– Two More Major Problems For Social Security & Medicare
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Medicare
One Nation, Under Sedation: Medicare Paid For Nearly 40 MILLION Tranquilizer Prescriptions In 2013
– One Nation, Under Sedation: Medicare Paid for Nearly 40 Million Tranquilizer Prescriptions in 2013 (ProPublica, June 10, 2015):
Congress wouldn’t allow Medicare to pay for benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Ativan until 2013. Now, the medications are among the most prescribed in its drug program.
This story was co-published with the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald and Health News Florida.
In 2012, Medicare’s massive prescription drug program didn’t spend a penny on popular tranquilizers such as Valium, Xanax and Ativan.
The following year, it doled out more than $377 million for the drugs.
Bankrupt U.S. Government Slashing Payments To Doctors By 43%; Medicare Patients To Be Rejected Nationwide
H/t reader squodgy:
“Whatever happened to the HIPPOCRATIC OATH?
Was there a typo when Obamacare came in & it is now the HYPOCRITIC OATH?”
– Bankrupt government slashing payments to doctors by 43%; medicare patients to be rejected nationwide (Natural News, Jan 7, 2014):
As we’ve warned for months, just because Americans are required to have health insurance coverage under regulations contained in the Affordable Care Act, that doesn’t mean that they will have access to care.
If you recall, the entire purpose behind Obamacare, according to the president and the law’s backers, was only to insure something like 14 or 15 million people, because at the time the measure was being debated, the vast majority of Americans — well over 80 percent — had health insurance. What’s more, the bulk of those insured had private sector plans, and most were insured through employers; the number of Americans on taxpayer-subsidized coverage, like Medicaid, was minimal.
We’re Relying on Phantom Wealth to Fund Our Retirement
– We’re Relying on Phantom Wealth to Fund Our Retirement (Of Two Minds, Aug 12, 2014):
Phantom wealth cannot possibly fund unprecedented retirement and healthcare promises.
The narrative that Social Security, Medicare and pension funds invested in stocks and bonds can fund the retirement of 65 million people is a misleading fantasy. The sad reality is we can’t fund the enormous expense of retirement/healthcare for 20% of the populace out of our national earned income, and the savings that have been set aside are either fictitious (the Social Security Trust Fund) or based on phantom wealth created by speculative asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate.
…
Killing The ‘We Paid Our Taxes; We Earned Our Benefits’ Social Security Ponzi Meme
– Killing The “We Paid Our Taxes; We Earned Our Benefits” Social Security Ponzi Meme ( Ludwig von Mises Institute,, Nov 22, 2013):
“We paid our Social Security and Medicare taxes; we earned our benefits.” It is that belief among senior citizens that President Obama was pandering to when, in his second inaugural address, he claimed that those programs “strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers.”
If Social Security and Medicare both involved people voluntarily financing their own benefits, an argument could be made for seniors’ “earned benefits” view. But they have not. They have redistributed tens of trillions of dollars of wealth to themselves from those younger.
Social Security and Medicare have transferred those trillions because they have been partial Ponzi schemes.
Read moreKilling The ‘We Paid Our Taxes; We Earned Our Benefits’ Social Security Ponzi Meme
Obamacare: Where Corporations Come First | Brainwash Update (Video)
YouTube Added: Nov 13, 2013
Description:
Abby Martin calls out the corporate media for its incessant superficial coverage of the Obamacare website, all the while ignoring both the successes and the truly legitimate criticisms of the Affordable Care Act.
‘Gunpoint Medicine’: U.S. Government May Force Doctors To Accept Obamacare And Medicare Patients
FYI.
– U.S. government may force doctors to accept Obamacare and Medicare patients, eventually at gunpoint (Natural News, Nov 3, 2013):
The primary tool of socialism is force, and while that force usually begins with good intentions codified into law, it inevitably ends up with the kind of force used by Mao Zedong to murder millions of his own citizens. “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” he famously stated, and Obama-supporting democrats are following in his footsteps.
Word from the street is that Kathleen Murphy, a democrat running for the House, wants to make it a legal requirement that doctors accept Medicare and Obamacare patients.
Many doctors, of course, have already announced that will not accept such patients because they would go bankrupt if they did. The government’s payout on medical services rendered to patients in these groups is a total joke, you see: doctors sometimes receive only 30% of what they actually billed. And they can’t negotiate, either. The government simply tells you what you “get” to receive in terms of payment, regardless of how much you actually billed as a doctor.
So forcing doctors to accept Medicare / Obamacare patients is the same as forcing them to work for free. Most doctors won’t work for free, as they have their own families to financially support, so they’ll simply quit the industry altogether. That, in turn, will cause a radical worsening of the existing doctor shortage across the USA, resulting in yet more people going without health care.
Force doctors to practice medicine at gunpoint
50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam That Is About To Collapse
– 50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam That Is About To Collapse (Economic Collapse, Feb 24, 2013):
The U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we die. In the United States today, the health care industry is completely dominated by government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations. The pharmaceutical corporations spend billions of dollars to convince all of us to become dependent on their legal drugs, the health insurance companies make billions of dollars by providing as little health care as possible, and they both spend millions of dollars to make sure that our politicians in Washington D.C. keep the gravy train rolling. Meanwhile, large numbers of doctors are going broke and patients are not getting the care that they need. At this point, our health care system is a complete and total disaster. Health care costs continue to go up rapidly, the level of care that we are receiving continues to go down, and every move that our politicians make just seems to make all of our health care problems even worse. In America today, a single trip to the emergency room can easily cost you $100,000, and if you happen to get cancer you could end up with medical bills in excess of a million dollars. Even if you do have health insurance, there are usually limits on your coverage, and the truth is that just a single major illness is often enough to push most American families into bankruptcy. At the same time, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance company executives are absolutely swimming in huge mountains of cash. Unfortunately, this gigantic money making scam has become so large that it threatens to collapse both the U.S. health care system and the entire U.S. economy.
The following are 50 signs that the U.S. health care system is a massive money making scam that is about to collapse…
The Federal Government Hands Out Money To 128 Million Americans Every Month
– The Federal Government Hands Out Money To 128 Million Americans Every Month (Economic Collapse, Jan 10, 2013):
The number of Americans receiving money directly from the federal government has grown from 94 million in the year 2000 to over 128 million today. A shocking new research paper by Patrick Tyrrell and William W. Beach contains that statistic and a whole bunch of other very revealing numbers. According to their research, the federal government hands out money to 41.3 percent of the entire population of the United States each month. Overall, more than 70 percent of all federal spending goes to what they call “dependence-creating programs”. It is the most massive wealth redistribution scheme in the history of the world, and it continues to grow at a very rapid pace with each passing month. But can we really afford this? Of course we never want to see a single person go without food to eat or a roof to sleep under, but can the federal government really afford to support 128 million Americans every month? If millions more Americans keep jumping on to the “safety net” each year, how long will it be before it breaks and it is not there for anyone? The federal government is already drowning in debt. This year the U.S. national debt will easily blow past the 17 trillion dollar mark and we are rapidly heading toward financial oblivion. We are stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day with no end in sight. If we don’t get our finances in order as a nation, what will the end result be?
Read moreThe Federal Government Hands Out Money To 128 Million Americans Every Month
Why $16 Trillion Only Hints At The True U.S. Debt (WSJ)
From the WSJ article:
“The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees’ future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure.”
But wait it gets worse:
FLASHBACK:
– US National Debt At $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion!!! (NPR, August 6, 2011):
“If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”
– Prof. Kotlikoff: ‘The US is bankrupt’, Government Debt At $200 Trillion – 840 Percent of Current GDP (The Globe And Mail, Oct 27, 2010):
Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”
And again, prepare for total collapse.
– Cox and Archer: Why $16 Trillion Only Hints at the True U.S. Debt (Wall Street Journal, Nov 26, 2012):
Hiding the government’s liabilities from the public makes it seem that we can tax our way out of mounting deficits. We can’t.
A decade and a half ago, both of us served on President Clinton’s Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, the forerunner to President Obama’s recent National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. In 1994 we predicted that, unless something was done to control runaway entitlement spending, Medicare and Social Security would eventually go bankrupt or confront severe benefit cuts.
