Posted on 08/17/2012 10:06:22 PM PDT by george76
For the first time in memory, voters this year may have a choice between two very different philosophies about how Medicare ought to evolve. The political class is spitting nails because, thanks largely to ObamaCare, a reform agenda might finally get a fair hearing.
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Obama's $716 billion is a "cut" only in the sense of slowing the rate of spending growth over 10 years, which is the baseline Democrats always use. Medicare spending will continue to rise rapidly. The Obama "cuts" come by cranking down Medicare's price controls for hospitals and by gutting Medicare Advantage.
The real term for this familiar Beltway ploy should be Medicare austerity—i.e., keep the status quo, only less of it—rather than reducing costs over time through the structural change the program needs. But it is factually correct to say that Democrats took money from Medicare and then used the "cuts" to hide ObamaCare's true 13-figure cost.
Either Mr. Obama's apologists can defend raiding one insolvent entitlement to finance another one and own the cuts. Or they can say these Medicare cuts don't really count as cuts, as the media fact checkers are suddenly finding ways to do. In which case it means repudiating Mr. Obama's repeated claims that the Affordable Care Act reduces the deficit and that "I have strengthened Medicare," as he put it in Dubuque on Wednesday.
The larger reality is that Medicare cannot and will not continue as it is, as the President used to admit.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
You can always tell what the commie ‘RATS are up to by what the accuse the GOP of doing. ANYONE who would vote for a commie DemocRAT is a moron and/or lazy freeloader.
medicare ping
Medicare jujitsu?
That people are so stupid is a mystery to me. Obama simply cuts payments to institutions and physicians. At that point, physicians will quit taking Medicare patients. Being in health care, I have already talked to a number of physicians who say they will do this. Patients who are sick will then go to ER’s which MUST accept patients as long as they recieve government funding. Hospitals will then go broke and close their doors. Perhaps the true saving in this plan are that obama LIED and more people DIED.
One of the few good things about Obamacare was that as part of the deal, both Medicare and Medicaid would be killed off first. And that part is well underway. I was hoping that those two monsters would be dead, and then Obamacare would get canceled.
However, there are now efforts to bring the monsters back to life.
So the best the Republicans can hope for is to simplify both programs to ‘per capita’ block grants to the states, and within some limited perimeters, leave them up to the states to administer. And find some means to slap a federal cap on the grants.
If the states want to add more to them, fine. Blue states *will* be irresponsible. But because of the Justice Roberts exception, any more money the feds add to the basic grants cannot come with strings attached.
This could purge a LOT of federal bureaucracy from the deal, saving tens of billions of dollars quickly.
The states will have to decide what is covered and what is not. So a lot of states will not be offering abortions, and will keep tight controls on costs. States with a lower standard of living will do better than expensive states with high taxes.
And states that are honest will do better than those with corrupt government.
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