Tuesday, July 29, 2014


News Clips For The Day


U.S. says Russia violated 1987 nuclear missile treaty
CBS/AP July 28, 2014, 10:06 PM

WASHINGTON - In an escalation of tensions, the Obama administration accused Russia on Monday of conducting tests in violation of a 1987 nuclear missile treaty, calling the breach "a very serious matter" and going public with allegations that have simmered for some time.

The treaty confrontation comes at a highly strained time between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin over Russia's intervention in Ukraine and Putin's grant of asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

An administration official said Obama notified Putin of the U.S. determination in a letter Monday. The finding will be included in a State Department annual report on compliance with arms control treaties that will be released Tuesday.

The U.S. says Russia tested a new ground-launched cruise missile, breaking the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that President Ronald Reagan signed with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Russian officials say they have looked into the allegations and consider the matter closed.

"This is a very serious matter which we have attempted to address with Russia for some time now," an administration official told CBS News. "The United States is committed to the viability of the INF Treaty. We encourage Russia to return to compliance with its obligations under the treaty and to eliminate any prohibited items in a verifiable manner."

The Obama administration has expressed its concern over possible violations before, but this is the first time that the administration has formally accused Russia of violating the treaty. It comes in the wake of the downed Malaysian airliner in Ukraine and as the U.S. and the European Union seek to ramp up sanctions against Russia, offering the administration a convenient time to release the report which had been due to come out in April.

Two officials said the U.S. is prepared to hold high-level discussions on the issue immediately and want assurances that Russia will comply with the treaty requirements going forward. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive issue publicly by name ahead of Tuesday's report.

The New York Times first reported the U.S. move Monday evening

In raising the issue now, the U.S. appears to be placing increased pressure on Russia and trying to further isolate it from the international community. The European Union and the United States plan to announce new sanctions against Russia this week in the face of U.S. evidence that Russia has continued to assist separatist forces in Ukraine.

The formal finding comes in the wake of congressional pressure on the White House to confront Russia over the allegations of cheating on the treaty. The treaty banned all U.S. and Russian land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300 miles and 3,400 miles.

The officials said the Obama administration has informed Congress and U.S. allies of its decision to seek Russian compliance.

"The United States will, of course, consult with allies on this matter to take into account the impact of this Russian violation on our collective security if Russia does not return to compliance," an administration official told CBS News.

Indeed Obama, who has made nuclear disarmament a key foreign policy aim, has little interest in having Russia pull out of the treaty altogether.

Obama won Senate ratification of a New START treaty, which took effect in February 2011 and requires the U.S. and Russia to reduce the number of their strategic nuclear weapons to no more than 1,550 by February 2018.

Obama last year announced that he wants to cut the number of U.S. nuclear arms by another third and that he would "seek negotiated cuts" with Russia, a goal now complicated by the accusation of a missile treaty violation.




“The U.S. says Russia tested a new ground-launched cruise missile, breaking the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that President Ronald Reagan signed with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Russian officials say they have looked into the allegations and consider the matter closed.... 'The United States is committed to the viability of the INF Treaty. We encourage Russia to return to compliance with its obligations under the treaty and to eliminate any prohibited items in a verifiable manner.'”

This CBS article states that Obama's move to confront Putin now is due partly to Congressional pressure, and the missile test is not a newly discovered act. Obama's complaint over the treaty violation is also part of an attempt to put more and more stress on Russia due to it's interference in the affairs of Ukraine in what looks now like a civil war. Russia's actions in both issues show a complete lack of international goodwill at the least, and a plan to take over the whole nation of Ukraine at the worst. The potential of an atomic war, however, threatens the whole world, even Russia; so for a sane man, as I think Putin is, such a war would be a very unintelligent move. Hopefully he will scrap the new missile plan at the least, and begin to cooperate over the Ukrainian situation as well.





White House projects huge costs for delaying climate action
By STEPHANIE CONDON CBS NEWS July 29, 2014, 6:00 AM

A new White House report makes the economic case for pursuing policies to curb climate change now, arguing that delaying policy changes will significantly increase the cost of action -- and potentially put the nation at risk. The report also defends newly proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules at a time when the proposed policy changes have become midterm campaign fodder

"The signs of climate change are all around us," says the report, produced by the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, citing the results of the recently published National Climate Assessment.

