Do you have any older relatives in Florida? Food for thought here...
"Dear Florida": Five Ways McCain/Palin Will Make Things Worse For Older Americans
by RJ Eskow | October 21, 2008 - 10:37am
Obama has built a massive lead over McCain in the last several weeks. But while McCain now lags in all age groups, he retains his strongest support among voters 65 and older. Maybe that's because the overall economic crisis has received so much attention. The country hasn't devoted enough time to talking about the effect this election could have on retired people.
So I wrote a little letter. It goes like this:
________________________________
Dear Florida (and anywhere else Americans over 65 live in large, swing-state-vote numbers):
It gets a little harder for me to use the word "seniors' with every passing year. Is that time whispering in my ear? But I'd like to talk about five ways a McCain/Palin victory could impact ... er, older Americans in the next four years. And for those of you who are in Florida - well, we won't even discuss the fact that you live in a part of the country the McCain campaign says "isn't 'pro-America.'" How dare they? You've served this country well, in war and in peace. Who are they to say who loves this country and who doesn't?
But enough about that. Here are five things you should consider before you vote.
1. They Want to Cut Medicare.
It's not complicated: John McCain wants to cut Medicare by $1.3 trillion over the next ten years. He says he'll do it in two ways: by "cutting waste and fraud," and by "reforming payment policies." As a young systems analyst over 25 years ago, one of my first jobs involved reviewing the anti-fraud software Medicare was using. It was pretty sophisticated even then, and techniques keep improving. Sure, there's undoubtedly more fraud to be uncovered. But $1 trillion worth? No.
That leaves McCain and Palin squeezing most of that $1 trillion from "reforming payment policies." Here's what those words mean in real-life terms: Physicians will be forced to accept lower payments. They'll probably have to justify their actions with more paperwork, too.
The end result? More doctors will stop accepting Medicare patients, making it harder for you to find one when you need treatment. And they'll be more reluctant to perform certain procedures, when they feel Medicare isn't covering the real cost of the service.
That will make it harder for you to get the medical care you need and deserve.
2. They'll Tamper With Social Security.
When John McCain first announced his spending freeze he named a few exemptions. Social Security wasn't one of them. He added it to the list a few days later after an outcry. But McCain has a history of advocating Social Security cuts, and he's pushed a privatization plan that could have left retired people even more devastated by the recent economic downturn.
He says now that he's disowned his past support for "privatizing" Social Security. But as recently as this March he said that "I'm totally in favor of personal savings accounts... As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it--along the lines that President Bush proposed." (courtesy AFL-CIO)
It doesn't improve things that much if you say, as Mr. McCain now does, that privatization should be strictly "voluntary." Once you allow people to opt out of the group system, it becomes less financially stable. McCain's policy puts our nation's retirement safety net at risk.
(By the way, my use of the word "unstable" isn't a coded attack on Sen. McCain's age - honest! Colin Powell's the same age, and he was steady as a rock on Meet The Press last Sunday. Didn't you think?)
more...
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18097
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