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Even if you are no fan of so-called fact checks (yo!), you probably have some awareness that PolitiFact made the Democratic Party’s claim that passage of the Ryan plan by the House was a “vote to end Medicare” the “Lie of the Year” for 2011. “PolitiFact,” its writers noted on Dec. 20, 2011, “debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.” So, what is the message being put out now by leading Democrats? Here’s the text of an email from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid...

In a swipe at the GOP presidential ticket, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod on Tuesday defended President Barack Obama’s handling of Medicare. “The president … took away subsidies, unwarranted subsidies, to insurance companies, and he used that money to help lengthen the life of Medicare by nearly a decade,” Axelrod said on CNN’s Starting Point, referencing a provision of the new health care law. “So when Gov. Romney says he doesn’t support that, obviously … that’s problematical.” …

There is no more misleading imagery than the ad run by Democrats in which a Paul Ryan-looking figure throws Granny off a cliff due to Medicare cuts: (Ad at link) The ad has it exactly opposite to reality. Republican proposals would keep Medicare the same for people already in the system or 10 years away from entering the system. Nothing would affect Granny, but restructuring would save Medicare for future generations while easing the national debt burden. **snip**Mediscare is an age-old Democratic tactic, but this time it’s different because left as is Medicare goes bankrupt in Granny’s lifetime and bursts...

Well, that didn't take long:   In an effort to scare senior citizens, Democrats repeated and overheated a charge that Politifact branded the 2011 “lie of the year” upon hearing that Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has joined Mitt Romney as a running mate. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called Ryan “the architect of the Republican plan to kill Medicare” in a fundraising message sent by DCCC executive director Robby Mook. Mook explained the thinking behind making that charge in the next line, explaining that he wants to define Ryan in the minds of the American people as quickly as possible....

Former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Monday threw her political weight behind former West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel’s bid for Congress. In a scheduled visit to the Veranda Club, an assisted-living facility in Boca Raton, the Democratic leader briefly spoke to a small crowd of mostly seniors about her admiration for Frankel as a “woman of courage.” She then launched into a familiar speech on Medicare.

Tossing out President Barack Obama's health care law would have major unintended consequences for Medicare's payment systems, unseen but vital plumbing that handles 100 million monthly claims from hospitals and other service providers, the administration has quietly informed the courts. Although the law made significant cuts to providers and improved prescription and preventive benefits for seniors, Medicare has been overlooked in a Supreme Court debate focused on the law's controversial requirement that individuals carry health insurance. Yet havoc in Medicare could have repercussions in an election year when both parties are avidly courting seniors. In papers filed with the Supreme...

Romney Faces Medicare Attacks in Florida By Alan Silverleib January 27 (CNN) -- GOP presidential front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich barnstormed across Florida on Friday, trying to rally supporters and break away in the polls four days before what is shaping up to be a pivotal primary in that state. The morning after a heated CNN/Florida Republican Party debate in Jacksonville, a pro-Gingrich super PAC hit the airwaves with a television ad essentially accusing Romney of committing Medicare fraud. One of Gingrich's top Florida backers, former state Attorney General Bill McCollum, also raised questions about Romney's past service on...

Newt Gingrich avoided tens of thousands of dollars in Medicare payroll taxes in 2010 by using a technique the Internal Revenue Service has consistently and successfully attacked. Republican Presidential candidate Gingrich and his wife, Callista, treated only $444,327 of what they got from Gingrich Holdings. Inc. and Gingrich Productions as compensation to them, while reporting a whopping $2.4 million of their earnings from these corporations as profits or dividends. Medicare taxes are levied at a rate of 2.9% on an unlimited amount of compensation and self-employment income (say, from a consulting contract, speeches or a book) but not on profits...

Republicans muscled a budget through the House of Representatives in April that they said would take an important step toward reducing the federal deficit. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the plan kept Medicare intact for people 55 or older, but dramatically changed the program for everyone else by privatizing it and providing government subsidies. Democrats pounced. Just four days after the party-line vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a Web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care "because Republicans voted to end Medicare." Rep. Steve Israel of New York, head...

Republican lawmakers rejoiced Tuesday after Democrats' line of attack against their Medicare overhaul was named the 2011 "Lie of the Year" by the fact-checking website PolitiFact. Democrats hope that accusing Republicans of voting to "end Medicare" will rile up seniors and help them in the 2012 elections. PolitiFact's decision further weakens that argument just days after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) broke ranks and partnered with the author of the Republican overhaul, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). "That's a great talking point. I'm glad to hear that," said Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas). "We'll take a victory when we can get one." Rep....

Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich is reacting positively to a bipartisan Medicare reform plan, tweeting, "The Wyden-Ryan bipartisan Medicare reform plan is a major breakthrough with Democrats and Republicans working together to solve big problems." The plan in question, from Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, would keep traditional Medicare as an option for new retirees when it goes into effect in 2022, though private insurance would also be able to engage in regulated competition with the government-run health care plan. The eligibility age would remain at 65 under the new plan. Ryan, the House...

Immediately following the start of her tenure as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FLA) chose the path of deception over collected leadership. She revealed to the public the insidiousness with which she intended to further loot the long-gone confidence of citizens in their government when she claimed on national television that Republicans “want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws—and very transparently—block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates.” By uttering those words, Wasserman Schultz began her seemingly effortless...

In Rhode Island, a different take on Medicare fraud has been discovered. Gary Winner, 49, was purchasing penis enlargers from an adult website and then repackaging them as medical devices that were sold to patients claiming the device helped, “bladder control, urinary flow and prostate comfort.” Winner paid $26 for the pumps then charged Medicare $284 for the device that treated erectile dysfunction. Word must have gotten around about this miracle cure. Winner reaped $2 million before he was caught. Medicare reimburses for products treating impotence and erectile dysfunction. Winner (pronounced “winner” for any of those who may have been...

Washington faces two pressing tasks — getting a handle on escalating federal debt and addressing the country's unemployment crisis. Unfortunately, the White House, thanks to its usual ideological blinders, has come up with a plan that will actually cost jobs — even as it achieves only trifling savings. The proposal, which Team Obama has now forwarded to the supercommittee charged with coming up with $1.6 trillion in savings over the next decade, is to extend Medicaid-style manufacturers' rebates to part of the Medicare Part D program. The proposal affects the so-called "dual eligibles," those eligible for Medicaid but who obtain...

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's a massive health care entitlement with unfunded future costs over $7 trillion. Many conservatives are still upset at the way it was rammed through Congress. But when the Republican presidential candidates were asked last week asked if they would repeal the Medicare drug benefit, they said no way. After all, Republicans created it. Republicans want to pull the plug on the health care overhaul they call "Obamacare," but that law is arguably less a deficit driver than the Medicare drug plan they are defending.

Late Tuesday night National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Pete Sessions painted the Republican win in the special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District as a snapshot of the problems Democrats will face in 2012. “Democrats just saw their 2012 playbook fall apart as Nevada voters refused to buy Democrats’ Medicare scare tactics and misinformation campaigns,” Sessions wrote in a statement. “This election sends Democrats another warning that Democrats up and down the ballot next year cannot escape accountability for their failed economic policies.” Medicare policy was a major focus in the ad war between Democrat Kate Marshall and Republican Mark...

“We’re going to debate it. We’re going to debate it straight up. We’re not going to debate it in terms of just being a — political 30-second ads. Paul Ryan laid out their budget. Their budget eviscerates — it eliminates Medicare. They say it doesn’t. It makes it a voucher program. I call that eliminating Medicare in the next 10 years.” — Vice President Biden, Aug. 30, 2011Vice President Biden’s remarks to campaign donors in Tulsa resurfaces an issue that lay dormant during the long summer debate over raising the debt ceiling — the House Republican plan for Medicare. We...

The Price of Entitlements We face not only current budget problems but a Western European future. Some of a society’s most intractable problems come not from its failures but from its successes. Often you can’t get a good thing without paying a bad price. A prime example is our public old-age-pension system, Social Security. It has been completely successful in wiping out poverty among the elderly. Old ladies no longer have to eat cat food to survive. But we pay some prices for this. One is a lower savings rate. China has a humongous savings rate, in part because it...

This week, the House Budget Committee and Energy and Commerce Committee held hearings to examine the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a board of unelected bureaucrats tasked under Obamacare to reduce the growth in Medicare spending. During the Budget Committee hearing, Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, described the board: [T]he IPAB is unprecedented in the power given to unelected officials to direct hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending. The IPAB will give unelected, unaccountable government appointees the power to make decisions about payment policy in Medicare that will ultimately determine whether millions of seniors have access...

Senate Democrats today unleashed a torrent of criticism against the GOP's Cut, Cap, and Balance Act which passed the House late last night via a heavily partisan vote, re-branding it as a political scheme that would "kill medicare" and one that would never pass in the Senate. "Let me make this as simple as I can: the Republican scheme to cap, cut, and kill medicare is dead on arrival in the senate," declared Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at a press conference in Washington. "[It] would wreak havoc on our country's seniors, the middle class, military preparedness, and our country's standing...