Republicans are now claiming President Obama is for big spending cuts that gut government and the things we do to make our lives better, and that Republicans are not for gutting spending. This one is almost funny, if it weren’t for the damage that will be done to people if the Republicans cause the “sequester” budget cuts to go into effect next week.

Yes, next week huge budget cuts will occur unless Republicans do something to stop it. But Republican understand that:

1. Cutting the things government does to make our lives better is hugely unpopular;
2. Cutting government spending when the economy is weak will threaten to return us into recession;
3. Cutting essential services will hurt a lot of people.

So they are trying to deflect the blame, and are actually trying to tell the public that it is Obama who has been for these big cuts all along, not them.

This latest lie is so preposterous you might think I am making this up. So watch this ad that the Republican Party has put out:

Buzzfeed has the story, in RNC’s New Ad Takes Obama Wildly Out Of Context,

The short clip makes it appear as if Obama is pledging his support for the sequester rather calling on Congress to come up with a broad approach to avoid it, using his veto as part of a threat to force a plan.

My post this week, Coming Sequester Cuts Will Hurt Jobs, Growth And People – And People Are Mobilizing, details some of the terrible consequences of the “sequester” should it occur.

Three things you can do:

1) Contribute to our Stop the Cuts campaign today

2) Tell your member of Congress: Disarm the Austerity Bomb. Stop the Sequester

3) Starting today, real people started pushing back through a series of more than 100 events that were scheduled in 23 states around the country. They are sponsored by a coalition that includes national labor groups, Americans for Tax Fairness and Health Care for America Now. (You can see a list of events at AmericaWantsToWork.org or 99Uniting.org.)

One more thing: As for who is for cutting essential service that make people’s lives better, and who is for keeping them, never forget that it was the Republicans who campaigned in 2010 and again in 2012 saying Democrats were cutting Medicare and they would never do that. In 2010 it worked and they gained a majority in the House of Representatives, but by 2012 people had started figuring it out.

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The latest proposal to cut Social Security coming from our out-of-touch DC elites literally says that because old people cut back to cat food when people food is expensive, then we shouldn’t let Social Security rise enough to keep covering people food. It literally says that.

There is a Social Security proposal circulating among the out-of-touch DC elites that says because old people cut back when prices rise, then Social Security inflation adjustments should be cut back, too. They are actually saying that because people have to cut back to cat food, then they should only be getting enough to pay for cat food. The proposal is called by a funny name, “Chained CPI.” The elites love it because it helps keep the government from raising taxes on the rich to pay back what was borrowed from Social Security and used to give tax cuts to the rich.

APM’s Marketplace explained how Chained CPI works in Alternate inflation index could save billions:

(Note – if the audio stream player doesn’t show up, please go to this link to listen.)

Fiscal cliff talks have brought into the mainstream a phrase previously little-known outside economic policy circles: Chained Consumer Price Index. The concept is as complicated — evidenced by a jargon-splattered FAQ on the Labor Department’s website — as its impact could be massive.

… The CPI measures the price of various goods over time. But it doesn’t really account for how humans behave when prices go up. Sometimes they buy less of items that become more expensive. For example, rising beef prices will affect the CPI. But consumers may just buy more pork instead.

… Chained CPI accounts for this shift in consumer behavior, what economists call the substitution effect. The simple act of switching the way we measure inflation could save hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s because chained CPI is lower than the benchmark CPI. If life really isn’t as expensive as we thought, the government doesn’t have to pay as much in benefits.

Benefits will still continue to increase over time, just more slowly. One place where a switch to Chained CPI will have major impact is Social Security, which is why powerful seniors interest group AARP has a flotilla of lobbyists fighting this idea.

Got that? Old people switch from eating beef when the price goes up, therefore we don’t need to increase Social Security when prices go up. Except they are switching to cat food, not pork.

This males sense if you are in the 1% who doesn’t have to worry about it, and who gets that cash that isn’t put into increasing Social Security along with inflation.

