Keeping Medicare Safe and Solvent

Members of the Democratic Party should encourage the repeal of the prohibition clause of the Federal 2003 Medicare prescription drug law which bans the Secretary of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies.

Other changes to Medicare which should be supported include provisions to stop paying private Medicare plans anything more than traditional Medicare, to include a drug benefit in traditional Medicare, and to lowering the age of Medicare eligibility.

In addition, we should support a clarification by CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) with regard to improper interpretation and erroneous implementation of an "improvement standard." This misinterpretation results in improper denial of coverage to Medicare patients with chronic conditions, including "people with Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), spinal cord injuries, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, hypertension, arthritis, heart disease, and stroke. Further, the erroneous standard disproportionately affects people who have low-incomes, as well as African-Americans and Hispanics." [1]

"Neither the Medicare statute nor its implementing regulations mentions or suggests an improvement standard in the context of diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury...The general statutory standard for Medicare coverage is one of medical necessity; that is, the standard is whether a given service is 'reasonable and necessary.' The same subsection of the law does use the word 'improve,' but only in the specific and limited context of authorizing Medicare coverage 'to improve the functioning of a malformed body member.' This use of 'improve' is the only reference to improvement in the statute...[T]here is no overarching improvement standard in the Medicare statute." [2]

In the absence of CMS action, the President should be encouraged to issue an Executive Order directing CMS to take appropriate steps.


1. Removing a Major Barrier to Necessary Care: The Medicare "Improvement Standard" Advocacy & Education Initiative

2. How the 'Improvement Standard' Improperly Denies Coverage to Medicare Patients with Chronic Conditions

Copies of this posting were sent as e-mails using Congress.org to President Barack Obama (D), Senator Al Franken (D-MN), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Representative Collin C. Peterson (D-MN 7th).

Separation of Church and State?

Our founding fathers opposed the institutionalization of religion into government, and purposely kept the Constitution itself free of references to God. The first priority of the amendments in the Bill of Rights was to erect a church-state wall. When Benjamin Franklin proposed during the Constitutional Convention that each day begin with a prayer to God for guidance, his suggestion was defeated.

Since our nation's founding, opponents of America's secularism have repeatedly sought to breach the wall of separation between religion and government. It was not until the "Red Scare" of the 1950s, with it's fear of communism and the atheism that it espoused, that politicians in Washington practically fell over each other in their efforts to prove their piety. It was in 1954 that the phrase "under God," was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, thus making it a public prayer as well as a patriotic oath. (Ironically, it has been the addition of those words that has resulted in the banishment of the pledge from public schools.) In 1955 Congress added the words "In God We Trust" to all paper money. In 1956 "E Pluribus Unum" was replaced with "In God We Trust" as the nation's official motto.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled as unconstitutional efforts to inject religion into government, yet we are told almost daily how the founding fathers wanted this to be a Christian nation. We are told repeatedly that we must have religion in order to have values. People's rights are routinely denied with recitation of Old Testament value judgements. Non-Christian religions are demonized with distortions and untruths about those faiths. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars practically became holy wars with all of the religious justifications that were regularly cited.

Our founding fathers would be vehemently opposed to current efforts to put Christianity into our government. If people really cared about the values that this nation was founded on, they would stop using religion as a qualification for seeking public office, and they would oppose the demonizing of those who choose to respect the Establishment clause (church/state separation) of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights of our nation's Constitution.

Additionally, I believe that government itself should have a blind eye when it comes to religious matters. Laws should apply equally to both religious and non-religious organizations, assets, incomes, etc. To do otherwise is to give religion special status, and invites corruption of religious institutions as well as of government.

Newt Gingrich Lies About Chilean Privatized Retirement

Newt wants Wall Street to get a hold of the $2.6 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund, as well as the money coming in yearly from payroll taxes. And he wants private firms to make money from 20% administrative costs (administrative costs for Social Security are currently less than 2%).

In the Chilean privatized retirement scheme that Newt loves so much, Chilean workers pay 10% of their salaries to personal retirement accounts, plus another 2% for the pension fund managers. It doesn't matter to Gingrich that about half of all retirement payments from the private accounts have to be subsidized, and that 40% of retirees are paid only from government (public) funds.

Newt continues to spout the lie that the system is voluntary, and that it has not cost the Chilean government anything, because apparently if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.