Word: systemic
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...Medicare Baucus has held down the fiscal impact of his legislation by proposing to cut a hefty $500 billion in Medicare costs. The bill claims to do this by trimming a lot of fat out of the system and setting up an independent, nonpartisan panel that will take away Congress's power to set Medicare payment policies and reimbursement rates. But, most controversially, the bill takes a big chunk of money from the Medicare Advantage program, which essentially subsidizes insurers. "We are committed to working with policymakers and stakeholders to find savings in the Medicare program, including Medicare Advantage...
...same time, Russian officials must be smiling wryly at Obama's explanation that the plan was changed because of revised intelligence estimates of Iran's missile capability - since Moscow had never taken seriously the U.S. explanation that the shield was designed to protect against an Iranian threat. (An interceptor system targeting Iranian missiles would be more appropriately stationed in Jordan than in Poland, after all, and Moscow's vehement opposition to the planned deployment on its doorstep was based on fears that it actually was aimed at weakening Russia's own nuclear deterrent, because the system would be able...
...Still, giving up the protection offered by the missile shield is not particularly difficult for the U.S. - for the simple reason that the shield doesn't offer any significant protection. The system that would have been deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic was in every sense a work in progress whose testing had not yet proved any real-world capacity to deal with a hostile missile threat. In that sense, the missile "shield" was every bit as hypothetical as the Iranian missile threat against which it was ostensibly deployed...
...most people in the Czech Republic agree with him. Repeated polls have found that more than 60% of the country opposes the construction of radar facilities within its borders. Many feared that the U.S. missile-defense system would destabilize security by provoking Russia, which has long been against the building of the shield, and making the Czech Republic a target for an Iranian first strike. "Seventy percent of people in the Czech Republic will certainly welcome [this decision],"said Social Democratic leader Jiri Paroubek, whose party had opposed the radar, citing recent polls. "I think it will raise the United...
...every Czech feels this way. Proponents of the radar - mostly conservative politicians from the former center-right government that recently lost power - are openly angry with the decision and are concerned that the U.S. has acquiesced to Russia's demands that the system be scrapped. Ex-Premier Mirek Topolanek, whose government fell in March, said the decision showed that the U.S. no longer cares about the security of central Europe. While in power, Topolanek had supported the system against public opinion, because he felt the presence of U.S. military technology was a physical manifestation of the determination that central Europe...