Call your Senators and Representative and tell them you do not want them to cut Social Security or Medicare in any way, and not with this “Chained CPI” scam. Tell them we won the election, we voted for tax increases on the rich and no cuts in Social Security or Medicare.

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This interview was based on a piece we did entitled “Four Republican Medicare Secrets … and a $600 Billion Funeral.”  Video is below:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

As Washington approaches a “fiscal cliff” of its own making, our elected officials appear to be forgetting some important things. President Obama seems to have forgotten the mandate he won in November, not a mandate just to increase taxes on the wealthy (something nearly 50% of Republicans now even support), but a mandate not to compromise for the sake of compromise — and not to compromise on cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. John Boehner has forgotten that he doesn’t have a mandate, nor do House Republicans have a mandate from the majority of voters. And both seem not to notice that President Obama is winning the “fiscal cliff” showdown.

It’s time to remind Washington just what Americans voted for — and against — in November. That’s why a coalition of progressive organizations are mobilizing to whip Democratic Senators against voting for any “fiscal cliff” deal that includes cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

A coalition of liberal advocacy groups is mobilizing its members to whip Democratic senators against voting for any deficit-reduction deal that cuts safety-net benefits.

The groups divide the caucus up into three categories — the “weak-kneed,” who they fear may agree to benefit cuts; the “wavering,” who have signaled discomfort with the idea but haven’t committed; and the “champions” whose support they’re confident of. Via petition, they are urging their supporters to call their senators and ask for and record their positions on benefit cuts, with the dual goals of pressuring Democrats to oppose reducing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits and of providing their supporters continually updated information on where key members stand on the issue.

“Senators owe their constituents clarity about whether they’ll stand up against any benefit cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security,” said Victoria Kaplan at MoveOn.org Political Action, in a statement to TPM. “Our whip count seeks to shine a spotlight on whether Democratic Senators will fight for poor, middle class and working families, or if they will cave to Republican demands to favor millionaires and billionaires instead.”

The petition splits Democratic senators into three groups: “Champions,” “Part-Way There or Wavering,” and “Weak-Kneed.” Right now, the “champions” include:

• Sen. Daniel Akaka (HI)
• Sen. Sherrod Brown (OH)
• Sen. Ben Cardin (MD)
• Sen. Al Franken (MN)
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)
• Sen. Tom Harkin (IA)
• Sen. Frank Lautenberg (NJ)
• Sen. Patrick Leahy (VT)
• Sen. Carl Levin (MI)
• Sen. Jeff Merkley (OR)
• Sen. Barbara Mikulski (MD)
• Sen. Jack Reed (RI)
• Sen. Jay Rockefeller (WV)
• Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT)
• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)

If your senators aren’t on that list, visit the petition and click on their names to call and ask them: “Do you commit to oppose any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?” (Or call them and thank them for their commitment if they are listed among the “champions,” as my Maryland senators are.)

Call your senators and remind them what Americans really care about. Remind your senators that most of us are following the “fiscal cliff” debate closely, and we want to see them stand up for our concerns. Remind them that the deficit is not our top priority; not even close.

Call your senators, and remind them what Americans voted for in November, and the priorities we elected them to fight for.

Their first priority is to create jobs and get the economy going. Many mistakenly believe that large deficits cost jobs. But when we asked them to chose between work to “grow the economy” and a plan to “reduce the deficit,” they chose growing the economy by more than two to one, 62-30, a margin of 31 percentage points. Fifty-five percent said they felt strongly on the first.

Second, voters disagree strongly with the priorities of the elite consensus congealing around the president’s deficit commission co-chairs, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, and his own discussions of a grand bargain with House Speaker John Boehner. Those discussions suggest a deal that trades cuts in Medicare and Social Security for tax reform that lowers rates for individuals and corporations while gaining revenue by closing loopholes – a sort of Romney-lite tax reform.

When it comes to a deficit reduction plan, Americans have clear ideas.

