Scarborough Dings Dem's Medicare Demagoguery

Steve Israel had his talking points, and he was sticking to them. Republicans want to "end Medicare" in order to give tax cuts to the big oil companies. On Morning, Joe Scarborough repeatedly called out Israel, head of the Dem congressional campaign committee, on his demagoguery. Not that it stopped the Dem congressman from New York from repeating his rap.

For good measure, Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett appeared later and claimed that Medicare could be maintained without cutting a penny of benefits to seniors merely by finding various "efficiencies" in the program. Waste, fraud and abuse ride again!

Did Paul Ryan not think out the politics of his plan? Is he that much of a wonk.

Dumb move to pull this before an election when A.) You had the Dems on the ropes and B.) It had no chance of passing.

Should have done nothing (until we won). Let the economy fail. It’s on Obama’s watch.

Republicans once again step in it.

Medicare Loses Nearly Four Times as Much Money as Health Insurers Make

In a newly released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that, in fiscal year 2010, $48 billion in taxpayer money was squandered on fraudulent or improper Medicare claims. Meanwhile, the nation’s ten largest health insurance companies made combined profits of $12.7 billion in 2010 (according to Fortune 500). In other words, for every $1 made by the nation’s ten largest insurers, Medicare lost nearly $4.

This is sobering news for the minority of Americans who (for some reason) continue to think that government-run health care is a model of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Last year, total outlays for Medicare were $509 billion; therefore, Medicare spent nearly 10 percent of its outlays on fraudulent or improper claims. Actually, it may have been even worse than that: The GAO writes that this $48 billion in taxpayer money that went down the drain doesn’t even represent Medicare’s full tally of lost revenue, since it “did not include improper payments in its Part D prescription drug benefit, for which the agency has not yet estimated a total amount.”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/medicare-loses-nearly-four-times-much-money-health-insurers-make_552860.html

The Democrats are screaming about the Republicans wanting to cut a measly $61 billion from the budget when this GAO report identified over $200 billion of waste by duplication alone.

That could easily be doubled by identifying the fraud involved in all government programs. God bless Senator Coburn for getting this report published. It certainly should be thrown in the face of Big Government lovers of both parties.

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