Medicare changing the cost-sharing structure means that Medicare will go from paying 80% of your medical expenses to paying only 60 0r 70% with you picking up the additional 30 - 40%. They then will force you to buy medigap coverage that will have a high deductible that must be satisfied prior to the insurance paying anything. The number that has been tossed around was over three thousand dollars. Oh, btw the government will raise their premiums and moving younger people out of medicare, the insurance companies will raise their premiums also. The average SS benefit is $1,177 or $14,124 annually. Between insurance premiums, deductibles and copays, a senior will be lucky to have $7 or $8 thousand left.

Medicaid will be equally bad. Cash strapped states will reduce continue reducing their Medicaid rolls and more and more doctors will refuse to take Medicaid patients.

I guess that wouldn't be "pragmatic."

How many times have I read that people who are making $250,000 a year aren't rich and can't possibility maintain a bare minimum of a life style now and surely can't afford to pay any more in taxes? But now I'm reading that people on a much smaller limited income can afford drastic increases to Medicare premiums, Medigap coverage and high deductibles at the same time have their income cut.

Ronald Reagan!

"When I was in Norway one of the Norwegian politicians sat next to me at a dinner and said, "You know, there's one good thing that President Obama has done that we never anticipated in Europe. He's shown the Europeans that we can never depend upon America again. There's no president, no matter how good he sounds, no matter what he promises, we're never again going to believe the patter talk of an American President.

Mr. Obama has cured us. He has turned out to be our nightmare. Our problem is what to do about the American people that don't realize this nightmare that they've created, this smooth-talking American Tony Blair in the White House."

The entire world is watching. So let's seize this moment to show why the United States of America is still the greatest nation on Earth. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

Uh, so let's get going, there's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids.

Cutting the budget at a time of Lesser Depression will be disastrous.  Pulling that much money out of the economy at a time of deflation will only deflate the economy further -- why is that so hard for you to understand?

I don't give one good godd*mn what people say they want.  I expect leadership that's better than that.  I expect a President and a Congresswoman to have a basic understanding of how the economy functions, as well as a basic reading of American history -- and either of those two knowledge bases would inform them quite clearly that cutting government spending right now will seriously harm real people.

You cannot pull $1-3 trillion from a $20 trillion economy and have it not go off like an economic bomb.  You especially cannot pull that kind of money from the people most likely to put it into the economy, ie. the non-wealthy.

Why are we even talking about the deficit?  How did Obama so lose control of the narrative that we have quit talking about how necessary it is for the government to spend to create jobs?

Where is the fierce urgency of now for the people who desperately want work?  And surely polling indicates that the American people care more about jobs than the deficit, so if Obama is in fact guided by polls, why isn't he responding to that care?

Face it:  this austerity plan is nothing but a tool for asset-stripping.  The middle classes and the poor selling what assets they have at rock bottom prices just to get cash to survive.  Public entities privatizing in order to keep basic services alive.  And Obama -- and Pelosi too -- are colluding with that.

Cuts that protect entitlements.

I can think of no better way to protect "entitlements" than cutting them...

Hey.

But let's talk about "austerity," shall we?  Do you truly believe that what people want is a life of austerity?  What if we called it something else - like, say, government-imposed deprivation?  Because isn't that what we're talking about?

"Austerity" is something one chooses - like monks, for example, or others in religious life who have taken a vow of poverty, or those in the secular world who believe that the less one surrounds one's self with, the less emphasis one places on "things," and the acquisition and accumulation of them, the better one is able to focus on one's inner life.

And how about "sacrifice?"  Now, there's a noble and moral word for you.  Another word of choice, not imposition, which is what is happening here.  No one is choosing to sacrifice their financial well-being, their ability to manage retirement and old age, and those who lose their jobs as a result of this deal or that deal I believe are going to be hard-pressed to take any satisfaction from sacrificing their jobs to the glory of deficit reduction.

No one's "asking" us to "sacrifice" or lead a life of "austerity," ABG; this isn't going to be a choice we get to make.  No one's going to be getting a postcard where they can check off the box that says, "Yes!  I want to wait until age 67 to be eligible for Medicare" or "No, thanks!  I don't want to wait - I'll be ready at 65."  There will be no official form in the mail that asks us to choose how we want our Social Security calculated.  No, these decisions will be made for us, so, as far as I'm concerned, this is not the choice of austerity or sacrifice, it is government-imposed deprivation - because to "deprive" means "to take away."

No one who has been in front of a camera, speaking into a microphone, standing at a podium, sitting at an anchor desk, has been honest with the American people about what this manufactured crisis will mean to them.  And when you're not honest with people, asking their opinion about what you've been telling them is more likely than not going to get you the answer you're looking for.  When people are asked, they overwhelmingly reject increases in the age of eligibility and decreases in benefits from SS and Medicare - so how bright do you have to be to understand that whatever "compromise" people say they favor does NOT include these things?

"Most people" do not want more uncertainty in their lives.  "Most people" do not want to look back at their hard work and be told to wait longer to get less, and too bad if that means no retirement.  "Most people" do not want to realize that all the personal sacrifice they've made for their children - because most of us who are parents have sacrificed for our kids - it comes with the territory - is likely to mean little if there are no jobs for them, or the jobs there are won't allow them be financially independent.  

The "give the people what they want" model doesn't really work because they want conflicting things.  When this Congress went into session, the number 1 priority was jobs.

Therefore, where are the jobs?

For years, people have favored the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

Where is the repeal of those cuts?

Unsurpisingly, after being bombarded by deficit talk, more Americans now want deficit reduction, even if in practice that threatens their other priorities.

From Greg Sargent:

The Beltway deficit feedback loop: For the longest time, polls indicated that the deficit ranked low on the list of voter concerns, showing public opinion to be strikingly out of sync with official Washington's prioritizing of the deficit over job creation.

But this morning brings a new poll from the Washington Post and Pew Research that finds a whopping 81 percent now think the deficit is a major problem that should be dealt with now, rather than when the economy improves. Tellingly, that number has jumped even among Democrats.

When you have leading officials in both parties -- starting with all Republicans and a handful of moderate Dems -- acting as if reining in the deficit is so urgent that it requires more attention than creating jobs, people start to tell pollsters they agree. This helps create a climate in which Dems lose any incentive to make the case for more government spending to prime the recovery, which begins to vanish from the conversation.