Page 15 - Means Testing News Today

To afford it. we should extend those credits to working class families. i think quite frankly myself we need to drop medicare to a 55 or 50 and allow people to buy into that program with means testing so that working class families can afford it. places like youngstown and akron, people say when they are 50, 55 years old, how much longer do i have to work until i can refitire and every time it comes down to health care. do i have a plan that i can afford. and if we drop them to allow them to buy...

Do is broadly right and increase defense spending and in ways that dont add to the deficit. what i would suggest he expand and look at the entire budget. that is the real challenge here. you could pay for these things with tweaks and entitlement programs, quite frankly. >> exactly. >> you could go back to some things. president obama in 2014 proposed both means testing for medicare and what is called change cpi which slows down the growth of the program. doesnt cut anything but slows down the ra...

Go through this process, because it does seem this bill is not going to stay the way it is. youre in the senate. as a guideline, a health savings account is good as long as you have money to add to it, right? youre not going to give me enough money to pay for my care completely, youre going to help me. when you do means testing on a lot of people that youre going to cut in the house plan, it doesnt matter what youre planning to give them. its not going to be enough. it seems like youre catering ...

Chamber of commerce republican. >> exactly. >> thats the bait and switch. not that theyre rich, but theyre doctrineaire in their right wing plutocratic ideology. >> they typically do usher in the economic elite who come in and pillage the economy. the people hes putting in, someone like mnuchin who literally made money taking away peoples homes if they missed a 29 cent payment, people who have been rapacious in their attacks on the working class. not to mention the fact that theyre paired with t...

Raising the retirement age right now. nobody else is running so far on means testing. and mike huckabee another potential republican candidate criticized him, how dare you, this contract with the american people. everybody knows that social security has to change. doesnt he get credit for saying so? >> i think so. one of the knocks on him is hes one of these eastern moderates. this sort of insulates him from the idea that hes moderate. this is a very radical idea. it also sets him up as the anti...

Medicaid, which almost doubled from 4.6% to 8%. over the next 25 years these programs will grow from about 7% of the economy to more than 14%. so i ask -- how are we going to pay for that? but for some people even raising the question means youre automatically anti-social security or against the elderly. that rhetoric might work for campaigning or special interest groups but it doesnt do much for the people who count on these programs. the "l.a. times" article that took me on raised a worthwhile...

Obamacare works is they give you a subsidy for an insurance plan. as you make more money, they take away more and more of the subsidy. this creates effectively a tax with people on low and moderate incomes. as they earn more money, they lose part of the subsidy. it adds on 5%, 10%, 15% to their tax rate. some people will work less. thats not a desirable economic effe effect. tweak the program to have less of that effect. any kinds of means tested entitlement plan -- >> any means testing in spite...

>> we have to start, as you know i made a proposal a few weeks ago in the context of the budget to say okay, lets just say under medicare that there would be means testing under part b, which is hospitalization and doctors -- it is doctors visits. and also under part d, which is prescription drugs. if you increase that means testing slightly you can save about $56 billion over the next ten years based on the presidents own budget. but in the next ten years you save about $450 billion. so that is...

I fought for means testing in medicare. i fought for raising the age limit on future retirees. that was completely rejected. those things i think make a big difference on our entitlement trajectory. i just dont see that kind of thing happening. but i would like to think its a step in the right direction which maybe we can work on tax reform. maybe there are some other things we can get done. the fed will start tapering. i want to get a foundation underneath this economy, get people back to work ...

Got them and weve got means testing in effect for the program exchanges, we got that and maybe a couple more things. but i think he might be able to get medical devices. thats the tricky one. that robs the program of about $5 billion over two years, about $29 billion over ten years or so. and the question then is, is that considered a mortal wound or serious wound against obama care? if the president believes it is, its a real underfinancing of obama care which will hurt it down the road, hes go...