Congratulations on your economic progression. But based on the ever increasing disparity in income, I would guess that more people trod my economic path than yours.

I made a lot more money in 1982 than I did in 1972. I made a lot more money in 1992 than I did in 1982. I made a lot more money in 2002 than I did in 1992.

I would say that if we are to not have rationing they will have to have a very high tax on every taxpayer, but then I am looking a bit further down the road than 2011 or is it 2013 when this new law is to go into effect? Rationing has to accompany the inability of the people to keep up with increased taxation.

Walter said, "what did they tell you when you tried to pay the other 40% out of your own pocket?"

So you will know about how this works out let me tell you that my Medigap company, BC/BS, sends me a monthly statement that shows what they paid and what I may have to pay and the tell me that Medicare either paid the remainder or will explain it. Well, every quarter I get my Medicare report about what they have been asked for and what they have paid. THE END.

I think I told you that physicians have to agree to take whatever Medicare thinks is fair for any treatment and they can collect nothing more. Me offering to pay that remaining share would be illegal for the doctor and the hospital to take and they would be in trouble.

Since you have been unable to understand what I have been trying to say I will try one more time and stop. I am giving you an example of bureaucrats determining what is fair to charge. No doctors or hospital administrator on the board that decides, just politicians. Do you fail to see what will happen with socialized medicine from our best example of it going today? Surely you can see that there would have to be federal groups, state groups and so on involved in these decisions. The bureaucracy we have from Medicare and Medicaid is a perfect example on a much smaller scale to what we will have.

Walter, have you bothered to watch the Gleen Beck segment with Daniel Hannan, yet? If not let me give you the link with the suggestion that if you scroll down to segment #3 you can see it with a minimum of exposure to Beck. I wonder if Beck brought Hannan in to lie for Republicans. He has been around many times and keeps up the same story. Actually I don't wonder that at all.

BTW, all you of the left persuasion, Beck is also a Libertarian, like da King.

Instead of clamoring for tax increases, we should be clamoring for spending cuts, unless we're suicidal.

I could agree to some of the trade measures you offered, but tariffs right now would be the Smoot-Hawley mistake all over again.

Say what you will about Reagan, but he turned the Carter disaster economy around and made it the most prosperous era of my lifetime. And he won the Cold War. I'll take that anytime. And about that alleged Reagan bubble that burst in 1987 – color me skeptical, because between 1986 and 1989, GDP increased 15.9%. No President has matched that 4-year record since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms

I'll admit that Obama was a tad to the left of Clinton, but the progressives had been eliminated (as they always are) through the scorn of the MSM. We ended up as we always do with a choice of right of center vs. centrist.

Here's what I would consider "fair" trade. We should be inspecting products coming into this country (if for other reason but national security). If we, for example ban DDT, we should ensure that we are not importing produce grown with DDT from a foreign source. Inasmuch as we prohibit child labor, we should ban products made with child labor. If, for example, a country's manufacturers evade production costs due to lax pollution controls, then we should charge a tariff, a percentage of the difference of production costs attributable to the lax pollution controls. Same thing for wages or any of the superior standards that the American worker has fought for. We should have a system of tariffs that encourages other countries to meet our standards. As it is, we are being encouraged to lessen our standards to compete in the world market. Thus the downward spiral where lower wages seek lower prices, causing producers to further lower wages (the most malleable of costs) to achieve lower prices, ad infinitum. I think that these tariffs are doable and would avoid the debacle of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.

Yes, Obama is reinflating the bubble of the financial industry, like Reagan did, like Greenspan did several times. The reason—not only is our level of government debt unsustainable, but so is our entire economic model of "free" trade.

shorter larry…..I want healthcare run like a business but I don't want healthcare run like a business

the lady that pays 100%….maybe she needs to shop around

A few years back I got dropped by my doctor because he stopped taking United Health Care. I was talking to someone on his staff and he said they paid worse then Medicare.

Obama did not inherit a different set of circumstances than Reagan recession-wise, but I never hear you qualify your opinion of Reagan's policies through the lens of historical circumstances. Even Bush Jr. inherited a recession, and then had 9/11 fall on top of it. Few, if any, Presidents inherit a perfect world. Granted, Obama inherited more problems than most. Still, the debt Obama is piling up is mainly Obama's choice. Going from a $3 trillion budget to nearly a $4 trillion budget in his first year is Obama's choice, and if he gets his way, it will go much, much higher. If Bush Jr. was wrong on fiscal policy (and he was), then Obama is much more wrong.

I also don't remember Obama running as a centrist. He ran mainly on ending the Iraq war, universal health care, global warming, and green energy. All liberal policy.

I'm going to assume your comment about "free" trade means you would support "fair" trade as the alternative. I think the alternative of isolationism would be counterproductive.

Your comment about Obama reinflating the bubble is spot on. That's exactly what our government is trying to do. Pretty ironic when Obama goes on and on about the failed policies of the past, as he tries to repeat them. That's politics, I guess.

I don't think you got the point I was trying to make when I said that they don't pay any more than they do for the endoscopy but a woman with no insurance gets to pay the whole thing and insurance companies are billed for the whole thing, also.

I want people to understand that Medicare, since it is like the Dems keep saying Socialized medicine will be like, isn't all hearts and flowers. Doctors agree to take whatever they pay for all procedures and this drives some doctors away from accepting new Medicare patients. If the uninsured and insurance companies have to pay the whole thing then Medicare should.

roybot is 78 yo. He's had a by-pass and cancer. I don't think any private insurer would touch roybot let alone for $400/mo.

the reason roybot is able to have insurance now is because he has paid for it his entire life.

I wouldn't be complaining

What I will say if defense of Obama, is that he has inherited a different set of economic circumstances than the others. However, as I see it, he is just trying to reinflate the bubble. It is all that is left. We are in the downward economic spiral that Ross Perot predicted "free" trade would bring.

Now lets get to the real bottom of the health care thing that the Dems are really talking. Obama said that words have meanings but when Dems talk about health care reform they really mean health insurance reform. I say that because they insist that public option (what meaning here) will not kill private insurance. Now this is really socialistic reasoning since I don't understand how companies that must make a profit can possible compete with one that can use tax money to make up its deficits.

Hey, Rev Red, why don't you explain to me how this kind of level playing field thinking is really level? Maybe Walter could get that explanation from Think Progress.

Lets see now, Walter. Think Progressive, Think Progress. There seems to be a very near same meaning in those words. Even Think Progress admits that that is what their name means.

I think that too many people don't understand that the supplemental insurance doesn't pay a very large amount. I sure didn't before I got involved in Medicare payments.

The main problem with Medicare is that providers have to take what they will pay and go on down the road. In my opinion, this causes those same providers to charge people with insurance more because they can get the money out of the insurance companies than from Medicare.

It is sad that if a provider agrees to take Medicare they have to take what they can get and write off the rest. My wife can get her med needs paid for by the same company that I pay about $150 per month for them to take up the slack ib Medicare and they sure don't do that, at all.

I asked my tree hugger dentist the other day if he will be glad to have some bureaucrat do his scheduling so he won't have to hire two receptionists who do the scheduling. He said no that he preferred things as they are. I just happened to be in his chair after calling the day before getting a crown reattached. I hardly think that a bureaucrat could have arranged that or that they would have tried to get the man who does my work to do that job.

We are headed for some big changes if we continue down the Obama road.