They want tax rates to be raised on the wealthy. 68 percent find a plan that did not raises taxes on the rich “unacceptable.” 70 percent support a plan that raises taxes on the top 2 percent while keeping the taxes of others at the same level. 63 percent would find a plan that continued to tax investors’ income at lower rates than worker’s wages unacceptable. 75 percent would support a plan to create a higher tax bracket for millionaires. 67 percent finds a plan that lowers tax rates on corporations or the rich unacceptable.

They do not want Social Security benefits cut over time. By 62 to 31, they would find a plan that did that unacceptable.

They do not want Medicare payments cut or capped: 79 percent, nearly four out of five, find capping Medicare payments forcing seniors to pay more unacceptable.

By 50 percent to 41 percent, they favor a deficit reduction plan that starts with closing loopholes and raising tax rates at the top, and excludes cuts to Medicare and Social Security over one that closes loopholes but “gets entitlement spending under control, including reducing the growth of Medicare and Social Security.”

In November, voters handed President Obama a bigger win than Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, or Bush; and gave Democrats gains in both the House and Senate. Voters gave President Obama and the Democrats a mandate to use  government to improve people’s lives.

President Obama’s reelection represents a victory for the Democratic ideal of activist government and a mandate for more of it. From the stimulus through the auto rescue through Obamacare and, finally, Hurricane Sandy, Americans saw the Democratic president making a difference in their lives, and after a campaign that was stunning in its ugliness, they gave Obama a second term and sent Mitt Romney home, wherever that is.

…The only reason the election was a squeaker was voter suppression in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. The long lines to vote, especially in minority neighborhoods, represent a 21st century poll tax, and should horrify all Americans. If Democrats were as unethical as Republicans, they’d look for ways to suppress the older white vote. Instead, all of us should look for ways to make it easier for everyone to vote. Democrats don’t have to cheat to win.

The reelection of our first black president may be more remarkable than his first win, given the implacable opposition he faced from Republicans and racists (they aren’t the same thing, even if it seems like it sometimes). In the end, Romney’s contempt for half the country, as revealed in his 47 percent remarks, brought many Americans together behind a man who wants to be the president of all of us. When I saw his tears Monday night, I worried that it meant he’d learned bad news, but maybe he knew he was going to win, after four years of demonization. He tweeted his campaign slogan, “We’re all in this together,” to his followers after his win. Let’s hope some Republicans listen this time.

We expect Republicans to ignore that mandate. We should remind Democrats that they ignore it at their peril.

Politico shares its insights on what the right “deal” should look like:

…tax reform that goes way beyond individuals and rates; much deeper Social Security and Medicare changes than currently envisioned; quick movement on trade agreements, including a proposed one with Europe; an energy policy that exploits the oil and gas boom; and allowing foreign-born students with science expertise to stay here and start businesses.

Do this and there could be not an economic recovery — but a boom, many argue.

Just think, if only we’d elected the presidential candidate who ran on that agenda it might even have the support of the people. 

Jared Bernstein writes:

Really? I gotta say, I don’t see it. In fact, pretty much everything on that list is a) conventional wisdom in DC and b) largely a distraction from where I think the evidence is actually pointing, as I’ll stress in a moment. To be clear, raising more tax revenues and slowing health care costs are critical in terms of getting our long-term debt situation under control, and immigration reform that provides a path for folks here to stay is also a great idea. A domestic energy boom is already underway and trade agreements do squat for growth (which doesn’t mean they’re not worth it—but their growth potential is hugely overhyped).

What’s holding back growth is inattention to the need for stimulus in the near term in an economy where monetary policy is at least partially hamstrung (zero lower bound), premature fiscal contraction (premature contraculation?), too much income and wealth inequality, and, over the longer term, the lack of a deep investment agenda in public goods, including education and worker training.