Eighteen years later, nothing has been done. Why? The usual reason is that entitlement reform is the third rail of American politics. That explanation presupposes voter demand for entitlements at any cost, even if it means bankrupting the nation.
A better explanation is that the full extent of the problem has remained hidden from policy makers and the public because of less than transparent government financial statements. How else could responsible officials claim that Medicare and Social Security have the resources they need to fulfill their commitments for years to come?
Read moreWhy $16 Trillion Only Hints At The True U.S. Debt (WSJ)
US Government Charges 91 People In $430 Million Medicare Fraud
– Authorities charge 91 in $430 million Medicare fraud (Reuters, Oct 4, 2012):
Ninety-one people including doctors, nurses and other medical professionals were charged criminally in a new sweep of Medicare fraud involving seven U.S. cities and $430 million in alleged false billing, officials said on Thursday.
It was the government’s second big raid in recent months after a similar effort in May alleged $452 million in fraud in Medicare, the U.S. health program for the elderly and disabled.
Read moreUS Government Charges 91 People In $430 Million Medicare Fraud
Are You Better Off? 40 Statistics That Will Absolutely Shock You
– Are You Better Off? 40 Statistics That Will Absolutely Shock You (Economic Collapse, Sep 6, 2012):
Are you better off today than you were four years ago? This is a question that comes up nearly every election. This year the Romney campaign has even created a Twitter hashtag for it: #AreYouBetterOff. The Democrats are making lots of speeches claiming that we are better off, and the Republicans are making lots of speeches claiming that we are not. So are most Americans actually better off than they were four years ago? Of course not. One recent poll found that only 20 percent of Americans believe that they are better off financially than they were four years ago. But the same thing was true four years ago as well. Our economy has been in decline and the middle class has been shrinking for a very long time. The Democrats want to put all of the blame on the Republicans for this, and the Republicans want to put all of the blame on the Democrats for this. A recent CNN headline defiantly declared the following: “Decline of middle class not Obama’s fault“, and this is the kind of thing we are going to hear day after day until the election in November. But obviously something has gone fundamentally wrong with our economy. So who should we blame?Sadly, you hear very little on the mainstream news networks or the talk radio shows about the institution that has the most power over our economy. The Federal Reserve has far more power over our financial system than anyone else does, but the media and both political parties tell us that the Federal Reserve is “above politics” and that their “independence” must never be questioned.
Read moreAre You Better Off? 40 Statistics That Will Absolutely Shock You
Seniors To Pay $60,000 More For Medicare Under Romney/Ryan Plan
– REPORT: Seniors Will Pay $60,000 More For Medicare Under Romney/Ryan Plan (ThinkProgress, Aug 24, 2012)
See also:
– Barack Obama And Mitt Romney Are Essentially The Same Candidate … 40 Facts
“The selection of the next president of the US will depend on one thing alone–which of the two candidates financed by the ruling private oligarchy has the most effective propaganda.”
“Whether you vote Republican or Democrat, the oligarchs will win.”
“If Americans had any sense, they would stay home and not vote.”
– Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: ‘War Criminals Run The State Department And The Entire US Government’
18 New Tax Hikes On Their Way Via Obamacare
Flashback:
– U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare … AS A TAX!!!
– U.S. SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS CORE OF OBAMA HEALTH CARE
– CHANGE: Obamacare Creates $17 TRILLION In Unfunded Liabilities (Video)
– The Obamacare Mandate: Obama VERSUS Obama (Video) (Hilarious!)
– Judge Napolitano On Obamacare And The Supreme Court (Video)
– New Obamacare Regulation Calls For Free Sterilization For All College Women
– Read My Lips: 18 New ‘Obamacare’ Taxes (Zerohedge, Aug 21, 2012):
Don’t worry, the ‘fiscal cliff’ will all be taken care of; have no fear, the market AAPL will hold up into the election to sustain Obama’s hope-and-change; and, as The Heritage Foundry blog reports, in that change, there are 18 new tax hikes on their way via Obamacare.Not only did the President and his partners in Congress take $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare, but they also raise taxes by $836.3 billion to pay for it, with $36.3 billion hitting Americans in 2013 alone. Here’s the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation‘s (JCT) updated cost of the Obamacare tax hikes and penalties.
