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Medicare is key to Democrat’s upset win in NY congressional race.

by on May. 25, 2011, under Health

How did a Democrat win a Congressional seat in a district that always votes overwhelmingly Republican?  Medicare is the answer.  The Associated Press described the results:

The Democrat rode a wave of voter discontent over the national GOP’s plan to change Medicare and overcame decades of GOP dominance here to capture Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District.

…The special election that became a referendum on the health care plan for the nation’s seniors may serve as a warning shot to further GOP efforts to cut popular entitlement programs.

The Democratic candidate, Kathy Hochul, got the message right by saying we can’t decimate Medicare while giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies. It’s a simple message and it resonates with voters: young, old, independent, and even Republicans.

This was a special election to fill a seat in Congress vacated by a Republican who left office amid a scandal over his Craig’s List pick up posts and picture (looking buff with no shirt on). He was a married man who had campaigned on family values.  Yuck!  That guy won the 2008 election with 70% of the vote.

Republicans have attacked their own who have dared to speak against the Paul Ryan plan to turn Medicare into a  voucher system and hand it over to insurance companies.  The House of Representatives recently voted for the Ryan budget, and almost every Republican endorsed ending Medicare as we know it – or as Newt Gingrich put it,  “radical social engineering”. Democrats in the Senate will force a vote on the Ryan budget soon, so Republican senators can go on record with their position on the future of Medicare.

I’m looking forward to 2012 as I continue to blog about Medicare. What fun this is  going to be!

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 at 9:10 am and is filed under Health. Tags for this post: , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • http://aolnewa james hayes

    Sure, the democrats had a fake tea party guy in there to take 9% of the vote away. Cheating is how they win

  • medicareblogger

    Tea Party candidates and their influence in the Republican party will be a big help to Democrats.  Did Democrats come up with Christine O’Donnell in Delaware?  Dems will take all the help they can get.

  • Don

    We Republicans look forward to rebutting the Democrat’s Mediscare campaign in the months ahead.  Rep Paul Ryan is just gearing up, as are we.

    • medicareblogger

      I too am looking forward to the debate. Democrats are very fortunate that Republicans are being honest and upfront about their plans for Medicare.  Both sides will be able to present their vision of Medicare to voters and voters will decide which one they want.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to get down and dirty, and expensive.
       
      But maybe, just maybe, Democrats have a simple message this time around, which is what usually works in campaigns:  Republicans want to kill Medicare while protecting billion dollar tax breaks for oil companies. Is that too long for a bumper sticker?
       

      • Don

        Why Denise, are you encouraging the Democrats to demagogue the Medicare issue? 

    • Mary Tom Walker

      That is just what we Dems want to hear!!!!!!

    • TucsonGeek

      This just proves what I have always believed: the average voter is an imbecile. Medicare is unsustainable. So is Social Security. We simply cannot pay for it. There are not enough babies being born in this country to pay the bills for all those who are retiring. Unfortunately, the average dolt out there cannot understand this simple arithmetic.
      Look across the pond at Europe. Their social welfare systems are collapsing for the same reasons. That is our future. Don’t believe me? Then do some research on the net. Every economist who has been asked says the same thing. We are doomed. Less babies = less taxpayers = less revenue = no money to pay for all this crap. See Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, etc, for examples. They built systems designed to have a large amount of people paying into them. Then they stopped having children through abortion and birth control. The numbers have finally caught up to them and their populations are shrinking. Too bad no one thought about who was going to pay the bills once all these no child couples retire.

  • catsense

    Oh too funny, now there are ‘fake’ tea party candidates? Any relation to the RINO crowd?

  • medicareblogger

    Can you please provide a link to a report by an economist who says we are doomed?  From what I have read, the problem with Medicare is that spending is rising at a rate of over 6% per year. I think I’ve read that private insurance premiums are rising much faster, but that’s an aside.
    What I have read is that Medicare needs to slow the spending growth to around 3% per year to keep the program sustainable. The problem is that Medicare is a fee-for-service program where doctors make more money if they do more things.  And then doctors invest in imaging centers and order more expensive MRIs, PET scans, etc.
     
    The Affordable Care Act has some pieces that try to move away from fee-for-service, and hospitals have bought into this idea of Accountable Care Organizations where they will employ doctors and so will reduce the fee-for-service spending that is killing Medicare.
     
    As for Europe, I have not read that they are doomed because of their heath care systems, which are much more generous yet half as expensive as our system. France and Germany are doing just fine and they have the best health care in the world. If you can provide a link to an article that supports your claims, I’d be interested to read the information.

  • RH

    The tea party is no real movement, billionaire Koch brothers with their operative Armey created this frankenstein, it’s alive, and turning on its creators!:-) The GOP is merely reaping what they sowed!:-)

  • Don

    Denise, I feel that you misrepresented your evidence in your posting on Paul Ryan and the Joint Economic Committee.

    You depict that report as being from the committee itself.  But, when you actually look at the report, it clearly said it was produced by the staff of the chairman of the committee—-Senator Robert Casey, a Democrat.

    I didn’t see any evidence that this was a bipartisan report. No Republican signed it that I could see.   Your posting made it sound as if this was an official product of the entire committee.  That’s not what this report appears to be.

    • Don

      Is this why comments are closed on your Paul Ryan story?

    • Don

      Link to your story, so people can read it and judge for themselves: http://tucsoncitizen.com/medicare/2011/05/25/ryan-plan-would-double-health-care-costs-for-seniors-on-medicare/

      In paragraphs 2 and 3 of your article, you say that the report was from “the US Congress Joint Economic Committee.”  Not “the staff of the chairman,” which is what every page of the actual report says. 

      You then use this caption for your blockquote:  “Excerpts from the committee report.” 

      Based on that, I have to wonder if you meant to mislead your readers into thinking that this was a bipartisan report.  Again, I can’t find any evidence in your blog posting that the GOP members of the committee agreed with the report’s findings or participated in the report in any way.

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