Obama Accounting: Double Counting Medicare’s Imaginary Savings

IBD's Capital Hill ^ | 8/5/2010 | Ed Carson

[Slyscribe]

Medicare’s trustees said Thursday that ObamaCare extends Medicare’s solvency by 12 years to 2029. The major media are largely parroting those findings. But the trustees — including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — are largely relying on savings from Medicare cuts that already are earmarked to pay for ObamaCare. Worse, the magnitude of cuts is unprecedented in Medicare’s history, especially given the flood of baby boomer retirees in the coming years.

[BelegStrongbow]

It seems to be all about garnering as much cash as they can. Anybody that gets in the way, even unintentionally, is going to get hurt. I can’t see them caring, one way or the other.

These people have got to go.

[kabar]

I am glad someone in the media is on this. I read the just recently released report, A SUMMARY OF THE 2010 ANNUAL REPORTS Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees, and was amazed what a piece of propanganda it is compared to the earlier reports. There are no public members on the Board. The report is a travesty and should be torn apart by the think tanks like Heritage and CATO.

I predicted that the delayed report would be a propaganda piece extolling the virtues of Obamacare and how it saved Medicare. And it has just been released before the midterms so the Dems can use it during their campaign citing the results as though they are objective. We are living in a state controlled media and bureaucratic apparatus that resembles a communist regime. I say that advisedly having lived in Communist Poland for two years.

We really need to go on the attack against this report. It is an outrage.

[DrC]

“The report is a travesty and should be torn apart by the think tanks like Heritage and CATO.”

AEI’s already begun this process:
A Mistaken Prognosis for Medicare | Joe Antos: The American, A Magazine of Ideas
August 5, 2010

This week the Obama administration released a report claiming that the new healthcare law will strengthen Medicare. This is a familiar theme from an administration that has received low marks from seniors, who instinctively know that cutting Medicare spending by $575 billion over the next decade will probably not do them any good. A cynical mind might also conclude that releasing this self-congratulatory message three days before the annual Medicare Trustees Report was meant to deflect attention from more bad news. http://www.american.com/archive/2010/august/a-mistaken-prognosis-for-medicare?

[ObamaBoogaBooga.com]

I'm sure this will be all over MSNBC, right?

Yeah... right.

[Nachum]

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