It just can’t be said often enough — everything that the DC consensus wants to do is counter-productive to the goals they claim to endorse. In fact, there is ample evidence that an austerity agenda of the magnitude they seem to want will do to the US what it’s already doing to Europe — create the opposite of a boom and instead usher in another recession. So maybe it would be a good idea to start questioning whether or not the goals the DC insiders claim to endorse are really the ones they are after.

It’s not hard to see what that might be. After all, that agenda could have been written by the Chamber of Commerce. In fact, it was. It may seem counter-intuitive to think business people would be in favor of tanking an economy but this explains it very well.

This piece by Aaron Carroll explains in full detail why raising the Medicare age is daft (and cruel):

What you’re seeing is life expectancy at age 65 broken out in to the top half of earners and the bottom half of earners, from 1977 to 2007. I got these data from a study that appeared in Social Security Bulletin in 2007. The paper was entitled, “Trends in Mortality Differentials and Life Expectancy for Male Social Security-Covered Workers, by Socioeconomic Status.” We know that average life expectancy went up less than 5 years overall in this period. But what’s somewhat stunning is how much of a disparity there is in these gains. The top half of earners gained more than 5 years of life at age 65. The bottom half of earners, though, gained less than a year.

If you raise the age of eligibility by two years, then you are taking away more years of Medicare than half the country gained in longer life. Moreover, we’ve already taken away these people’s Social Security. The Greenspan Commission in the early 1980s made it so that the retirement age is already 66. It’s scheduled to rise to 67. So those at the bottom half of the socioeconomic ladder have already lost more years of Social Security than they’ve gained in years of life life expectancy at 65.

Sure, in a perfect world poor young seniors could get Medicaid if we take away their Medicare. That is, of course, if their state accepts the Medicaid expansion. Many haven’t. Less poor young seniors can go to the exchanges, I suppose. But if you’re a 65 year old widow and you make $46,100 a year in a high cost area, then your premium will be over $12,000 for your insurance. And you could owe another $6250 in out-of-pocket costs if you get sick. Tell me again how that person won’t miss her Medicare.

(He also explains is simple language why this whole ” raised life expectancy” trope is nonsense to begin with. It pertains to life expectancy at birth not at the age of retirement. The designers of social security and medicare understood this even if nobody else seems to.)

So, we know that raising the Medicare age is a bad idea. How about the other very “clever” idea floating around these discussions: changing the accounting formula to cut benefits across all federal programs?

Here’s the answer from Social Security Works:

Some politicians in Washington are preparing to cut your Social Security COLA for good–even after two years without getting a COLA. This COLA cut has an obscure name: chained-CPI. But it would do real damage by changing the formula used to calculate the COLA. Here’s what you need to know about it:

It’s a benefit cut. It’s not some minor technical change to the COLA. It’s a real cut to the benefits you have earned every year into the future.

It cuts benefits more with every passing year. After 10 years, your benefits would be cut by about $500 a year for the average retiree. After 20 years, your benefits would be cut by about $1,000 a year.

It hits today’s Social Security beneficiaries. Politicians like to say that their cuts to Social Security will not affect those getting benefits today. Wrong! Switching to the chained-CPI would hit all current beneficiaries.

We need a higher COLA, not a lower one. The current COLA is not large enough–it does not adequately account for large health care cost increases faced by seniors and people with disabilities.

And it’s not just social security. It’s veterans and military retiree benefits, disability payments, federal worker pensions, anything the federal government funds.

Here’s the thing, once again: all of this is unnecessary. The deficit caused by Bush’s tax cuts, wars and recession will be largely mitigated by reinstatement of the upper income taxes, drawdown of the wars, growth(duh!) and, most importantly, controlling health care costs, the best method for which would have been expanding Medicare to cover everyone. We don’t need to make this “clever” accounting change that will result in elderly and disabled people suffering. We can get serious about a rational national security policy, controlling health care costs, and espurring conomic growth and stop listening to the disaster capitalists who are intent upon using this window of opportunity to cut the programs they hate, whether the economy is good or bad. (Hell, we could even raise the top income tax rate above the Clinton levels, at least for those making a million dollars a year. These people have been making out like bandits and surely won’t miss the money.)

