Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Hannibal]

Target announcing that they are going to close stores in San Francisco, Philly, NYC, and Portland, due to skyrocketing theft.

Hmmm. What do those cities all have in common?

[Hannibal]

Democrats getting what they vote for.

[Mike]

Where do I sign up for my free hotel stay in Manhattan?

[WingsFan]

Target announcing that they are going to close stores in San Francisco, Philly, NYC, and Portland, due to skyrocketing theft.

Good, and they announced like other stores they are locking up different products in their stores to keep them from getting stolen. Go woke go broke...Or have a place of business in one of the crime-infested democratic sanctuary cities.

[Dr. Strangelove]

.

[THE_WIZARD_]

We need to bring back killing of Progs.

[Mike]

How do you feel about stoning?

[THE_WIZARD_]

I like it...as long as it isn't ditchweed.

[Mike]

Good info on the debt and entitlements that relates to the recent discussion here about the same.

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-biggest-issue-that-few-presidential-candidates-want-to-talk-about/

For reference:

• $1 million dollars: Roughly the average annual salary of a mid-range long snapper in the NFL.
• $1 billion dollars: Roughly the estimated value of an average-quality National Hockey League franchise.
• $1 trillion dollars: Roughly the gross domestic product, or total value of all goods and services produced in a year, in the state of Florida.

Got it? For shorthand, a million’s a guy, a billion’s a sports franchise, and a trillion’s a big and populous state.

When you pay your Social Security taxes, despite popular perceptions, that money does not go into any “trust fund.” There is no Scrooge McDuck-style Money Bin somewhere in Washington, storing all the money that current workers pay into Social Security for their retirement years. The federal government takes that money and spends it, and writes itself an I.O.U., and decides to worry about it later.

We are now much closer to “later” than we used to be. At $6.8 trillion, the government has borrowed from itself effectively seven big states’ worth of money.

The national debt was $23.4 trillion in February 2020, so while not every last bit of spending that exceeded tax revenue since then was Covid-related, it is reasonable to say that the ordeal of the pandemic, or the pandemic years, added roughly $10 trillion — or, using our previous mental measuring sticks, ten Floridas — to the national debt.

You will hear the argument, mostly from Democrats, that the enormous debt is a sign that we need to raise taxes. But tax revenue is higher than ever. For the current fiscal year, the U.S. government’s total revenue is estimated to be $4.71 trillion. It was $4.05 trillion the year before that, and $3.42 trillion in the previous year, amid the lingering economic effects of the pandemic. Despite the perception that the rich somehow avoid paying taxes, IRS data indicate,

The top one percent’s income share rose from 20.1 percent in 2019 to 22.2 percent in 2020 and its share of federal income taxes paid rose from 38.8 percent to 42.3 percent. The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent.

The primary driver of the country’s spending deficit is entitlement programs, a fact that a lot of elected officials — and a wide swath of the American public –prefer to ignore. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and other health-care programs consumed 46 percent of all federal spending. For perspective, all U.S. defense spending was 12 percent.

The U.S. spent roughly $877 billion on national defense in 2022. The U.S. federal budget deficit in fiscal year 2022 was $1.38 trillion. If the U.S. had a magic wand and hadn’t spent a single penny on defense that year, we still would have had a deficit of about $500 billion.

Every year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services review the numbers, and the most recent conclusion is, “The Medicare hospital insurance trust fund is scheduled to become insolvent in 2031. This means that in 2031 Medicare will be unable to pay for all promised benefits, and Medicare patients will face an initial 11 percent cut in their hospital benefits.”

Then there’s Social Security:

As the 2024 presidential campaign ramps up, candidates are facing pressure to pledge not to touch Social Security. While this pledge is framed as ‘protecting benefits,’ it is — in reality — an implicit endorsement of a 23 percent across-the-board benefit cut in 2033, when the Social Security retirement fund becomes insolvent. In that year, annual benefits would be cut by $17,400 for a typical newly retired dual-income couple.

If we do nothing, Medicare and Social Security hit a brick wall at high speed in 2031 and 2033, respectively.

