The fail is strong in this NY Times piece titled Delicate Pivot as Republicans Blast Rivals on Medicare Cuts:
For much of the past year, Republicans assailed President Obama for resisting the Medicare spending reductions they say are needed to both preserve health benefits for older Americans and avert a Greek-style debt crisis. Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House Republicans’ point man on the budget, has called the president “gutless.”
Yet since the Supreme Court upheld the Democrats’ 2010 health care law, Republicans, led by Mitt Romney, have reversed tactics and attacked the president and Democrats in Congress by saying that Medicare will be cut too much as part of that law. Republicans plan to hold another vote to repeal the law in the House next week, though any such measure would die in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“Obamacare cuts Medicare — cuts Medicare — by approximately $500 billion,” Mr. Romney has told audiences.
That is a reprise of Republicans’ mantra of the 2010 midterm elections, which gave them big gains at both the state and federal levels and a majority in the House. Yet the message conflicts not only with their past complaint that Democrats opposed reining in Medicare spending, but also with the fact that House Republicans have voted twice since 2010 for the same 10-year, $500 billion savings in supporting Mr. Ryan’s annual budgets.
The result is a messaging mess, even by the standards of each party’s usual election-year attacks that the other is being insufficiently supportive of older people’s benefits.
And in this year’s contests, which both parties describe as a referendum on who can best correct the nation’s economic course, such talk underscores how far Republicans and Democrats are from truly squaring with the public about curbing the growth of the major entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid and, to a lesser extent, Social Security. That growth is driving the projections of a federal debt that is mounting unsustainably as the population ages and health care costs rise.
“A pox on both their houses,” said Ron Haskins, a former Congressional staff member who is now a scholar of social programs and budgeting at the Brookings Institution. Democrats and Republicans “know they have to do something about Medicare, and then they harass each other about cutting Medicare. It’s so discouraging to me, but I’m a Republican, so I’m much more distraught about Republicans.”
And, Mr. Haskins added, “$500 billion is modest compared to what Ryan would do.”
Why can’t reporters just come and say what the Republicans are doing. They are lying. They are lying about the Obamacare cuts to Medicare. It doesn’t cut Medicare benefits at all- it expands them. What it does cut are bloated payments to private insurers, which is basically more corporate welfare the Republicans gussied up and call Medicare Advantage, which paid 10-15% (I can’t remember the exact number, but it is in that ballpark) more to insurers than regular Medicare.
They are lying about what Paul Ryan (and Mitt Romney) would do to Medicare, which is not make it sustainable, but to gut it, throw elderly people “premium support” which is basically a voucher capped at a certain dollar value, and then toss them into the magic that is the free market to find their own insurance. Can’t find one that you can afford, you just aren’t trying hard enough, because we all know the free market can never fail, it can only be failed. And let’s not even talk about the spectacle of millions of early onset dementia patients navigating the private insurance market. Nothing could go wrong there.
Not to mention, Republicans want to repeal Obamacare, which means that insurers could once again deny you coverage for a pre-existing medical condition. You know how many 70 year olds have pre-existing conditions? ALL OF THEM, FIRST OF WHICH IS BEING 70. None of them would be able to find coverage that would provide them with the security they need, because no insurance company wants to take on a 70 year old diabetic with a thyroid condition, high blood pressure, and cataracts. So guess what would happen?
WE’D BE RIGHT BACK WHERE WE WERE IN THE 60’S WHEN WE FUCKING CREATED MEDICARE TO SOLVE THIS VERY FUCKING PROBLEM (Read this .pdf).
Why is it so hard for our media to just call them liars?
It’s Not a Pivot, They are Shamelessly Lying and You Are Helping ThemPost + Comments (51)