The new report notes that harms from greenhouse gas emissions aren't reflected in the price of carbon-based energy. Consequently, it says government action is necessary to make up for this market failure and "thereby to limit the damage to economies and the natural world from further climate change."

The costs of inaction could be large, the report says, citing economic estimates that letting the Earth's temperature rise 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, instead of 2 degrees, could increase economic damages by about 0.9 percent of global output.

"To put this percentage in perspective, 0.9 percent of estimated 2014 U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is approximately $150 billion," the report notes. "Moreover, these costs are not one-time, but are rather incurred year after year because of the permanent damage caused by increased climate change resulting from the delay."

The report gives specific examples of how climate change would impact the economy. For instance, it cites research showing that when the temperature in the U.S. rises above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the labor supply in outdoor industries declines by up to one hour a day relative to temperatures 20 to 25 degrees cooler.

Furthermore, the longer policies to curb climate change are delayed, the costlier they are to implement the report says. "An analysis of research on the cost of delay for hitting a specified climate target (typically, a given concentration of greenhouse gases) suggests that net mitigation costs increase, on average, by approximately 40 percent for each decade of delay," it says.

The report also makes the case that action to curb climate change "can be thought of as 'climate insurance' taken out against the most severe and irreversible potential consequences of climate change. Events such as the rapid melting of ice sheets and the consequent increase of global sea levels, or temperature increases on the higher end of the range of scientific uncertainty, could pose such severe economic consequences as reasonably to be thought of as climate catastrophes."

The Council of Economic Advisers specifically makes the case for new carbon limits that the EPA has proposed. The proposed rule would require the existing plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Republicans have dismissed the proposed policy changes, skewering President Obama and his party as anti-coal.

The proposed EPA rule, the report notes, would generate $27 billion to $50 billion in net benefits annually by 2020 and as much as $49 billion to $84 billion in 2030.

While Congress is unlikely to do anything to address climate change this year, particularly in the GOP-led House, Democrats are keeping up discussion about the issue. On Tuesday, a subpanel of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is hosting a hearing on the effects of unchecked climate change. The panel plans to hear from a local Florida official, economists and others.




“The new report notes that harms from greenhouse gas emissions aren't reflected in the price of carbon-based energy. Consequently, it says government action is necessary to make up for this market failure and 'thereby to limit the damage to economies and the natural world from further climate change.'.... The costs of inaction could be large, the report says, citing economic estimates that letting the Earth's temperature rise 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, instead of 2 degrees, could increase economic damages by about 0.9 percent of global output. 'To put this percentage in perspective, 0.9 percent of estimated 2014 U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is approximately $150 billion,' the report notes. 'Moreover, these costs are not one-time, but are rather incurred year after year because of the permanent damage caused by increased climate change resulting from the delay.'

The Council of Economic Advisers is proposing a reduction in carbon emissions by 30% by the year 2030. The Republicans have responded by accusing the Democrats of being “anti-coal,” The Democrats are continuing the argument, and will host a hearing on the subject including “a local Florida official, economists and others.” Of course the mining of coal is a large factor in the economies of several US states, and if power plants were to go more heavily to solar power or another alternative energy source, those states would lose money. If the Democrats are “anti-coal,” it is not without good reason. In multiple ways coal mining is damaging to the environment and the burning of coal in power plants releases a great deal of CO2. We desperately need to get away from coal, not because we hate big business, but because of the environmental issues dependence on coal involves.





Obama considers large-scale move on immigration
CBS/AP  July 28, 2014, 5:32 PM

WASHINGTON -- White House officials are making plans to act before November's midterm elections to grant work permits to potentially millions of immigrants in this country illegally.

The move could scramble election-year politics and lead some conservative Republicans to push for impeachment proceedings against President Barack Obama.

Advocates and lawmakers who've been in touch with the administration say officials are weighing a range of options including changes in the deportation system and ways to grant relief from deportation to targeted populations in the country.

That might include parents or legal guardians of U.S. citizen children - which could be around 3.8 million people - or parents of immigrants brought here illegally as kids who've already received executive relief from Obama. That could be an additional 500,000 to 1 million people.