If you know any veterans or military retirees, you might want to pass this fact sheet along to them. They tend to get testy when their promised benefits are threatened. They are a constituency worth organizing against this.

It’s tempting to read these pieces by Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Chait and decide that, all things considered, liberals should at least consider raising the Medicare age to 67 as part of a budget compromise.

They shouldn’t.

“This seems like a useful time for liberals to sort out the difference between budget ideas we don’t like and budget ideas we can’t or shouldn’t accept,” Chait writes. I couldn’t agree more. Put this one in the “can’t accept” column.

Here are four arguments for compromising on the Medicare age – and why they’re wrong.

Bad Reason #1: As a bone to throw to the right.

“When the question comes to what concessions the Democrats are going to have to accept,” Chait writes, ” … raising the Medicare age seems like a sensible bone to throw the right.” That’s the first bad reason to compromise. Raising the Medicare age would increase the number of uninsured Americans, and would do so for people who need substantially more care than the average person.

It would also cost more money than it saves. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that its $5.7 billion in projected Federal savings would lead to an additional $11.4 billion in health spending elsewhere in the economy.

More uninsured Americans? Higher healthcare costs? That’s not bone. It’s meat.

Bad Reason #2: To protect the Affordable Care Act.

“Raising the Medicare retirement age would help strengthen the fight to preserve the Affordable Care Act,” Chait writes. He argues that “a side effect of raising the Medicare retirement age would be that a large cohort of 65- and 66-year-olds would suddenly find themselves needing the Affordable Care Act to buy their health insurance.”

There’s something seriously wrong about the cost/benefit logic in Chait’s position, and the moral logic too. Do we really want to put a segment of our population in distress in order to provide artificial political support for a health reform law that needs substantial strengthening?

Yes, says Chait, because “Republicans attacking the Affordable Care Act would no longer be attacking the usual band of very poor or desperate people they can afford to ignore but a significant chunk of middle-class voters who have grown accustomed to the assumption that they will be able to afford health care.”

That’s a little like saying Democrats should cheerfully accept natural disasters because they build support for FEMA.

Bad Reason #3: Because Medicare has symbolic value.

Medicare “has weirdly disproportionate symbolic power,” Chait writes, “both among Republicans in Congress and establishmentarian fiscal scolds.”

Yes, it does – and conservatives have consistently been more effective than liberals in reframing both the terms of debate and the public’s perception of the economy.  Here we go again: By cutting Medicare, Democrats would be “acknowledging” – falsely – that it’s a burden on society, an ineffective program, and a drain on economic growth.

Medicare’s “symbolic power” is an argument for strengthening it, not cutting it.

Chait goes on to say that “Mitch McConnell and Erskine Bowles alike would regard raising the retirement age as a sign of serious belt-tightening and the ‘structural reforms’ conservatives say they need.”

Yes, and so would our sadly misinformed mainstream media. We have to change that perception, not reinforce it. Yet a deal this kind would reinforce their misleading narrative, further undermining public support for the social contract we need to defend.

Bad Reason #4: The Affordable Care Act will protect most of the 65 and 66 year olds affected by the change.

“Strengthening the political coalition for universal coverage seems like a helpful side benefit” to a Medicare age deal, says Chait. What universal coverage?

Remember when a lot of liberals, including Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein, were saying that Hillary Clinton’s 2008 health plan (now the Affordable Care Act) will provide something like universal coverage? I said it would leave at least 15 million people uninsured. I was wrong: The CBO concluded that 25 million people will be left uninsured under the Affordable Care Act. (That figure was later raised to 28 million after the Supreme Court overthrew the bill’s Medicare provisions.)

A lot of people will be unable to afford private health insurance under the Act, even with subsidies. (I was also shouted down back then for saying that the subsidies would be unreachable for a lot of middle class families.)

