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Romney claims: “Obama stole 716 billion dollars from Medicare and used it to pay for Obamacare.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Per TPM:
The Romney campaign’s new ad blitz reinforces its latest attack — that President Obama cut Medicare spending by $716 billion — with an ominous warning to seniors. But the Affordable Care Act’s cuts and other Medicare reforms don’t touch benefits, they target waste in provider payments.
In fact, the totality of Obama’s Medicare reforms expand benefits for seniors and lower out-of-pocket costs. The Affordable Care Act actually enhances Medicare benefits by closing the prescription drug coverage gap known as the “doughnut hole” and expanding free preventive services, including an annual wellness visit.
The Romney ad misleadingly implies that seniors will take a hit. “You paid in to Medicare for years. Every paycheck,” a narrator says. “Now, when you need it, Obama has cut $716 billion from Medicare.”
Also, note that this is a projected cut over the course of a decade.
10 Comments
They’re just stinking liars. They lie every single day, about almost every single thing. If they say something, then almost exactly the opposite is true. The Romney is a perfect predictor of what’s false.
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Not time to expound on these proposed cuts, but Medicare beneficiaries will take a tremendous financial hit when these are imposed. This is from the Health Industry Washington Watch website.
(1) Increase Medicare cost-sharing for higher-income beneficiaries, (2) imposes Medicare home health copayments, and (3) applies a premium surcharge for new beneficiaries with Medigap plans, offering first-dollar coverage.
You might notice that two out of three of these increases, affect “low- and middle-income seniors, or ALL SENIORS, not just the affluent or wealthy ones.
Blue
Here’s a link to the website:
http://www.healthindustrywashingtonwatch.com/tags/budget/
Blue
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Recommended.
Blue
Thanks for the link to that web site. There’s more there than I can digest right now. IMHO, Obama screwed up royally when he refused to address the central causes of the outrageous cost of medical care in the U.S., 17% of GDP compared to 10% of GDP in other developed countries, most of which have better healthcare systems.
Most likely, the whole truth lies neither in the TPM version nor the Romney version.
For one thing, the doughnut hole is in Part D–the part of Medicare that Democrats accused Bush of passing in order to benefit PHRMA. But, when Obama expands Part D, it’s something he is doing “for seniors.”
No doubt Obama had seniors in mind when he moved swiftly to kill the drug reimportation bill, too.
Um, no one is perfect, even at lying.
That, unfortunately, is true!
Btw, folks, don’t forget the proposed Medicaid cuts in Ryan’s plans. Those will victimize seniors needing nursing home care.
Man, I just despise these guys.
This election needs to become a referendum on Ryan’s budget, rather than Obamacare and Obama’s stimulus, neither of which were what they should have been but both of which were way more that the GOP Tea Party would have done.
Isn’t it sad and shocking, and maybe disgusting, when the Tea party is only favorable comparison with something an allegedly liberal Democrat President did?
Accoring to a New Yorker article, the Tea Party (which is not really a Party at all) was something the Koch brothers thought up about twenty years ago. Thirty years ago, they donated to the Democratic Leadership Committee, which gave us things like New Democrats, Third Way, triangulating, and so on.
In other words, the Koch brothers favored anything that would move the nation to the right. And that rightward movement during the last three decades is exactly what is wrong with the country today.
Wow. That’s a new one on me. But it makes all kinds of sense. The DLC and Clinton were pretty much the end of the Democratic party as I had known it.