Obama recently put a $3.7 billion proposal on the table to provide resources for additional border security and additional immigration judges to deal with an increasing number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border from Central America. Last week, he urged Congress to pass his proposal, saying "we need action and less talk."

"It is my hope [that Congress] will not leave town for the month of August for their vacations without doing something to solve this problem," Obama said.

Several Republicans have expressed interest in including a provision in the funding to end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) -- the program that Mr. Obama enacted in 2012 to allow certain undocumented youths to stay in the country legally (temporarily) if they meet certain requirements. However, it's unclear whether many GOP members would insist on including this provision in any bill.

A bipartisan coalition of senators passed a reform bill last June that would extend an earned path to citizenship to some undocumented immigrants, throw considerably more security resources at the border, and strengthen domestic enforcement of immigration laws.

House Republican leaders refused to take up the Senate bill, and though some smaller bills targeting border security and visas for skilled workers have passed through the House Judiciary Committee, nothing has reached the House floor.

GOP leaders tried earlier this year to rally their caucus around a bill that would confer citizenship on those who have served in the military, but even that proved too heavy a lift for the fractious Republican conference. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., even lost his seat to a conservative challenger in a stunning primary upset last month that some blamed on his support for the measure.




“White House officials are making plans to act before November's midterm elections to grant work permits to potentially millions of immigrants in this country illegally. The move could scramble election-year politics and lead some conservative Republicans to push for impeachment proceedings against President Barack Obama. Advocates and lawmakers who've been in touch with the administration say officials are weighing a range of options including changes in the deportation system and ways to grant relief from deportation to targeted populations in the country.”

That would include parents of US citizen children and children brought here illegally by their parents. Conservatives in the House are firmly placed against any new bill to extend a path to citizenship, including one passed in the Senate last June, and some conservatives want to include wording to abolish DACA in the President's recent request for funds for the current border crisis. Despite the crisis, Republicans aren't showing a great desire to deal with the Border control funding issue before August is out. Meanwhile conservatives in the House are still planning to sue the President over the limits of executive power, and Obama is persisting in his executive actions which the conservatives so hate. The situation lies somewhere between exciting and downright scary. I can't wait to see what happens. I am pleased by Obama's willingness to stand up against the House move to test the limits of the conservatives.







Obama, EU poised to hit Russian economy hard
CBS/AP July 29, 2014, 6:31 AM

Last Updated Jul 29, 2014 10:15 AM EDT
BRUSSELS -- The United States and the European Union are preparing a powerful one-two punch against the Russian economy, with EU ambassadors meeting Tuesday to discuss a dramatic escalation in the trade bloc's sanctions on Russia.

Measures under consideration include limiting Russia's access to European capital markets and halting trade in arms and dual-use and sensitive technologies. A decision on proposed new EU sanctions was expected later in the day.

In a rare videoconference call with President Obama, the leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy and France expressed their willingness Monday to adopt new sanctions against Russia in coordination with the United States, an official French statement said.

The Western nations are demanding Russia halt the alleged supply of arms to Ukrainian separatists and other actions that destabilize the situation in eastern Ukraine.

The show of Western solidarity comes as the U.S. accuses Russia of ramping up its troop presence on its border with Ukraine and shipping more heavy weaponry to the pro-Moscow rebels.

"It's precisely because we've not yet seen a strategic turn from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin that we believe it's absolutely essential to take additional measures, and that's what the Europeans and the United States intend to do this week," said Tony Blinken, Mr. Obama's deputy national security adviser.

Russia's leaders have staunchly denied supporting the rebels in Ukraine, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday that any new sanctions would fail to influence the Kremlin in any direction.

"I assure you, we will overcome any difficulties that may arise in certain areas of the economy, and maybe we will become more independent and more confident in our own strength," Lavrov said in Moscow, according to the Reuters news agency.

"We can't ignore it," he said, but suggested Moscow would not respond with its own sanctions against the West.

"To fall into hysterics and respond to a blow with a blow is not worthy of a major country," he told reporters.

Europe, which has a stronger trade relationship with Russia than the U.S., had lagged behind Washington with its earlier sanctions package, in part out of concern from leaders that the penalties could hurt their own economies. But a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said following Monday's call that the West agreed that the EU should adopt a "strong package of sectoral sanctions as swiftly as possible."

CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante was told Monday by a senior administration official that Washington intended to wait and see what specific sanctions its partners in the EU actually managed to agree to before hammering out any new punitive measures at the Treasury.

According to the official, if the Europeans were to make good on their promise to bring tough new measures, the U.S. would follow suit later in the week with an elaboration of the U.S. sanctions announced two weeks ago.

The teleconference on Monday night came amid concerns within the administration that the Europeans were backsliding on their vows to hit Russia's economy hard over Putin's role in Ukraine, said Plante.

Russia's economy is already struggling to cope under the weight of sanctions already imposed on many companies and individuals. The government says the economy grew a tiny bit in the last quarter, which has allowed the nation to avoid a technical recession, but capital is flowing out of the country at an alarming rate, and growth forecasts for the year are dismal.

The new round of sanctions from Europe and the EU are expected to target vast swathes of the Russian economy in a way that current measures have not, which could have a far more significant impact.




Measures against Russia are being considered, to include “limiting Russia's access to European capital markets and halting trade in arms and dual-use and sensitive technologies. “Britain, Germany, Italy and France have agreed to stand with the US in imposing new sanctions. Their demand is that Russia stop its action to destabilize the legitimate government of Ukraine by sending in arms “and other actions.” The Russians are continuing to deny their aid to the Ukrainian rebels.

Lavrov boasted that Russia will “overcome any difficulties” that the EU/US sanctions cause them, but this news article states that Russia is “already struggling” under current sanctions. The new sanctions should affect “vast swathes of the Russian economy and could have a “far more significant impact.” I hope that proves to be true, because nobody in the West wants a war with Russia, but to allow them to progressively overtake European nations to form a new USSR is not acceptable to me, personally, or to most Americans. My whole life has been spent watching political improvements from the time of the 1940s – Hitler was conquered and the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev was liberalized. We don't need another Iron Curtain. Now Putin is trying to reverse some of the progress and antisemitism is popping up all over Europe. The goal of America to aid democracy still goes on.





Teacher Tenure Lawsuits Spread From California To New York – NPR
by BETH FERTIG, ANYA KAMENETZ and CLAUDIO SANCHEZ
July 28, 2014

Why are so many low-income and minority kids getting second-class educations in the U.S.?

That question is at the center of the heated debate about teacher tenure. In New York today, a group of parents and advocates, led by former CNN and NBC anchor Campbell Brown, filed a suit challenging state laws that govern when teachers can be given tenure and how they can be fired once they have it.

As WNYC reported, Brown announced the suit on the steps of City Hall:

"I am so inspired by what these people are doing," Brown said, tearing up during her brief appearance at the press conference. "This is not going to be easy and they are so incredibly brave to be taking this on."

Some of the named plaintiffs also appeared:

Bronx resident Angeles Barragan said her daughter fell behind due to an incompetent teacher who didn't assign homework and didn't help her child learn to read. Now Natalie is repeating second grade at Kings College School P.S. 94.

"What I'm looking for is changes. I'm not looking for them to get rid of anybody," Barragan said in Spanish. "I'm looking for changes so that teachers in classrooms really want to teach children."

The suit is the second of its kind in New York. The first, filed earlier this month, comes from a group calling itself the New York City Parents Union. Both arrive on the heels of last month's ruling in Vergara v. California. There, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge found similar state laws unconstitutional, ruling that tenure rules disproportionately saddle poor and minority students with "grossly ineffective" teachers, a violation of the right to equality of education spelled out in California's constitution.

The Vergara ruling has been stayed pending an appeal, but critics of teacher tenure laws clearly consider it a promising template for potential battles across the country. New York is the second major front in that fight.

Out With 'Last In, First Out'?

Michelle Rhee and her group, StudentsFirst, are a major force behind these tenure law challenges. After resigning under a cloud of controversy as Washington, D.C.'s schools chancellor, Rhee embarked on a national campaign to target teacher tenure and seniority laws.

"There are states and jurisdictions in which the dismissal process is way too time-consuming and cumbersome, making it impossible for teachers to be fired," Rhee says. "And so, when we have nonsensical laws that give people a job for life regardless of performance, we should remove those policies or fix them."