Interview With Jim Marrs, Author Of ‘The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy’ (Video)
YouTube Added: 26.04.2012
In case the YouTube video ‘disappears’:
Books from Jim Marrs @Amazon.com:
– The Terror Conspiracy Revisited: What Really Happened On 9/11, And Why We’re Still Paying The Price
– The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America
And Now: Under New Guidelines Surgeons Won’t Have To Wait To Make Sure A Heart Has Stopped Beating Before Harvesting Organs
– Surgeons won’t have to wait to make sure a heart has stopped beating before harvesting organs under new guidelines (Daily Mail, Sep. 20, 2011):
Surgeons retrieving organs to be transplanted just after a patient’s heart has stopped beating will no longer have to wait to make sure it doesn’t start up again if new proposals are adopted.
At present when doctors are retrieving organs they have to wait at least two minutes to ensure it doesn’t spontaneously start again.
Critics now fear seriously ill patients could be viewed more like tissue banks than sick people if the plans to change rules about organ donation go ahead.
There is currently a ban on considering anyone to be a potential donor before doctors and family members have independently decided to stop trying to save them.
That is poised to be eliminated if the plans by the group that co-ordinates organ allocation in the United States are adopted.
US National Debt At $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion!!!
Related article:
– Prof. Kotlikoff: ‘The US is bankrupt’, Government Debt At $200 Trillion – 840 Percent of Current GDP (The Globe And Mail, Oct 27, 2010):
Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”
Laurence J. Kotlikoff served as a senior economist on President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and is a professor of economics at Boston University.
– A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion (NPR, August 6, 2011):
When Standard & Poor’s reduced the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, the United States suffered the first downgrade to its credit rating ever. S&P took this action despite the plan Congress passed this past week to raise the debt limit.
The downgrade, S&P said, “reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.”
It’s those medium- and long-term debt problems that also worry economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who served as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He says the national debt, which the U.S. Treasury has accounted at about $14 trillion, is just the tip of the iceberg.
“We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt,” Kotlikoff tells David Greene, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books.”
Kotlikoff explains that America’s “unofficial” payment obligations — like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — jack up the debt figure substantially.
“If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”
Read moreUS National Debt At $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion!!!
TrimTabs Finds Social Benefits Are Equal To 35 Percent Of All US Wages And Salaries
After yesterday TrimTabs Charles Biderman made it all too clear who runs the stock market, today the same firm exposes the system’s dirty socialist core: “In a research note, TrimTabs highlights that government social benefits —including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance—were equal to 35% of all private and public wages and salaries in the 12 months ended January, up from 10% in 1960 and 21% in 2000.
“We have no quibble with the view that the U.S. economy is expanding at a moderate pace,” says Madeline Schnapp, Director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs. “But we believe Wall Street does not fully appreciate the degree to which growth depends on government support.”
Schanpp’s conclusion: QE3 is inevitable, leaving aside debt monetization concerns, as without it the US welfare state will collapse. DXY: meet 50, just in time for the NYSE Borse to extends its rollup with the Zimbaber stock exchange.
More from TrimTabs:
“The pressure on the federal government to decrease runaway spending is intense, while state and local governments are slashing payrolls to eliminate deficits,” notes Schnapp. “Further declines in public-sector employment and transfer payments bode ill for wages and salaries, and they will exact an even larger toll on final demand.”“We think very few market participants understand that the economy has become heavily dependent on government largesse,” cautions Schnapp. “We are hardly convinced that the recovery can persist without outside aid, so we expect the Fed to roll out QE3 shortly after QE2 ends at the close of June.”
One thing is certain: socialist status quo under Uber-Comrade Iossif Vissarionovich Bernankestein must continue as usual, or else US will no longer be able to say it is not Libya.
Read moreTrimTabs Finds Social Benefits Are Equal To 35 Percent Of All US Wages And Salaries
Censored Ron Paul’s 20/20 ABC News Interview With John Stossel (MUST-SEE!!!)
The videos are a flashback and a must-see.
More about Ron Paul:
– Rep. Ron Paul of Texas Wins CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Again
– Ron Paul 2012 – Can you Hear us Now?
– Ron Paul: ‘Is the Gold Really There? Who Owns It?’
