Free Republic

IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure Discourse: At a town hall last week in Dallas, an elderly "mob" with "manufactured" outrage questioned AARP's support for nationalized health care, asking: "Do you work for us or do we work for you?"There were no swastika-wearing grannies at Tuesday's meeting, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might claim. Nor were they "taking their cues from talk show hosts, Internet rumor-mongers . . . and insurance rackets," as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said. But they were mad as hell at the perception that AARP was selling them out in the...

The one said you could keep your insurance if you like it. The SOS blew that one out the water months ago … Now we find the promise doesn’t even apply to folks who supplement benefits with private insurance on Medicare Advantage programs.

Elmendorf quantifies the amount of benefits lost. Medicare Advantage plans are bought by Medicare patients to extend benefits and coordinate with Medicare. The only reason to purchase them in the first place is to get better coverage than what Medicare provides. Arguing that people won’t lose anything because Medicare requires insurers to meet the same requirements as Medicare is a big red herring. MA consumers will lose a significant amount of extended benefits, for which they pay premiums.

Obama Administration Threatens Health Insurance Company For Deviating From Approved Thoughts —DrewM. Dissent is the highest form of shut your mouth or else. The Humana mailer focused squarely on the Medicare Advantage program. "While these programs need to be made more efficient, if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable," it said. It urged seniors to sign up with Humana for regular updates on the health care legislation, and encouraged them to contact their lawmakers in Washington....

Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character. In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels.When Joe Wilson, the decorum-challenged South Carolina Republican, reacted to President Obama's assertion that there was nothing in health care legislation giving coverage to illegal aliens by shouting "You lie!" he knew, as his critics ignore, that there was nothing requiring proof of citizenship either. A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill at that moment did not restrict illegal immigrants...

Wednesday night Obama stated that the $500 billion he wants to take from Medicare will NOT result in any reduction in Medicare benefits. This is an out-and-out lie and I’ll prove it. I am a business systems analyst for the largest health claim processor in the country, and the third largest data warehouse in the world. My job is to ensure that our computer systems meet the business’ needs, thus I've have six years' experience in the regulatory, technical and business aspects of health insurance. Background on Medicare Advantage (Med Adv) Medicare Advantage was created in 1997/2003 to address...

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written about Barack Obama’s plan to kill Medicare Advantage, a successful public-private partnership that extends benefits and access for Medicare patients, in order to pay for the overhaul of the American health-care system. We have personal experience with Medicare before and after buying into the Advantage program (which requires monthly premiums above those of Medicare Part B and D) and understand its value. Karl Rove looks at the electoral consequences of killing the program, to which 20% of all Medicare recipients belong, and warns that it could cost as many as 23,000 votes per...

President Obama's lies in Montana were the most egregious falsehoods since Bill Clinton said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". The current President was asked how the government is going to pay for the $1 trillion in new health care expenditures under HR 3200. Watch the video here. Part of the President's answer included blaming a previous administration. Oh no, he's not blaming Bush again, is he? Well, as it turns out, the previous administration was Bill ("depends on what the meaning of is is") Clinton's. The current President claims that we can save $60 billion per...