td11 wrote:"oh dominant one" blew my mind. never thought i would give megyn kelly a standing ovation but here we are

Today, the Medicare Trustees reported some good news for seniors and taxpayers: The Medicare program will be solvent through 2026, nearly a decade longer than projected at the time of passage of the Affordable Care Act. This is 2 years longer than projected last year. Their annual report also shows that the long run actuarial deficit in the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund – a measure of its long-term fiscal health – has been cut by more than 70 percent since enactment of the health care law. The long-run Medicare deficit has fallen from 3.88 percent of taxable payroll in the 2009 Trustees Report to 1.11 percent in this report.

These long-run gains are matched by short-term relief: the Trustees also project that the Part B premium will not increase between 2013 and 2014, keeping out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries down. Medicare cost growth has remained at historically low levels over the past three years even as new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs have helped tens of millions of beneficiaries access care at lower cost. The law reduces prescription drug costs by closing the donut hole, a policy that has already saved more than 6 million seniors more than $700 each. And more than 32 million seniors have accessed a free preventive service under the law, helping them stay healthy and avoid future illness.

This news comes on the heels of a string of reports of good news for Medicare, for seniors, and for overall health care costs. This morning, USA Today reported on how Affordable Care Act is driving innovation across the health industry by the creation of new care models, new payment incentives, and greater efficiency by health care providers – improvements that will benefit all health care consumers. New care models like Accountable Care Organizations reward providers for managing the quality and costs of their patients across all settings over time –more than 250 of these organizations area already serving more than 4 million Medicare beneficiaries. Payment incentives to focus on quality are showing results – there were about 70,000 fewer unneeded hospital stays in Medicare last year. And our data and health information technology initiatives are driving a wave of innovation as entrepreneurs and innovators develop and deploy new digital tools to help clinicians deliver better care across the country.

Youseff wrote:

Swiggers wrote:

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

Youseff wrote:just found out Steve McQueen was a Republican. I'm bummed.

It's not like he votes anymore.

And the Republican Party was a very different animal back then. The social-conservative lunacy wasn't nearly as prevalent.

true but he was a Nixon backer.

jerseyhoya wrote:So was the whole country bar Pauline Kael's social circle

jerseyhoya wrote:I was not actually under the impression that Richard Nixon was supported by everyone in the country except for a few people that one lady knew.

But thanks for putting me straight.

The B.C. Liberal government has strongly rejected the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, writing in a formal submission to the Joint Review Panel that the company has not properly addressed the province's environmental concerns.

"(Enbridge Northern Gateway) has presented little evidence about how it will respond in the event of a spill," the province wrote in its submission to the Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel.

"Put another way, it is not clear from the evidence that NG (Northern Gateway) will in fact be able to respond effectively to spills either from the pipeline itself, or from tankers transporting diluted Bitumen from the proposed Kitimat terminal."

The strongly worded submission made clear the B.C. government believes the company has yet to lay out how it would respond to a catastrophic spill - something it said is particularly important here.

"The project before JRP (Joint Review Panel) is not a typical pipeline. For example: the behavior in water of the material to be transported is incompletely understood; the terrain the pipeline would cross is not only remote, it is in many places extremely difficult to access; the impact of spills into pristine river environments would be profound," the province wrote.

A banker, a fireman and an unemployed man are sitting around a table on which stands a plate of cookies. Suddenly the banker lunges forward and gobbles up all but one of the cookies. An awkward silence follows, and then the banker leans over to the fireman and says 'Watch it mate, that benefits scrounger is going to go after YOUR cookie!"

Legislatively, Lautenberg is known as one of the leading liberals in the Senate. He was a vociferous critic of the Iraq War.

He also was the author of the bill that banned smoking on commercial airline flights – a precursor to many later laws banning smoking in other public places.

Lautenberg pushed for stricter impaired driving laws and for raising the drinking age to 21.

The Senate bid farewell in recent months to two other World War II veterans: Hawaii Sens. Daniel Akaka (D) and Daniel Inouye (D). Akaka retired in January; Inouye died in December.

On February 15, Senator Lautenberg announced he would not seek a sixth term in the Senate. At his announcement in his hometown of Paterson, he set out an agenda for the remaining two years of his term that included reforming U.S. chemical safety laws, improving gun safety laws, and providing federal resources for New Jersey to rebuild from Superstorm Sandy.

Senator Lautenberg had made significant progress on all three items, most recently by announcing a bipartisan breakthrough on modernizing the Toxic Substances Control Act. Lautenberg’s legislation to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines also received a vote in the Senate earlier this year.

Senator Lautenberg was born the son of immigrants and grew up poor in Paterson, New Jersey. He enlisted in the military at the age of 18 and served in the Army in Europe during World War II. Upon returning home, he graduated from Columbia University with the help of the G.I. Bill. He joined with two boyhood friends to found Automatic Data Processing (ADP), which today employees 57,000 people worldwide and 4,500 in New Jersey. He left the business world to pursue a career in public service and give back to the country that helped give him so much.

Sen. Lautenberg was the last World War II veteran serving in the U.S. Senate and held the record for the number of votes cast by a New Jersey Senator.