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President Obama To Enact ‘Death Panels’
WASHINGTON — When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.
Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.
Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.
The final version of the health care legislation, signed into law by President Obama in March, authorized Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or wellness visits. The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.
John Williams: ‘Times That Try Our Souls’ (U.S. Bankruptcy – Hyperinflation – Great Depression), Preparedness Can Save Your Life
Highly recommended reading.
The Greatest Depression is here.
When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admits to seeing an “unusually uncertain” economy ahead, it’s pretty terrifying to imagine what he’s really thinking. What John Williams envisions-and he’s by no means looking to the far horizon-is a systemic collapse, a hyperinflationary great depression and the cessation of normal commerce. Despite that bleak outlook, however, when the economist and editor of ShadowStats.com sat down for this exclusive Energy Report interview, he also had some good news.
The Energy Report: A few months back, John, you said, “if you strangle liquidity you always contract an economy and deliberately or not, liquidity is being strangled, resulting in sharp declines in consumer credit, commercial and industrial loans.” Does this mean it would spur more economic growth if banks actually started lending?
John Williams: It sure wouldn’t hurt. We’re still seeing contractions in liquidity, and that’s adjusted for inflation. In real terms, M3 money supply is down almost 8% year-over-year. It’s the sharpest fall in the post -World War II era. It’s not so much the depth of the decline in the liquidity or the duration, but the fact that the liquidity turns negative year-over-year that signals the economy turning down.
We had the signal in December of 2009 indicating intensification of the downturn, in this case, within six to nine months. We’re in that timeframe now and see softening numbers. People are talking about a weaker economy. Even Mr. Bernanke has described the economy as “unusually uncertain” in terms of its outlook. Wording like that from the Fed is a pretty good indication that something’s afoot.
Meltup (Documentary): The Beginning Of A US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation.
Added: 13. Mai 2010
US: Death-Spiral Intercept
Well well well…. ( The origins of the next crisis – William White, the former chief economist at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) gave an important speech at George Soros’ Inaugural Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) conference in Cambridge.):
In essence, White was saying: “it’s the debt, stupid.” When aggregate debt levels build up across business cycles, economists focused on managing within business cycles miss the key ingredient that leads to systemic crisis. It should be expected that politicians or private sector participants worried about the day-to-day exhibit short-termism. But White says it is particularly troubling that economists and their models exhibit the same tendency because it means there is no long-term oriented systemic counterweight guiding the economy.
This short-termism that White refers to is what I call the asset-based economic model. And, quite frankly, it works – especially when interest rates are declining as they have over the past quarter century. The problem, however, is that you reach a critical state when the accumulation of debt and the misallocation of resources is so large that the same old policies just don’t work anymore. And that’s when the next crisis occurs.
It seems that Mr. Harrison has it figured out. He goes on to spend a lot of digital ink on the periphery of the bottom line, which is that we continue to think of debt in terms of service costs (indeed, you’ll hear Bernanke talk about it, but never about the actual gross financial system debt outstanding.)
When you boil all this down, however, you get to the following chart (trendline added by moi):
You can see what’s going on here – each “crisis” leads to lower lows and lower highs.
This presents two problems:
Pfizer ordered to pay up over ‘AIDS-like’ virus infections
In what is being hailed as a major victory for workers in the biotech and nanotech fields, a former scientist with pharmaceutical firm Pfizer has been awarded $1.37 million for being fired after raising the alarm over researchers being infected with a genetically engineered “AIDS-like” virus.
Becky McClain, a molecular biologist from Deep River, Connecticut, filed a lawsuit against Pfizer in 2007, claiming she had been wrongly terminated for complaining about faulty safety equipment that allowed a “dangerous lentivirus” to infect her and some of her colleagues.
The Hartford Courant describes the virus as “similar to the one that can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.” Health experts testified that the virus has affected the way McClain’s body processes potassium, which they say causes McClain to suffer complete paralysis as often as a dozen times per month, the Courant reports.
McClain’s lawsuit (PDF) asserted that Pfizer had interfered with her right to free speech, and that she should have been protected from retaliation by whistleblower legislation.
Read morePfizer ordered to pay up over ‘AIDS-like’ virus infections