Name:	lotowner -	Reply
Subject:	"Don't Spend Your SS Increase for 2011"
Date:	10/10/2010 7:46:03 PM

WASHINGTON – As if voters don't have enough to be angry about this election year, the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an increase in their monthly benefits.

It would mark only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. The first year was this year.

Name:	MAJ USA RET -	Reply
Subject:	Chip Once for YES - Twice for NO
Date:	10/11/2010 9:08:46 AM

Whatever happens… including cuts in Social Security (which is a Ponzi scheme about to go bad) and Medicare… there is much pain to come.  ONLY fiscal austerity will save our great nation.  We will go the way of rioting Greece, and now France, unless we put a halt to the exploding debt and underfunded entitlements.  The longer we delay the pain the worse it will be.

Am I wrong?  Watch Illinois (unrecoverable without Federal bailout) and California (in critical condition).  The golden geese are taxpayers, small business, and big corporation.  So, how did the California geese handle it?  The fleeced geese fled if they could (hmmm… mixed metaphor).  Those that did not are being bled dry.  There’s no more money to be had to support the bloated entitlement situation.  Now, there will be fiscal pain in California… or the rest of the country will bail them out.

Fishy, should we bail out California and Illinois?  Not a complex question – answer is “yes” or “no”.

Name:	MAJ USA RET -	Reply
Subject:	Chip Once for YES - Twice for NO
Date:	10/11/2010 9:26:46 AM

ONE CHIRP – Yes, bail them out, we can’t afford to have states fail because of their unfettered fiscal policies.  We, that worked hard, should share the fruits of our labor to bolster the failed policies of entitlement states.  Only higher taxes can fund them – raise ours.  Redistribute wealth - share the pain of irresponsible behavior.

TWO CHIRPS – No, behavior is a result of its consequences.  If we bail them out, their debt will expand to fill the windfall.  Therefore, we require that they cut entitlements (pain) and bloated government.  We expect them to regard and respond to illegal immigration for what it is.  We expect them to respect the sources of their money – taxpayers. 

As go California and Illinois, so goes the United States of America.

Name:	Mack -	Reply
Subject:	Just Waiting
Date:	10/11/2010 8:11:02 PM

for the outfall of insane fiscal policy to arrive on the doorstep. And, it will. Just starting.
Just hope that mid-terms can at least restrict the spending spree in the District of Corruption enough to prevent an even more damaging 2011.

The current economic and political turmoil is causing a serious corrosion of TRUST in my country, and, I don't like it, at all, at all. At this point, I don't trust anybody on a ballot sheet, and polls show that I am not alone, Republican or Democrat.
Ripe ground for reactionary movement.
I have already apologized to my children for the mess I have left them to resolve.

Name:	lotowner -	Reply
Subject:	"Walking Away from Prescriptions"
Date:	10/13/2010 8:29:40 AM

Growing numbers of Americans with health insurance are walking away from their prescriptions at the pharmacy counter, the latest indication that efforts to contain costs may be curbing health-care consumption.

A review of insurance-claims data shows that so-called abandonment -- when a patient refuses to purchase or pick up a prescription that was filled and packaged by a pharmacist -- was up 55% in the second quarter of this year, compared with four years earlier.

The phenomenon coincides with rising co-payments for many drugs and increasing enrollment in high-deductible insurance plans that require patients to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars out of pocket before insurance kicks in.

Patients are deserting prescriptions for the most expensive drugs most often, according to the review by Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions, a health-care data company. For instance, nearly one in 10 new prescriptions for brand-name drugs were abandoned by people with commercial health plans in the quarter, up 88% from four years earlier, when the data were first tracked and before the recession began. Abandonment of generic drugs was higher, too, according to the data