Did the Affordable Care Act create cuts in Medicare? No it did not.

[Billy000]

PolitiFact | Romney says only Obama has cut Medicare

The Affordable Care Act does reduce Medicare spending by $500 billion over the next 10 years. But here’s the catch: Those dollars aren’t taken out of the current budget, they are not actual cuts, and nowhere does the bill actually eliminate any current benefits

 

[waltky]

Granny says dey need to send her dat 2nd stimulus check so she can pay her Medicare premium...

25 Percent of Seniors to Face Highest Medicare Premiums Under Obama Budget
February 13, 2012 – Under cost-cutting reforms proposed by President Obama in his 2013 budget, 25 percent of seniors would face the highest Medicare monthly premiums for health care and prescription drugs.

Obama also proposes to increase the highest Medicare premiums by 15 percent starting in 2017. “Beginning in 2017, the Administra*tion proposes to increase income-related premi*ums under Medicare Parts B and D by 15 percent and maintain the income thresholds associated with income-related premiums until 25 percent of beneficiaries under Parts B and D are subject to these premiums,” Obama’s budget proposal says.

Currently, wealthier seniors are charged higher premiums to reflect the fact that they can afford to pay for more of their own health care, despite the fact that they have paid into the program just like everyone else and, since they are wealthier, would have paid more in Medicare taxes while they were working. Obama plans to increase this penalty on wealthier seniors by 15 percent in 2017 and to continue to raise the eligibility requirements until 25 percent of seniors are paying the highest possible premiums under Medicare.

Currently, the threshold is $170,000 per year for an elderly couple. Obama’s plan would keep these thresholds from rising with inflation in order to trap more seniors in the highest premium group. In 2012, those higher premiums range from $139 to $319 for doctor visits [Part B], depending on a retired person’s income and whether they were still married or whether they had been widowed.

For seniors who were no longer married, the premiums paid for doctor and hospital visits ranged from $40 to $220 per month in 2012. Similarly, Obama plans to impose the highest possible cost for prescription drugs on 25 percent of seniors. Currently, those high-income premiums range from just $11.90 for a senior who is single to a maximum of $66 per month for an elderly couple.

Source

 

[waltky]

Granny says she doubts she'll live long enough to collect dat much in benefits.

Medicare Faces Unfunded Liability of $38.6T--$328,404 for Each U.S. Household
April 23, 2012 – Medicare faces an unfunded liability of $38.6 trillion, according to the Medicare Trustees report released Monday.

The unfunded liability is the amount that has been promised in benefits to people now alive that will not be funded by the tax revenue the system is expected to take in to pay for those benefits. (The Medicare Trustees calculate the unfunded liability for a period of 75 years into the future.)

The $38.6 trillion in unfunded benefits Medicare is expected to pay over the next 75 years equals $328,404.43 for each of the 117,538,000 households the Census Bureau said there were in the United States in 2010. “From the 75-year budget perspective, the present value of the additional resources that would be necessary to meet projected expenditures, at current-law levels for the three programs combined, is $38.6 trillion,” reads the report. “To put this very large figure in perspective, it would represent 4.3 percent of the present value of projected GDP over the same period ($907 trillion),” states the Trustees report.

The extra money needed to fund the unfunded liabilities would have to come from something other than payroll taxes, benefit taxes, and premium payments scheduled under current law. The report also says that there is “a significant likelihood” that the “projected HI and SMI expenditures are substantially understated as a result of potentially impracticable elements of current law.”

Source

 

[healthmyths]

AND HERE is why..
Univ. Community Hospital Tampa.. sent 2,110 CAT scan no contrast in 2009 claims to Medicare.
Each claim to Medicare for $2,635 each BUT IT Cost the hospital $43 each!
A 6,127.91% that Medicare PAID!!
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center sent Medicare 10,711 claims for CAT scans, each for $2,068.
At a cost per CAT SCAN of $139 or an overcharge of 1487.77%!
Just two examples where Medicare gladly pays these "padded and passed on claims" and thus adding to the $250 billion a year in WASTE and FRAUD in Medicare!

AND why? Because of EMTALA... LOOK it up since 1986 another example of good intentions lead to BAD results from government interference.