People who are making the argument for the Medicare age as a “compromise” seem to have also forgotten that the Act allows insurers to charge as much as three times in premiums for covering older (and therefore costlier) enrollees.  This “significant chunk” of middle class voters wouldn’t find itself fighting for an Act that requires them to buy that insurance.

They’d be hit with a tax penalty instead – and still be uninsured.

Style Council

And yet Matt Yglesias writes that it would be “foolish to categorically rule … out” increasing the Medicare age.

“There’s no need for the ritual scourging,” Yglesias adds, linking to a piece by David Dayen which takes Chait to the woodshed.  ”Ritual scourging,” like “ideological inflexibility” and “reflexive hostility,” is a phrase which means “a strong argument against a position I support.”

Yglesias’ position is unclear.  At first he defends Chait’s position, at least in principle. Then he says that “people will disagree” about whether or not the Affordable Care Act is an acceptable substitute for Medicare, “but we can all see why theObama administration would be inclined to think that it is the case.”

Yes, people will disagree. But does Yglesias disagree? It’s unclear.  And yes, we can see why the Obama Administration might be biased toward the idea. But is it a good or bad one?

By contrast, an earlier Yglesias piece about the Medicare age lays out much (though not all) of what’s wrong with the idea of raising it, and makes his position perfectly clear: It’s a bad idea.

Getting It Right

In that earlier piece, Yglesias makes one of the clearest, most concise arguments I’ve seen yet for the approach I and others favor.

“Rather than shrinking Medicare,” he writes, “we ought to be taking advantage of the program’s lower costs. One way to do that would be to lower the retirement age—potentially all the way down to zero—and bring more people into the program. That would reduce system-wide costs but require higher taxes or bigger deficits.”

That’s exactly right, and any self-described “deficit hawk” who doesn’t embrace should be called out for hypocrisy – even if that amounts to a “ritual scourging.”

What’s more, I would argue that deficits could go down under this scenario. The economy would expand more quickly, which is likely to put deficits in better balance as a percentage of the GDP .  We would also eliminate the tax breaks for employer-sponsored health insurance, which would provide another offset.

Yglesias also proposes reviving 2008′s “public option,” reminding us that the CBO said it would save $68 billion in subsidies while lowering out-of-pocket costs.  That’s another idea we’ve embraced as well.

Medicare works. It delivers good coverage, and it does so more cost-effectively. It should be strengthened, not weakened. It shouldn’t be “compromised” or sacrificed on the altar of lower expenditures, especially for an alternative that will actually cost more.

The Republicans are demanding $600 billion in Medicare cuts over the next ten years. Their only concrete proposal is to deny Medicare coverage to Americans during what is now their first two years of eligibility, at ages 65 and 66. But their official offer isn’t even that specific. It just throws out that figure: $600 billion. But you can’t get there from here.

At least you can’t do it their way – not without causing enormous hardship, and not without costing the public twice as much from other sources as would be saved in government spending.

In fact, there are only two paths to $600 billion in savings. One’s macabre and morbid, and is offered here only to make as a Swiftian “modest proposal.” The other would take a chunk out of corporate profits.

Which path do you think the GOP would prefer?

This entire Medicare debate’s being held under false pretenses. Here are four multibillion-dollar Medicare secrets they don’t want you to know – along with that funereal “modest proposal”:

1. Runaway corporate profits are squeezing medicare.

Republican Sen. Bob Corker echoed the party line today when he said that cutting “entitlements” was needed in order to “save the nation.” But benefit cuts aren’t where the money is: profits are.  We did some rough calculations to show you just how much profit’s involved:

Roughly $200 billion in Medicare spending will go to drug company profits in the next 10 years. (We got that figure by averaging the profit margins for large pharmaceutical corporations by projected Medicare drug expenditures.) And yet the Republicans have blocked legislation that would allow the government to use its purchasing power to negotiate for a better deal. So the drug companies can charge us whatever they want – and we pay it.

