceptive coverage mandate. If they do, Republicans will be marginalized for years, especially with modern women.
“So this issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down. They don’t have the authority … to tell someone in this country, or some organization in this country, what their religious beliefs are. Therein lies the problem.”
Looking at a lot of polling on the issue, I’d bet you $10,000 the Administration and Obama Reelect is hoping McConnell pushes this argument all the way to November.
To manipulate an old saying, it’s great to be good, but sometimes it helps to also get lucky. Right now Pres. Obama is certainly getting lucky with the adversaries he has in Republicans.
The cost will be added to the deficit? Isn’t that what they were fighting about all along? Isn’t that their whole reason for being? They’re going to give up on this and spend eight months fighting about birth control? Maybe they really have lost their minds.
I’m pretty sure they have, fangio. Lost their minds, that is.
They have read the polls.
I question if any of these clowns ever had a mind to lose. Maybe at one time when they were lil tikes they had a brain, but somewhere along the line they lost it.
The Obama budget was also revealed today. Once again there are no cuts to Medicare or Medicaid benefits just as there were no cuts to benefits in the Affordable Health Care Act. There are cost cuts, but they would be borne by the pharmaceutical industry. One of the most egregious and poorly understood regulations that is contained in the 2004 Prescription Drug Benefit for Seniors that was written by the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries and passed into law by the Bush Adminstration and the Republican controlled House and Senate is that the legislation prohibeted Medicare from negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry for lower drug prices. The Obama Administration budget removes that regulation and allows Medicare to negotiate with Big Pharma for lower drug prices. The VA has always had the power to negotiate with Big Pharma for lower drug costs and the VA’s drug costs are substantially lower that the cost of the same drugs covered by the prescription drug plan for seniors.
The affordable care act cut costs as well but benefits actually increased and the cost cuts were in reductions in tax payer subsidies to health insurance companies that offer Medicare Complete and Medicare Advantage health insurance policies. The affordable health care act is the law of the land but there isn’t much hope of passing the Obama budget that would substantillay reduce the cost of drugs.
The affordable health care act of 200-9 in an effort to reduce costs but adding new benefits substantially increased the budget of the government in tracking down Medicare fraud. It is already paying dividends. The governmrnt recovered over 4 billion dollars in Medicare fraud last year a large increase over the previous year:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/health-care-fraud-judgment_n_1275320.html