The criticisms of tenure rules in both the Vergara case and today's New York lawsuit come in roughly three buckets. First, critics say that teachers receive tenure too quickly, before their performance can be evaluated reliably or tied to students' test scores. In California for example, teachers can be given tenure after just 18 months on the job. Second, they argue that rigid "last-in, first-out" seniority rules mean that younger teachers are dismissed before older teachers regardless of effectiveness. And third, they say, firing low-performing teachers is just too difficult and involves too much red tape.

Dennis Van Roekel, the outgoing president of the National Education Association, says groups like Rhee's simply want to go after unions. Partnership for Educational Justice, the group that filed the New York suit, is headed by Brown, who's been an outspoken critic of teachers unions on several fronts. Her husband sits on the board of Rhee's StudentsFirstNY chapter. Among Brown's advisors is David Welch, a telecommunications billionaire who also funded the Vergara lawsuit.

This anti-tenure activism "has nothing to do with students," Van Roekel says. At the same time, he concedes that unions are not opposed to streamlining the dismissal process for ineffective teachers or, for that matter, lengthening time to tenure. California's tenure process is unusually short, at just a year and a half; a three-year probationary period, the rule in New York State, or even five years is more common.

The California teachers NPR Ed talked to last month agreed that teacher protections are important but that it should also be easier to get rid of lower-performing colleagues. "Working with a bad teacher is an embarrassment," said Alan Warhaftig, a 25-year veteran of Los Angeles Public Schools. "You feel bad for their students."

'The Losers Are The Students'

Kevin Welner of the National Education Policy Center hasn't taken a position in the tenure fight, but he sees a problem with focusing on tenure and seniority laws in the quest to improve schools. Namely, it takes the focus away from everything else.

"It doesn't focus on attracting stronger teachers, it doesn't focus on developing stronger teachers," Welner says.

Other researchers have found that the main reason strong teachers leave low-performing schools is because of working conditions, including discipline problems and reduced opportunities for professional development. Making matters worse, compared to data from 2000, more students now attend schools with high concentrations of poverty.

If there is a silver lining, Welner says, it's that these suits are putting a magnifying glass to the nation's highest-poverty schools, and that could expose plenty of unjust policies that need addressing.

But the courts are a slow, tortuous path to change. The New York lawsuit is likely to take years, while the California decision is being appealed. Welner questions whether the courts are up to the task of, as he puts it, "mucking around" with complex, contentious educational policies and practices. Still, he says, asking the courts to play that role is "preferable to generation after generation of kids being denied basic equality of educational opportunities."

Rhee's group, meanwhile, is considering additional suits in Minnesota, Connecticut, New Jersey and Tennessee.




“There, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge found similar state laws unconstitutional, ruling that tenure rules disproportionately saddle poor and minority students with "grossly ineffective" teachers.... The Vergara ruling has been stayed pending an appeal, but critics of teacher tenure laws clearly consider it a promising template for potential battles across the country.... Michelle Rhee and her group, StudentsFirst, are a major force behind these tenure law challenges....” Critics of the teacher tenure laws have several complaints; “teachers receive tenure too quickly, before their performance can be evaluated reliably or tied to students' test scores... rigid "last-in, first-out" seniority rules mean that younger teachers are dismissed before older teachers regardless of effectiveness... firing low-performing teachers is just too difficult and involves too much red tape.”

I am generally in favor of labor unions – they have made great improvements in America's workplaces – but giving tenure for a teacher after working for a period of under 5 years or so doesn't make sense, and tenure that is not based on teacher performance ratings is unfair to the students and to the whole school system, as it will cause the school to be rated C to F rather than A as the students make lower and lower grades on standardized tests. I am in favor of changing tenure laws to make them reflect a high quality performance by teachers, but not of getting rid of tenure altogether, as tenure is to protect teachers from arbitrary or discriminatory firing.

A teacher who fails to give extra attention to a student who has trouble mastering basic skills like reading, spelling, grammar and math should be fired. They are failing to do their job. No child should be failed and then required to repeat the grade when a tutor or some extra attention from the teacher could have put him in line with the lessons that are currently being presented – failing in a subject like reading makes him incapable of self-education, which is essential in an educated public.