Medicare has reportedly underpaid for hospital services at times. But for-profit hospitals have an average profit margin of 5.5 percent. What they’re not receiving from Medicare is ‘cost-shifting’ to private health insurance. We pay for that, too –  in insurance premiums and tax concessions for employer-sponsored coverage.  With Medicare hospital expenditures likely to approach $2.5 trillion in the next ten years, that’s costing society a fortune.

And that doesn’t include high margins in the non-profit hospital field, where CEOs frequently earn more than a million dollars as a reward for maximizing revenue. Nor do these figures include the profits received by all sorts of other for-profit health providers ranging from diagnostic centers to ambulatory surgery clinics.

2. We receive far too much unnecessary care, and are often fraudulently billed for the care that is given.

Then there’s what may be the most expensive effect that greed has on Medicare: overtreatment. A series of exposés (some of which we discussed in “Sick Money,” a review of Bain Capital’s health investments) have revealed gross patterns of fraudulent Medicare overcharging.

Even worse tis the overtreatment that’s done to boost profits. Unnecessary procedures are difficult and uncomfortable at best, and at worst they can lead to pain, disability, even death. This overtreatment’s been documented in both academic studies (John Wennberg’s Dartmouth Atlas is a great resource) and some excellent journalism.

And it’s getting worse. Now hospitals are buying physician practices and exerting financial pressure on doctors to perform more surgeries. But the truth is that doctors have always been under financial pressure to overtreat. They graduate from medical school with tons of debt and must then maintain a profitable practice, including everything from equipment to office staff.

And yet Republicans have beaten back attempts to control this overtreatment with their “death panel” hoax. That  myth is only slightly less believable than “black helicopters.” There are death panels – but they’re manned by insurance executives, not bureaucrats.  Republicans have fought Medicare by telling us that doctors shouldn’t be “employees” of the government. Now they’re employed by MBAs who want a fat bonus.

Does overtreatment research interfere with our right to choose our own care?  I want to make an informed choice – and I don’t want anybody cutting me open if it isn’t absolutely necessary.

3. Seniors are already being hit hard by medical costs.

People who aren’t covered by Medicare and don’t know much about it often assume it covers all, or most, medical expenses. But the average person on Medicare pays roughly $4,600 per year in out-of-pocket medical costs, and that figure can be much higher for those who are severely or chronically ill or who have suffered a serious injury.

Boehner’s figure of $600 billion over 10 years is a reduction of approximately 7.8 percent from current projections. But Medicare enrollment will increase from 49 million people to 85 million over the same period. Assuming that these Republican cuts are made permanent, that means that Medicare’s per-person budget will have been cut by more than 15 percent by the year 2022.

4. Chronic conditions and end of life illnesses are extraordinarily expensive.

They’re not proposing to do anything about Medicare’s biggest cost problem: the care that’s provided to the severely ill, especially in the final year of life. As the Dartmouth Atlas reports, “Patients with chronic illness in their last two years of life account for about 32% of total Medicare spending.” That comes to nearly 2.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years, based on current projects. And yet the GOP is proposing to slash, not increase, funding for research that might help us provide end-of-life care more effectively and humanely.

The elderly are particularly prone to other costly chronic conditions like cancer and diabetes, which can be treated much more effectively – and much less expensively – if they are caught early. Instead, their plan to deny Medicare to people aged 65 and 66 will lead to less early diagnosis and intervention, making us sicker and driving up Medicare’s costs.

It’s Your Funeral

That leads us to our “modest proposal.” Any way you look at it, we’re going to be seeing an increase in the number of funerals if Medicare benefits are cut. Research has shown that the survival for seniors in this country increased by 13 percent when Medicare was introduced in the 1960s.

It’s reasonable to assume that those survival rates will begin to fall again – and death rates will rise – if we impose mindless benefit cuts, instead of taking an intelligent cost management approach that focuses on expense drivers such as overtreatment, overbilling, and excessive profiteering.

The Republicans want drastic cost reductions without disturbing corporate profits. Using their logic, they shouldn’t take away our first two years of Medicare coverage. They should take away the last two years.  That would cut Medicare expenditures by more than a third.

