Facts just aren't your thing. Facts tend to keep you from being elected. Fact may well account for your having to resort to vote suppression to win an election. What follows here are some facts about Medicare. So Republicans, cover your ears and go la-la-la to drown out the horrible truth.
The New York Times -- evidently as sick and tired of listening to the burble as the rest of us are -- just tells it like it is.
Fiction: "A Republican attack ad says that the reform law has “cut” $716 billion from Medicare, with the money used to expand coverage to low-income people who are currently uninsured."
Fact:
The budget resolutions crafted by Paul Ryan and approved by the Republican-controlled House retained virtually the same cut in Medicare.
In reality, the $716 billion is not a “cut” in benefits but rather the savings in costs that the Congressional Budget Office projects over the next decade from wholly reasonable provisions in the reform law. ...NYT
Those savings come from 1) "reducing unjustifiably high subsidies to private Medicare Advantage plans"; 2) "reducing the annual increases in federal reimbursements to health care providers" who are "notoriously" inefficient and unproductive.
Fiction: "The Republicans imply that the $716 billion in cuts will harm older Americans, but almost none of the savings come from reducing the benefits available for people already on Medicare."
Fact:
... If Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan were able to repeal the reform law, as they have pledged to do, that would drive up costs for many seniors — namely those with high prescription drug costs, who are already receiving subsidies under the reform law, and those who are receiving preventive services, like colonoscopies, mammograms and immunizations, with no cost sharing. ...NYT
Fiction: "Republicans also argue that the reform law will weaken Medicare and that by preventing the cuts and ultimately turning to vouchers they will enhance the program’s solvency."
Fact:
Medicare is not in danger of going “bankrupt”; the issue is whether the trust fund that pays hospital bills will run out of money in 2024, as now projected, and require the program to live on the annual payroll tax revenues it receives.
The Affordable Care Act helped push back the insolvency date by eight years, so repealing the act would actually bring the trust fund closer to insolvency, perhaps in 2016. ...NYT
Fiction: "Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan said last week that they would restore the entire $716 billion in cuts by repealing the law."
Fact:
The Congressional Budget Office concluded that repealing the law would raise the deficit by $109 billion over 10 years. The Republicans gave no clue about how they would pay for restoring the Medicare cuts without increasing the deficit. ...NYT
The fictions don't end there, though it gets harder to distinguish between deliberate lies, on the one hand, and ignorance or stupidity on the other. The usual problem when dealing with the right.