If a student is having trouble reading by the sight “see say” method, he should be trained thoroughly in phonics. By the third or fourth grade I think a child should be able to pronounce an unfamiliar word based on phonics and look the word up in a dictionary to find its meaning. Children who have dyslexia would have more trouble with that, and should be put in a special class. My family was blue collar, but my parents bought a good pictured dictionary and an encyclopedia set. I continue to look things up when I need to, as I sometimes do in technical reading or books that are written with an unusually high vocabulary. It makes reading more fun and interesting for me.






Medicare's Costs Stabilize, But Its Problems Are Far From Fixed – NPR
by JULIE ROVNER
July 28, 2014 3:43 PM ET

Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which finances about half of the health program for seniors and the disabled, won't run out of money until 2030, the program's trustees said Monday. That's four years later than projected last year, and 13 years later than projected the year before the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

But that's not the case for the part of Social Security that pays for people getting disability benefits. The Disability Insurance Trust Fund is projected to run out of money in 2016, just two years from now, unless Congress intervenes, the trustees said.

"Medicare is considerably stronger than it was just four years ago," Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said Monday. She noted that slower growth of the program's spending will very likely mean that the Medicare Part B premium charged to beneficiaries — currently $104.90 per month — remains the same for the third year in a row. "That's a growth rate of zero percent," she noted.

All the trustees, however, including the secretaries of HHS, Treasury and Labor and two public members, stressed that Medicare's financial problems are far from fixed, particularly as 78 million baby boomers are on the precipice of joining.

"Notwithstanding recent favorable developments, both the projected baseline and current law projections indicate that Medicare still faces a substantial financial shortfall that will need to be addressed with further legislation," the report said.

And "the sooner lawmakers face that reality, the better," saidRobert Reischauer, a public trustee and former head of the Congressional Budget Office.

For the first time, the Medicare report deviates from current law and does not assume that scheduled deep cuts in reimbursements to physicians who treat Medicare patients will occur. Congress has suspended the cuts each year since 2003, and in this report the trustees assume that will continue until Congress fixes the formula, known as the sustainable growth rate, or SGR.

The change "should make the Part B cost projections more useful than they have been in the past," said Reischauer. Part B pays for most physician and outpatient costs. It technically does not have a trust fund because it is financed by a combination of general tax revenues and beneficiary premiums, but the trustees make projections for its spending each year.

The trustees opted not to wade into the ongoing debate over the extent to which the slowdown in Medicare's spending increases can be attributed to changes to the program made in the 2010 health law.

"No one knows and certainly there is an active debate," said Charles Blahous, the other public trustee and lone Republican on the panel. "And that's not something the trustees are going to settle," said Blahous, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.

But whatever the reason, no one contests that the slowdown has been dramatic. Medicare, which covered an estimated 52.3 million people in 2013, spent $582.9 billion, "and, for the second year in a row, per beneficiary costs were essentially unchanged," the report said.

The financial picture for Social Security's disability insurance fund, by contrast, is much more dire.

"The projected reserves of the DI Trust Fund decline steadily from 62 percent of annual cost at the beginning of 2014 until the trust fund reserves are depleted in the fourth quarter of 2016,"the Social Security report said. After that, the program would be able to pay only 81 percent of scheduled benefits.

The disability program has seen a dramatic increase in enrollment in recent years, yet Congress has not taken any action to change its financing, which is 1.8 percentage points of the overall 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax paid by employers and workers.




Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is not expected to run out of funds until 2030, but the Disability Insurance Trust Fund will run out in 2016 unless Congress acts. “'Notwithstanding recent favorable developments, both the projected baseline and current law projections indicate that Medicare still faces a substantial financial shortfall that will need to be addressed with further legislation....” The Medicare Part B premium is expected to remain at $104.90 a month. The program has not yet felt the stress of 78 million baby boomers enrollment, however, so more financial woes are ahead. The sustainable growth rate, or SGR which determines how much physicians are paid is due to be cut and needs a Congressional “fix.” I wonder if Medical doctors will start to opt out on taking Medicare patients rather than lose money, or if they are even legally allowed to do that. That would cause Medicare patients to lose doctors that they are used to and the continuity of care that they now have. Whether or not that really causes harm, it would certainly make patients uncomfortable and there would be complaints if it occurs.