And what do they care about one more funeral here or there – as long as it’s not theirs?

Cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security hurt PEOPLE. Raising tax rates on the wealthy is just money. They do not equate, do not trade them. Please join Monday’s big, national event and add your voice.

The “Lame Duck” — unelected — Congress is deep in negotiations over the ‘fiscal cliff.’ Republicans are holding us hostage again, Some lawmakers are pushing a deal that includes steep cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and more tax breaks for the richest 2%.

We voted to end tax cuts for the wealthy in November. We voted not to cut Medicare and Social Security for We, the People.

Monday, December 10th is International Human Rights Day, and all across the country, workers, seniors and supporters will be standing up for their rights at a series of vigils and actions to say NO to cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and NO to extending tax cuts for the richest 2%.

Working families across the country are coming together to tell their members of Congress:

- NO tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans;

- NO benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

Find an event in your area.

Find a MoveOn.org Fiscal Showdown event here.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

It’s almost impossible to believe: With the private-sector economy struggling and politicians worried about government spending, the biggest proposal on the table is raising the Medicare age to 67. That would take far more out of household budgets than it would save in government spending – and the savings would be short-lived.

What’s more, it would impose terrible hardships on lots of people. Why do the truly terrible ideas always seem to become the really Big Ideas?

Oddly, John Boehner won’t come right out and say what he’s proposing. Instead he throws out a large figure – $600 billion in cuts over ten years – and says somewhat obliquely that he supports a proposal from former Clinton White House official Erskine Bowles. Since that proposal discussed raising the Medicare age, journalists and insiders have inferred (undoubtedly rightly) that Boehner is endorsing that option.

But he won’t speak the words. He’ll only say “$600 billion” and some mumbo-jumbo that comes out sounding like he’s saying “that thing that Bowles wants to do.”

You know … that thing.

That “thing” — raising the Medicare eligibility age — is once again under serious discussion. It’s an idea Yale Professor Jacob Hacker called “the single worst idea for Medicare reform” (if by reform we mean “slashing.”) And it’s not just a terrible thing to do to Medicare. It’s also a terrible idea for health care costs, job creation … in fact, for the entire economy.

A Kaiser Foundation study showed that “raising Medicare’s eligibility to 67 in 2014 would generate an estimated $5.7 billion in net savings to the federal government, but also result in an estimated net increase of $3.7 billion in out-of-pocket costs for 65- and 66-year-olds, and $4.5 billion in employer retiree health-care costs.”

So it would save $5.7 billion from the Federal budget in the first year, but it would cost everyone else $8.2 billion. That means it would increase overall health care costs by $2.5 billion.

“Among the estimated 5 million affected 65- and 66-year-olds,” the Kaiser study reports, “about two in three would pay an average of $2,200 more for their health care in 2014 than they would have paid if covered under Medicare.”

And those costs would skyrocket in the following years.

Raising the Medicare age would exert enormous cost pressure on employer health insurance plans, too. That can only lead to three possible outcomes:

1) Profits fall for companies with American jobs, leading to more offshoring/outsourcing and lowering corporate profits.

2) Unemployment rises as employers cut jobs to offset the added expense. It would be worst for 66 and 67-year olds, who will be considered impossibly costly job hires.

3) Health insurance benefits cover even less cost in coming years, as employers offset the cost by demanding higher copays and deductibles and limiting the types of services covered.

The likeliest outcome is some mixture of all three.

Why is Washington seriously considering such a foolish proposal?  Because government spending means less pressure to ask the wealthy to pay their fair share. And it means everybody pays the price.

You’ve heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul, haven’t you? You might call this “an appalling robbery to pay Peterson” — Pete Peterson, that is. He’s the billionaire anti-government activist who’s been working to cut Medicare and Social Security – and get lower tax rates for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations – for decades.

Billionaires: Heads they win, tails … well, you know the rest.