[THE_WIZARD_]

I'll be dead before then. No problem.

[Jeff Buchanan]

What is so disturbing to me is that there have been multiple solutions provided by various organizations to fix the problems in Mike's post. It is not one giant, all inclusive swipe at them. It is a plan to incrementally make adjustments to benefits programs, that are spent across the entire US healthcare system, e.g., raising the retirement age, authorizing the government to negotiate the price it pays for pharmaceuticals to support Medicare and Medicaid, breaking the obfuscation of pricing for medical procedures and routine provider visits that are poorly constrained (not constrained much at all) by Medicare protocols that limit what that system pays. The tendency then is to hold in check what private insurers will pay hospitals and independent care providers. There are vast differences in HC costs by region and I understand why but the bottom line is that HC costs are out of control and there is a flashing red line screaming fix these.

In the last 4 months I had a pacemaker installed to fix a heart rhythm abnormality and a procedure to eliminate Atrial Fibrillation. Both were done as outpatient treatments. Prior to both procedures, I would receive a notification of what the procedures would cost. The PPM placement took under 2h from the time I entered pre-op to discharge. Including Anesthesiology, Pharmacy nursing and medical services, that one cost $73K. I paid nothing. Medicare paid 80% and my supplemental Insurance (Tricare for Life) paid 20%. The Cardiac Ablation procedure took a little more that 3h and, again, the total bill was $103K. That's what a private insurer or citizen paying cash would pay. If I recall from my EOB, the government paid Holey Cross Hospital $100K.

[Whitley]

Where do I sign up for my free hotel stay in Manhattan?

Ahhh....so you want to bring bed bugs back home then.

[foxhopper]

In the last 4 months I had a pacemaker installed to fix a heart rhythm abnormality and a procedure to eliminate Atrial Fibrillation. Both were done as outpatient treatments. Prior to both procedures, I would receive a notification of what the procedures would cost. The PPM placement took under 2h from the time I entered pre-op to discharge. Including Anesthesiology, Pharmacy nursing and medical services, that one cost $73K. I paid nothing. Medicare paid 80% and my supplemental Insurance (Tricare for Life) paid 20%. The Cardiac Ablation procedure took a little more that 3h and, again, the total bill was $103K. That's what a private insurer or citizen paying cash would pay. If I recall from my EOB, the government paid Holey Cross Hospital $100K.

Damn JB, those jabs have kicked your ass.

[WingsFan]

This is from the Toronto Sun.

Is the Indian government trying, with inane allegations, to discredit the Prime Minister and Canada. Parody or reality? No one can tell anymore. Either way, Trudeau is pissing a lot of countries off.

“When Justin Trudeau came to India for the G20 this month, his plane was full of cocaine,” Vohra said during a debate show hosted by journalist Deepak Chaurasia on Zee News. “He did not come out of his room for two days.”

https://torontosun.com/news/national/trudeaus-plane-had-cocaine-during-g20-former-indian-diplomat-claims

[Jeff Buchanan]

Damn JB, those jabs have kicked your ass.

Nope, I've had the arrhythmia since it was first discovered on a flight physical on entering Navy flight training in 1970. It showed up, then they couldn't reproduce it so I was cleared. It showed up a bunch of time, not all of them, on subsequent annual Flight PEs - 20 of them. Nobody ever cared because this particular arrhythmia is considered benign, until it's not which was the case just this year - my heart would stop beating randomly for consecutive 3 second pauses. The PPM protects me from those as it starts pacing when it senses that rhythm.

I've had AFib since I was 65, 10 years ago. My history of snoring (with apnea) was the cause. Now I use a CPAP religiously. The good news is that since the Cardiac Ablation procedure 2 months ago, I've not had one episode of AFib (my PPM continuously monitors for that and reports it to my cardiology team if AFib or something else weird is detected with my heart rhythm.

I'm getting the updated COVID vaccination (mRNA Pfizer or Moderna - doesn't matter which) tomorrow. I'll let everyone know if I grow horns or detect some kind of micro chip that was placed with the jab. I'd be fine if my RNA was changed and I grew a bigger dick, could piss 12 feet again and get an erection.