Yes, Obama Certainly Did Cut Medicare, Says Public Trustee For Medicare Fund

Apparently we're still debating whether you can spend the same $716 billion twice.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is to look at Social Security. If we generate $1 in savings within that program, then that's $1 that Social Security can spend later. If we also claimed this same $1 to finance a new spending program, we would clearly be adding to the total federal deficit. There has long been bipartisan understanding of this aspect of Social Security, which is why Congress's paygo rules prohibit using Social Security savings as an offset to pay for unrelated federal spending.

No such prohibition exists in the budget process against committing Medicare savings simultaneously to Medicare and to pay for a new federal program. It's this budget loophole, unique to Medicare, that gives the health law's spending constraints and payroll tax hikes the appearance of reducing federal deficits. But it is appearance, not reality. If you have only $1 of income and are obliged to pay a dollar each to two different recipients, then you will have to borrow another $1. This is effectively what the health law does. It authorizes far more in spending than it creates in savings.

How much more? Charles Blahous's study, "The Fiscal Consequences of the Affordable Care Act," published last month by the Mercatus Center, found that the health law would add over $340 billion to federal deficits over the next 10 years. Over the longer term, deficits would run into the trillions.

We are at the point where the guy needs to use an analogy to explain why you can't spend the same dollar twice. He actually has to tease this chain of reasoning out for people.

And yet, he must, because Obama's Media Palace Guard is attempting to claim otherwise.

MYTH THREE: OBAMACARE SLASHES $700 BLN FROM MEDICARE

Facts: The Romney-Ryan campaign has trotted out this scary-sounding number to deflect attention from Ryan's voucher plan. But it is largely a false claim because it implies that the health reform law slashes benefits.

The Affordable Care Act actually delivers expanded benefits to seniors. It closes the prescription drug donut hole over time, with 3.6 million seniors saving a collective $2.1 billion last year; it also expands preventive services, including an annual wellness visit, mammograms and prostate cancer screenings with no out-of-pocket cost.

Obamacare does cut $700 billion in Medicare spending over a 10-year period. But the cuts are adjustments in payments to Medicare providers, which are mostly meaningless to patients. According to the CBO, the ACA's 10-year cuts include $415 billion in fee-for-service payments to healthcare providers, $156 billion in reduced payments to Medicare Advantage plans, $56 billion to hospitals, and $114 billion in other miscellaneous cuts far too numerous to detail here.

That article -- from Reuters, natch -- is worth reading in its entirety. It is breathtaking. It is simply an Obama press release, and not a word of it is true.

And it further contends that cutting $718 billion from the program will, for the first time in the history of history, not impact beneficiaries at all.

Amazing. Every time Republicans propose a cut it's going to kill people. But when Democrats cut $718 billion, it actually "shores up the system."

This is the sort of claim that could only be made by the borderline-retarded.

Speaking of.

Thanks to @benk84 and @rdbrewer4

posted by Ace at 01:57 PM

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