The notion that Obama gutted Medicare to pay for the Affordable Care Act is a red herring:
Here’s what the conservative
Forbes.com fact checkers found:
Obamacare’s Medicare cuts don’t harm seniors’ health benefits
“Mitt Romney’s Medicare ad is dishonest and hypocritical,” claims Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith. “The savings his ad attacks do not cut a single guaranteed Medicare benefit.”
This is a deeply misleading statement by the campaign. It’s true that the Obamacare Medicare cuts don’t make any changes to the Medicare insurance benefit, which means that the health-care services covered by the Medicare insurance plan are technically unchanged. But Obamacare’s Medicare cuts are bluntly structured, in ways that will harm seniors’ access to care.
Obamacare’s Medicare cuts don’t harm seniors’ health benefits
“Mitt Romney’s Medicare ad is dishonest and hypocritical,” claims Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith. “The savings his ad attacks do not cut a single guaranteed Medicare benefit.”
This is a deeply misleading statement by the campaign. It’s true that the Obamacare Medicare cuts don’t make any changes to the Medicare insurance benefit, which means that the health-care services covered by the Medicare insurance plan are technically unchanged. But Obamacare’s Medicare cuts are bluntly structured, in ways that will harm seniors’ access to care.
Of the $716 billion in cuts, $415 billion come in the form of “updates to fee-for-service payment rates,” a euphemism for reducing Medicare’s payments to doctors and hospitals. But what happens when you reduce payments to doctors? Doctors stop being willing to see Medicare patients. And if you can’t actually get a doctor’s appointment, what does it really matter what your insurance plan covers on paper?
We already see this happening in the Medicaid program, where sick and injured children can’t get appointments to deal with urgent medical conditions, because Medicaid so severely underpays doctors relative to private insurers. By the end of this decade, under Obamacare, Medicare reimbursement rates are set to fall below those of Medicaid.
The Obama administration’s own Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, has explained that the Obamacare Medicare cuts could make unprofitable 15 percent of hospitals serving Medicare patients. “It is doubtful that many [hospitals and other health care providers] will be able to improve their own productivity to the degree” necessary to accommodate the cuts, Foster has written. “Thus, providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantial portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable, and, absent legislative intervention, might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing care for beneficiaries. [Our] simulations…suggest that roughly 15 percent of [hospitalization] providers would become unprofitable within the 10-year projection as a result of the [spending cuts].”
Sarah Kliff cited a study yesterday that showed that every $1,000 that a hospital lost in Medicare reimbursements was associated with a 6-8 percent increase in mortality rates from heart attacks. John Goodman pointed out in the Wall Street Journal that Obamacare’s coverage expansion will not be accompanied by an increase in the supply of doctors, which will lead doctors to focus their time on the privately-insured patients who pay them the best.
APOTHEFACT CONCLUSION: Seniors’ benefits won’t change on paper. But they will change in reality, because fewer and fewer doctors will accept their insurance.
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can totally ignore the plurality of Bishops and Church teaching on Abortion, Euthanasia,Traditional Marriage … 