Smoking Gun: Obama Admits He Cut Billions from Medicare to Fund Obamacare

[edthecynic]

And Huffpo is lying, in the above interview with Jake Tapper and Obama, Obama says he has cut Medicare and it is 1/3 of the payment of ObamaTax.

Don't believe everything you read, the link I posted earlier has the video showing Obama saying it.

Bullshit. You wouldn't know context if it bite you on the ass. Obama cut the Medicare budget, but he cut nothing from recipients - in fact he gave them more.

That's pure bullsh*t. Where is Medicare advantage?? He took that program away and lied about giving them more. You woudn't know context if it bit you in the *ss!!

I was there, I was trying to keep this assh*le from taking that benefit away from seniors. My Senators and Congressmen were fighting them tooth and nail, did you forget about all the enraged folks at the town hall meetings in August of 2010?? Yea, I thought so.

Phil Gingery told us this was happening and the American people tried to stop it, your Messiah passed it anyway. It's still unpopular. And it's a TAX.

As Obama pointed out at the Health Care summit when he schooled the Little Man Child Lyin' Ryan, that the extra 14% the insurance companies were OVERCHARGING in premiums for Medicare Advantage, in some states it was as high as 20%, gave no improvement in quality, so that WASTED money was used to close the Medicare doughnut hole as provided by Obamacare!!! The money never leaves Medicare, the only connection to Obamacare is that the provision to close the doughnut hole was created by Obamacare.

 

[Greenbeard]

No, Obama has reduced payments, NOT controoled prices....he assumes that costs are static....both statements make unfounded assumptions.

I'll repeat: what Obama is doing in Medicare is changing the way the program does business. That means starting to move past payment policies that reward volume and moving toward payment mechanisms that reward value. That means creating new payment incentives that allow and encourage providers to work together and organize in care in ways that we already know work. See this thread: http://www.usmessageboard.com/healt...-care-costs-through-better-care-delivery.html.

Inflationary payment mechanisms and flawed delivery systems are the problem; fixing them is the solution.

ALL the ACA does is eliminate ALL competition from the HC market by eliminating private insurers .....it forces them OUT of the market by making ALL policies uniform and ALL premiums to be charged exactly the same....

This is bullshit, but it's bullshit unrelated to Medicare so it's not really worth addressing here.

 

[g5000]

Anyone who read the PPACA knows that Obama made cuts to Medicare Advantage to pay for ObamaCare.

10 years of cuts to pay for 6 years of ObamaCare.

Now, I want you to pay real close attention to the exchange that Matthew posted, because I am going to show you something after that which proves Obama was lying through his teeth:

TAPPER: “One of the concerns about health care and how you pay for it — one third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare.”
BARACK OBAMA: “Right.”

TAPPER: “A lot of times, as you know, what happens in Congress is somebody will do something bold and then Congress, close to election season, will undo it.”

OBAMA: “Right.”

TAPPER: “You saw that with the ‘doc fix’.”

OBAMA: “Right.”

TAPPER: “Are you willing to pledge that whatever cuts in Medicare are being made to fund health insurance, one third of it, that you will veto anything that tries to undo that?”

OBAMA: “Yes. I actually have said that it is important for us to make sure this thing is deficit neutral, without tricks. I said I wouldn’t sign a bill that didn’t meet that criteria.”

Video
Video: Flashback: Obama Defends Cuts to Medicare to pay for ObamaCare

I have pointed out the "doc fixes" before. One of the ways Clinton balanced the budget was by reducing Medicare reimbursements. Except there is something most people don't know: Not one of those reductions has ever happened. Every year since then, Congress has passed a "doc fix" to stop those reductions.

Then along comes Obama who builds in a repeal of Medicare Advantage (MA) into the PPACA (see section 3201).

In the exchange which Matthew posted, Obama swears he is not going to do anything like those "doc fix" shams with respect to the MA reimbursement cuts.

Except he already has.

And here is the smoking gun, straight from the CBO: U.S. GAO - Medicare Advantage: Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration Undermined by High Estimated Costs and Design Shortcomings

You see, those Medicare Advantage reimbursement cuts were supposed to start THIS YEAR.

Perhaps you have noticed that did not happen.

Gosh, I wonder why! Could it be because the last thing Obama needs in a tight race is a bunch of seniors having their Medicare Advantage benefits cut before the system which is supposed to replace it kicks in?

Fuck! That's gotta be a fly in the left wing propaganda bongwater!

10 years of cuts replaced by 6 years of benefits, see? That's Obama math.

The cuts kick in now, but the replacement doesn't start until years from now.

What was it Obama said? Oh yeah: "I actually have said that it is important for us to make sure this thing is deficit neutral, without tricks."

Uh huh. Yeah.

And notice he said he wouldn't sign legislation which would stop the cuts. That is a lie of omission. Just like he said ObamaCare would not add one dime to the federal deficit. He conveniently left out that it would astronomically balloon STATE deficits.

Since the Advantage cuts have not begun, what piece of magic did Obama pull to stop them?

Well, read the CBO link.

Obama created a "demonstration project". It's a deliberate sham and the CBO has busted him on it.

And check out this bombshell:

The MA Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration does not—and is not required by law to—conform to the principles of budget neutrality

The MA Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration dwarfs all other Medicare demonstrations—both mandatory and discretionary—conducted since 1995 in its estimated budgetary impact and is larger in size and scope than many of them.

The name of the CBO report is "Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration Undermined by High Estimated Costs and Design Shortcomings."


There you go. His "deficit neutral" bullshit is exploded. And his pledge not to pull any tricks is also exploded.

And the claim that one program was replaced with an equal program is exploded.


All in one tidy package.

You're welcome!

.

 

[Darkwind]

Matt, don't you ever get tired of lies?



Romney Campaign Falsely Accuses Obama Of Gutting Welfare In New Ad

Shut up Shitting Bull, you have him in own own words admitting he did...

yes, totally ignore the truth that it does not because it completely screws the entire claim of the right. Stop being mean and pointing out Romney's lies, just quietly drink the republican kool aid and slowly go to sleep. It is good for you, trust me. All that thinking really hurts.

Yeah, stop ignoring the truth by the man who wrote the bill and knows exactly what is in it. Even prominent Democrats are saying that Ryan is an honest, and open person.

So, why do you and the rest of the people on this forum continue to insist that Ryans Budget will take medicare away from seniors when the truth is, that Obama has ALREADY reduced the security that seniors were relying upon.

 

[Lakhota]

It really ain't rocket science...

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien debunked the pervasive right-wing media falsehood that President Obama "stole $700 billion" from Medicare.

Right-wing media have repeatedly claimed that the Medicare savings included in Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) "gutted" the Medicare program. However, on CNN's Starting Point, when Romney senior adviser John Sununu claimed that Obama "gutted Medicare by taking $717 billion out of it," O'Brien was quick to correct him.

O'Brien pointed out that Sununu's talking point has been debunked by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that the Medicare savings in the ACA are not cuts, but rather a reduction in the expected rate of growth of the program.

O'Brien also noted that independent fact-checkers have found that the Affordable Care Act does not cut Medicare benefits. These fact-checkers also determined that the claim that hundreds of billions of dollars have been cut from Medicare is outright false.

When Sununu continued to claim that Obama had gutted Medicare, O'Brien confronted him with even more facts, citing evidence that drug providers and hospitals agreed to the Medicare savings because their "theory is that what they're going to be able to do is make up by the number of people who come into the system." It doesn't reduce or cut the benefits.

More by Medody Johnson: CNN's O'Brien Corrects Right-Wing Media Medicare Falsehood | Blog | Media Matters for America

 

[beretta304]

It really ain't rocket science...

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien debunked the pervasive right-wing media falsehood that President Obama "stole $700 billion" from Medicare.

Right-wing media have repeatedly claimed that the Medicare savings included in Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) "gutted" the Medicare program. However, on CNN's Starting Point, when Romney senior adviser John Sununu claimed that Obama "gutted Medicare by taking $717 billion out of it," O'Brien was quick to correct him.

O'Brien pointed out that Sununu's talking point has been debunked by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that the Medicare savings in the ACA are not cuts, but rather a reduction in the expected rate of growth of the program.

O'Brien also noted that independent fact-checkers have found that the Affordable Care Act does not cut Medicare benefits. These fact-checkers also determined that the claim that hundreds of billions of dollars have been cut from Medicare is outright false.

When Sununu continued to claim that Obama had gutted Medicare, O'Brien confronted him with even more facts, citing evidence that drug providers and hospitals agreed to the Medicare savings because their "theory is that what they're going to be able to do is make up by the number of people who come into the system." It doesn't reduce or cut the benefits.

More by Medody Johnson: CNN's O'Brien Corrects Right-Wing Media Medicare Falsehood | Blog | Media Matters for America

Then why don't you get it? I watched Soledad that morning and she got her ass handed to her. She was dead wrong and she knew it. That's why towards the end she shut her puss.


Look at the CBO report!

 

[g5000]

It really ain't rocket science...

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien debunked the pervasive right-wing media falsehood that President Obama "stole $700 billion" from Medicare.

Right-wing media have repeatedly claimed that the Medicare savings included in Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) "gutted" the Medicare program. However, on CNN's Starting Point, when Romney senior adviser John Sununu claimed that Obama "gutted Medicare by taking $717 billion out of it," O'Brien was quick to correct him.

O'Brien pointed out that Sununu's talking point has been debunked by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that the Medicare savings in the ACA are not cuts, but rather a reduction in the expected rate of growth of the program.

O'Brien also noted that independent fact-checkers have found that the Affordable Care Act does not cut Medicare benefits. These fact-checkers also determined that the claim that hundreds of billions of dollars have been cut from Medicare is outright false.

When Sununu continued to claim that Obama had gutted Medicare, O'Brien confronted him with even more facts, citing evidence that drug providers and hospitals agreed to the Medicare savings because their "theory is that what they're going to be able to do is make up by the number of people who come into the system." It doesn't reduce or cut the benefits.

More by Medody Johnson: CNN's O'Brien Corrects Right-Wing Media Medicare Falsehood | Blog | Media Matters for America

Please read section 3201 of the PPACA.

And note that the phasing out of MA was supposed to start this year.

Then explain why it has not.

 

[beretta304]

By the way did Soledad take his advice and slap an Obama bumper sticker on her forehead?

 

[francoHFW]

The same cuts are in the Ryan plan and all but 4 pubs voted for it in the house. Romney, of course, and the entire Pub propaganda machine are just FOS demagogues on the subject...

 

[OODA_Loop]

That means starting to move past payment policies that reward volume and moving toward payment mechanisms that reward value

Volume = greedy doctor taking your kids tonsils out when not medically necessary to get paid as Obama earlier said.

Value = Selective disbursement - care vs return on investment a/k/a rationing

 

[beretta304]

The same cuts are in the Ryan plan and all but 4 pubs voted for it in the house. Romney, of course, and the entire Pub propaganda machine are just FOS demagogues on the subject...

A Dopeycrat calling Republicans Demagogues.

 

[naturegirl]

Here ya go those of you that don't believe it...........this is the ABC video where Obama admits he cut Medicare!!

President Obama in 2009 Pledged to Veto Attempts to Undo Medicare Cuts - ABC News

 

[beretta304]

Here ya go those of you that don't believe it...........this is the ABC video where Obama admits he cut Medicare!!

President Obama in 2009 Pledged to Veto Attempts to Undo Medicare Cuts - ABC News

You can't post the truth. Obama will have you arrested and your family investigated.

 

[naturegirl]

I'm gonna laugh my butt off when Ryan proves Oblama is lying about this. Unfortunately his sheep won't believe it, they'll still defend him.

Obama has them right where he wants them. Saul Alinsky is so proud!!

“Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing.”

- Saul Alinsky

And we mustn't forget this one from Saul:

“A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage — the political paradise of communism.”

 

[g5000]

Supplemental evidence support for what I posted in post #34:

Obama Proving Republicans Right on Medicare - Forbes

There have been a number of Republican narratives arguing that Obamacare would grow the federal budget deficit, despite CBO projections to the contrary. Some are more plausible than others. The one I think is most likely to be true is that the Medicare cuts scheduled in PPACA, key to its deficit reduction, will prove politically unsustainable and be reversed.

Lo and behold, President Obama’s own Department of Health and Human Services department is working to undo cuts to Medicare Advantage subsidies that are scheduled to take effect this fall. HHS is using a “demonstration project,” far out of scale with previous Medicare demonstrations, which will replace over 2/3 of the cuts that were scheduled for this year by offering “bonus payments” to Medicare Advantage insurers.

The Administration has apparently decided that it’s politically problematic to reduce some seniors’ benefits in advance of the election. But there is always an election coming up, and cutting Medicare spending will always mean that somebody gets less of something. Eliminating Medicare Advantage subsidies was supposed to be the low hanging fruit among the Medicare cuts in PPACA. If these can’t withstand political pressure, how are IPAB’s cuts (which would hit traditional Medicare) supposed to survive?

Exactly. Just like the "doc fixes" of the last dozen years, this will also be "fixed" indefinitely into the future.

Here is how Obama's trick works:

Nothing is more politically volatile than monkeying with the health insurance of seniors, who aren’t too keen on confusing upheavals in their health care and are the most diligent voters in the land. This could make the Tea Party look like a tea party.

Making matters even more politically dangerous for Obama is that open enrollment begins Oct. 15, less than three weeks before voters go to the polls.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger electoral disaster for a president than seniors in crucial states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio discovering that he’s taken away their beloved Medicare Advantage just weeks before an election.

This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest “October Surprise” in US political history.

But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.

The money is to come from funds that Health and Human Services is allowed to use for “demonstration projects.” But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it’s doing an “experiment” to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.

That is, to “study” what happens when the government doesn’t change anything but merely continues a program that’s been going on for years.

Obama pledged he would not pull any tricks.

The CBO has exposed this trick.

Understand? The cuts that were supposed to make ObamaCare budget neutral have been removed for this year. Obama single-handedly created his own "doc fix", without Congress.

The same old program remains, and the CBO stresses that it is not budget neutral. Therefore, ObamaCare is already running in the red.


Wake up.
.

 

[francoHFW]

It's all part of Obamacare, which Romneycare (Teddycare) proves works great. You dupes are clueless and shrinking...

 

[naturegirl]

Supplemental evidence support for what I posted in post #34:

Obama Proving Republicans Right on Medicare - Forbes

There have been a number of Republican narratives arguing that Obamacare would grow the federal budget deficit, despite CBO projections to the contrary. Some are more plausible than others. The one I think is most likely to be true is that the Medicare cuts scheduled in PPACA, key to its deficit reduction, will prove politically unsustainable and be reversed.

Lo and behold, President Obama’s own Department of Health and Human Services department is working to undo cuts to Medicare Advantage subsidies that are scheduled to take effect this fall. HHS is using a “demonstration project,” far out of scale with previous Medicare demonstrations, which will replace over 2/3 of the cuts that were scheduled for this year by offering “bonus payments” to Medicare Advantage insurers.

The Administration has apparently decided that it’s politically problematic to reduce some seniors’ benefits in advance of the election. But there is always an election coming up, and cutting Medicare spending will always mean that somebody gets less of something. Eliminating Medicare Advantage subsidies was supposed to be the low hanging fruit among the Medicare cuts in PPACA. If these can’t withstand political pressure, how are IPAB’s cuts (which would hit traditional Medicare) supposed to survive?

Exactly. Just like the "doc fixes" of the last dozen years, this will also be "fixed" indefinitely into the future.

Here is how Obama's trick works:

Nothing is more politically volatile than monkeying with the health insurance of seniors, who aren’t too keen on confusing upheavals in their health care and are the most diligent voters in the land. This could make the Tea Party look like a tea party.

Making matters even more politically dangerous for Obama is that open enrollment begins Oct. 15, less than three weeks before voters go to the polls.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger electoral disaster for a president than seniors in crucial states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio discovering that he’s taken away their beloved Medicare Advantage just weeks before an election.

This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest “October Surprise” in US political history.

But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.

The money is to come from funds that Health and Human Services is allowed to use for “demonstration projects.” But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it’s doing an “experiment” to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.

That is, to “study” what happens when the government doesn’t change anything but merely continues a program that’s been going on for years.

Obama pledged he would not pull any tricks.

The CBO has exposed this trick.

Understand? The cuts that were supposed to make ObamaCare budget neutral have been removed for this year. Obama single-handedly created his own "doc fix", without Congress.

The same old program remains, and the CBO stresses that it is not budget neutral. Therefore, ObamaCare is already running in the red.


Wake up.
.

 

[naturegirl]

It's all part of Obamacare, which Romneycare (Teddycare) proves works great. You dupes are clueless and shrinking...

Stupid*ss, Romneycare doesn't touch Medicare, it's a FEDERAL program, not a state program.

 

[Lakhota]

It really ain't rocket science...

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien debunked the pervasive right-wing media falsehood that President Obama "stole $700 billion" from Medicare.

Right-wing media have repeatedly claimed that the Medicare savings included in Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) "gutted" the Medicare program. However, on CNN's Starting Point, when Romney senior adviser John Sununu claimed that Obama "gutted Medicare by taking $717 billion out of it," O'Brien was quick to correct him.

O'Brien pointed out that Sununu's talking point has been debunked by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that the Medicare savings in the ACA are not cuts, but rather a reduction in the expected rate of growth of the program.

O'Brien also noted that independent fact-checkers have found that the Affordable Care Act does not cut Medicare benefits. These fact-checkers also determined that the claim that hundreds of billions of dollars have been cut from Medicare is outright false.

When Sununu continued to claim that Obama had gutted Medicare, O'Brien confronted him with even more facts, citing evidence that drug providers and hospitals agreed to the Medicare savings because their "theory is that what they're going to be able to do is make up by the number of people who come into the system." It doesn't reduce or cut the benefits.

More by Medody Johnson: CNN's O'Brien Corrects Right-Wing Media Medicare Falsehood | Blog | Media Matters for America

Please read section 3201 of the PPACA.

And note that the phasing out of MA was supposed to start this year.

Then explain why it has not.

Medicare Advantage Payments
(PPACA Section 3201; HCEARA Section 1102)

Savings: U.S.—$131.9 billion over ten years.

Freezes Medicare Advantage (MA) payments in 2011: Beginning in 2012, phases‐in reductions to the Medicare Advantage county‐level benchmark rates such that the average MA payment per beneficiary is about 100% of per capita spending for traditional fee‐for‐service (FFS) Medicare. Adjustments will be made to these benchmarks based measures of spending per capita and on MA plans’ performance on quality and patient satisfaction measures. The base benchmarks will range from 95% of FFS spending per capita in the highest cost counties (top quartile) to 115% of FFS in the lowest cost counties (bottom quartile).

More: http://www.haponline.org/downloads/HAP_Summary_2010_PPACA_HCEARA_April2010.pdf

I can't answer your question, because I don't know anything about Medicare Advantage.

 

[OODA_Loop]

It's all part of Obamacare, which Romneycare (Teddycare) proves works great. You dupes are clueless and shrinking...

10th Amendment. States can do it.