Medicare: Where is the anger?

LOOK FOR US ON GOFUNDME.COM: RODGER MALCOLM MITCHELL

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

============================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

If you aren’t angry about this, you are taking way too much Xanax:

–All your working life you send your FICA dollars to the federal government. But why? The federal government never can run short of dollars, has no need for your dollars and in fact, never uses your dollars.

It created the very first dollars, and continues to create all the dollars it needs. That is why federal spending adds dollars to the economy and federal taxing takes dollars out of the economy (i.e. destroys dollars).

–Even after all those years of paying, you discover that you will be charged for Medicare Part B Medically necessary services: Services or supplies that are needed to diagnose or treat your medical condition and that meet accepted standards of medical practice.

Preventive services: Health care to prevent illness (like the flu) or detect it at an early stage, when treatment is most likely to work best.)

— Depending on which Medicare plan you take, you might have a $5,000 deductible you must cover with your own dollars or insurance.

And/or you may pay $3,000 – $3500 a year — per person — for a Medicare supplement plan, to cover the many things the federal government won’t cover. And the cost of that Medicare supplement plan keeps going up.

So you unnecessarily send your hard earned dollars to a government that neither needs nor uses those dollars, and you find that your coverage is being cut every year and your costs go up.

Why? Because of the Big Lie which, very briefly, is:

Medicare is running short of dollars but you have plenty of dollars.

If the federal government spends money, we’ll have higher taxes or inflation like Zimbabwe, but if you spend your own money, it costs you nothing.

The federal government needs to cut costs, but you don’t.

This is what people believe, because it is what they have been told.

The federal government cannot run short of dollars. Never, never, ever. It invented the dollar, and it creates dollars all the dollars it needs simply by paying bills. There is no such thing as “unsustainable” federal spending.

The federal government cannot go broke, and so, no federal agency can go broke. Not Medicare, not Social Security, not the military, not the Supreme Court, not Congress, not the White House — not any federal agency.

Even if all federal taxes fell to $0, the federal government could pay all its bills and all its so-called “debt” today. No problem at all.

Federal spending never has caused a Zimbabwe-like hyper-inflation — not in 230 years or recessions, depressions and wars — and it never will. The U.S federal government controls the value of the dollar, totally.

Health care is among the largest expenses you experience, but you have been told the federal government can’t afford it. So you pay the FICA tax, a tax that falls most heavily on the middle class — a tax that does not pay for Medicare or anything else. FICA pays for nothing.

You don’t like a single payer “free Medicare for All” plan, because that would be “socialism,” which you don’t like, although you have no idea what socialism is (you have been told it’s bad, like Cuba or Russia or something).

And doesn’t Canada have that, and don’t people have to wait months for surgeries?  (Well, no and no, but the politicians don’t want you to know that. Canada’s politicians are no better than ours

So free Medicare for All is “extreme” (or so you’ve been told) and you would prefer to pay thousands of dollars every year for FICA and a Medicare Supplement and Medicare Part D (drugs), and receive less coverage than a federally paid, fully funded, fully covering “Medicare for All” plan would give you.

Smart.

Oh, but wait. You say you’re not old enough for Medicare? You get “free” private insurance through your employer?

Well, it’s not exactly free because you pay a percentage, and even if you don’t, your employer figures in medical costs when determining what he can afford what salary to pay you.

So, one way or another, you pay for health care insurance, instead of getting it free in a single payer, Medicare for All plan.

But you like your private insurance, because it covers everything (like Medicare for All would).

Everything?  Are you sure?

From Time Magazine, March 14, 2016 You Only Think You’re Covered

Danny Postell and his wife Linda get their health insurance through Blue Cross, Blue Shield. Linda’s doctor and their local hospital were both listed as in-network providers, so the Postells didn’t think they’d have to pay any more out of pocket for little Luke’s birth.

The a stream of mysterious bills started rolling in: $1,746, $240 per day. Wasn’t all this — a total of $4,279 — covered by insurance?

No. While the hospital was in-network, the neonatal, intensive-care unit at the same facility was not.

Gotcha!

Sometimes it’s just a few hundred dollars if the person reading a lab report is out of network. But it easily can be tens of thousands of dollars if someone’s spent days in an in-network hospital and not know that the attending physician was out of network.

Or, if you go to the nearest emergency room, your insurance company will bill as if you went to an in-network hospital. But an out-of-network doctors or medical staff can still send you an invoice.

In Texas, for example, 20% of hospitals that the top three  insurance companies considered in-network had no in-network emergency-room doctors on staff.

The issue pits three powerful players in the health-care industry —  hospitals, physicians groups and insurance companies. (Notice that patients are not part of any powerful group.)

So, we have three choices:

1. Continue paying FICA, Medicare Supplement and Medicare Part D premiums to receive almost, but not quite, full coverage, at a big cost.
2. Or, we can get not, really “free” coverage from our employers — or pay it all directly — and learn we don’t have as much coverage as we thought.
3. Or, we can vote for really free, really full coverage, courtesy of the federal government (which doesn’t need FICA or any other tax money to pay its bills).

Yeah, I know.  It’s “socialism,” and it’s “radical,” and it’s “too good to be true.” That’s what the bribed politicians and the bribed media tell us, and we believe them.

We don’t even get angry. And we suckers will just keep on paying more and getting less.

That’s what suckers do.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

=======================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

PLEASE HELP US GET THE WORD OUT
LOOK FOR US ON GOFUNDME.COM: RODGER MALCOLM MITCHELL

========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

===================================================================================
Ten Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually Click here
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Recessions begin an average of 2 years after the blue line first dips below zero. A common phenomenon is for the line briefly to dip below zero, then rise above zero, before falling dramatically below zero. There was a brief dip below zero in 2015, followed by another dip – the familiar pre-recession pattern.
Recessions are cured by a rising red line.

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Mitchell’s laws:
•Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes..
•No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth.
•Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
•A growing economy requires a growing supply of money (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
•Deficit spending grows the supply of money
•The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
•The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

•Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and the rest..
•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between rich and poor.
•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY