Democrats Play Politics with Plan to Preserve and Protect Medicare

While Doubling-Down on Their Plan to Gut Medicare, Democrats Attack GOP Budget for Saving and Strengthening Medicare

As House Republicans prepare to announce their budget, which will secure Medicare for current retirees while strengthening it for future generations, Democrats are already engaging in false attacks to defend their plan to gut Medicare:
REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD), RANKING MEMBER ON THE HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE: “To govern is to choose, and it is not courageous to protect tax breaks for millionaires, oil companies, and other big money special interests while slashing our investment in education, ending the current health care guarantees for seniors on Medicare, and denying health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans.” (Press Release, “Van Hollen: Republican Budget Is Same Old Ideological Agenda,” Office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen, 4/3/2011)

DCCC ATTACKS GOP OVER PLAN TO PROTECT MEDICARE/MEDICAID: “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is going to challenge 50 House Republicans and tie them to House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan…

“‘House Republican leaders are now full speed ahead on a partisan plan that would dismantle Medicare for seniors,’ said Jesse Ferguson, spokesman for the House Democrats’ campaign arm.” (Catalina Camia, “Dems Target 50 GOP Freshmen Over Ryan’s Medicare Plan,” USA TODAY, 4/4/2011)

These attacks have already been proven false and dismissed as “deceptive” given that “no cuts have been proposed for those currently on Social Security and Medicare”:

FACTCHECK.ORG: DEMOCRATS’ ATTACKS “DECEPTIVE” AND FALSE.“Democrats are accusing Republicans of  ‘pushing to cut seniors’ benefits,’ when no cuts have been proposed for those currently on Social Security or Medicare. … The DCCC gives the impression that current Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries are in jeopardy of losing their benefits if Republicans get their way. That’s not the case, based on the evidence it provided us.”(“DCCC’s Deceptive Drive,” FactCheck.org, 3/28/2011)
Meanwhile, the White House is directing the public to look at ObamaCare and Obama’s FY 2012 budget to find out their own plan for Medicare:

WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: “I think the President’s position on Medicare is — can be seen in his Affordable Care Act; can be seen in the way he’s addressed it in his 2012 budget proposal.” (Remarks by Jay Carney, “Press Briefing By Press Secretary Jay Carney,” The White House, 4/4/2011)

So let’s look. ObamaCare, let’s remember, cut Medicare by $500 billion to pay for its government takeover of healthcare. Meanwhile, Obama’s budget for 2012 was panned for failing to offer solutions to save Medicare:

OBAMACARE CUTS MEDICARE BY $500 BILLION: “It would cut an additional $60 billion from Medicare, bringing total cuts to the program to more than $500 billion over the next 10 years. And it would delay a tax on high-cost insurance policies until 2018, replacing the lost revenue by imposing the Medicare payroll tax on investment income for families earning more than $250,000 a year.” (Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery, “With Senate ‘Fixes’ Bill, GOP Sees Last Chance to Change Health-Care Reform,” The Washington Post, 3/24/2010)

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: “President Obama’s budget for fiscal year 2012 landed with a thud Monday, laying out short- and long-term tax and spending plans that disappointed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The proposal was a remarkably tame response to Washington’s fiscal problems, not the bold statement about belt-tightening that the White House had suggested was coming. Yet the biggest shortcoming is that it all but ignored the most important long-term financial challenge, which is the growing cost of entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid.” (Editorial Board, “Obama’s Overly Tame Budget,” The Los Angeles Times, 2/15/2011)

But the Democrats’ support for the status quo is more than that—it is a commitment to gut Medicare. While the Republican budget plan would preserve Medicare for future retirees and not change Medicare at all for those 55 or older, the Democrats’ plan would gut Medicare and force a 23 percent increase in taxes or a minimum 15 percent cut in benefits, according to a report issued by the Obama-appointed trustees of Medicare:

FMR CLINTON WHITE HOUSE OMB DIRECTOR ALICE RIVLIN SAYS RYAN PLAN “A GOOD WAY TO THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE OF MEDICARE”: “But overall she supported Mr. Ryan’s idea. ‘What Democrats have to realize is we have to do something,’ Ms. Rivlin said. ‘Current policy on Medicare is not sustainable. You can worry about how you structure a premium support program, but I think it’s a good way to think about the future of Medicare.'” (Naftali Bendavid, “GOP Aim: Cut $4 Trillion,” The Wall Street Journal, 4/4/2011)

MEDICARE PART A BANKRUPT BY 2029: “The HI [Hospital Insurance Trust] fund still fails the test of short-range financial adequacy, as projected annual assets drop below projected annual expenditures…by 2012. The fund also continues to fail the long range test of close actuarial balance.”(Timothy F. Geithner, Hilda L. Solis, Kathleen Sebelius, and Michael J. Astrue, “A Summary of the 2010 Annual Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund Reports,” Social Security Online, Accessed 3/15/2011)

23 PERCENT PAYROLL TAX HIKE AND STEEP CUTS TO BENEFITS: “Over 75 years, HI’s [the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund’s] estimated actuarial imbalance is 23 percent as large as payroll taxes, and 16 percent as large as program outlays.” (Timothy F. Geithner, Hilda L. Solis, Kathleen Sebelius, and Michael J. Astrue, “A Summary of the 2010 Annual Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund Reports,”Social Security Online, Accessed 3/15/2011)

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ACTUARIES: 15 PERCENT CUT IN BENEFITS. “The projected HI deficit over the next 75 years is 0.66 percent of taxable payroll, down from last year’s estimate of 3.88 percent. Eliminating this deficit would require an immediate 23 percent increase in payroll taxes or an immediate 15 percent reduction in benefits—or some combination of the two. Delaying action would require more drastic tax increases or benefit reductions in the future.” (“Issue Brief: Medicare’s Financial Condition: Beyond Actuarial Balance,”American Academy of Actuaries, Nov. 2010)

These estimates for tax increases and benefit cuts reflect a best-case scenario, too. The Democrat-Obama plan to bankrupt Medicare does not address long-term cost imbalances and relies on assumptions so rosy even Obama’s own trustees admit Medicare may go bankrupt earlier than projected. When will Democrats stop playing politics with health security for America’s seniors and work with Republicans to help save Medicare for future generations?:

LONG-TERM UNADDRESSED COST IMBALANCES: “It is projected that SMI [Supplementary Medical Insurance] will continue to put increasing pressure on the federal budget and beneficiaries in the years ahead… Over the next 75 years, SMI costs are expected to average 3.3 percent of GDP, which is 1.4 percentage points higher than the SMI share of GDP in 2009.”(Timothy F. Geithner, Hilda L. Solis, Kathleen Sebelius, and Michael J. Astrue, “A Summary of the 2010 Annual Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund Reports,” Social Security Online, Accessed 3/15/2011)

THE DEMOCRATS’ PLAN ASSUMPTIONS ARE SO UNREALISTIC EVEN THEY ADMIT IT: “Much of the projected improvement in Medicare finances…ispremised on the assumption that productivity growth in the health care sector can match that in the economy overall, rather than lag behind as has been the case in the past. This report notes that achieving this objective for long periods of time may prove difficult, and will probably require that payment and health care delivery systems be made more efficient than they are currently… If health care efficiency cannot be substantially improved through productivity gains or other measures, then over time the statutory Medicare payment rates would become inadequate. In that situation, the payment update reductions might be suspended, in which case actual long-range costs would be larger than those projected under current law.“(Timothy F. Geithner, Hilda L. Solis, Kathleen Sebelius, and Michael J. Astrue, “A Summary of the 2010 Annual Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund Reports,” Social Security Online, Accessed 3/15/2011)