Saturday, March 02, 2013

IT'S OFFICIAL: Seniors who paid into Medicare see benefits slashed to pay for those who haven't contributed a nickel

Conservatives have warned of this scenario since the cluster known as Obamacare was rammed through Congress in 2010. For a demagogue who continually hectors Americans about "fairness", it is indeed ironic that those who paid into Medicare are having their benefits slashed in order to subsidize those who've contributed nothing. We call that unfair.

[It loves to talk about the Sequester, but] the Obama administration doesn’t want to talk about its own devastating cuts in Medicare. On Friday, February 15, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced $716 billion in cuts over the next ten years. Instead of being put toward the debt, most of the money will go toward a new entitlement: Obamacare’s vast expansion of coverage for the uninsured.

Where Obama is cutting is telling. At least half of the savings will come out of Medicare Advantage, under which a full 28 percent of seniors buy privately managed health insurance that often includes added benefits such as vision and dental care or chronic-illness management. In exchange, patients agree to stay within a medical network, which helps insurance companies manage their costs. The program is most popular with Hispanics and African Americans. A study by CMS found that 38 percent of Hispanics and 31 percent of African Americans on Medicare were enrolled in Medicare Advantage, compared with 27 percent of whites...

To add cynicism to injury, the Obama administration postponed the Medicare Advantage cuts until after the 2012 election, using a slush fund to tide the program over and conceal the true costs of Obamacare to seniors.

The cuts are so much larger than expected that health-care stocks tanked across the board after they were announced. Managed-care analyst Carl McDonald told clients in an e-mail that Obamacare’s reducing payments to private-plan providers “would turn almost every plan in the industry unprofitable.” The Congressional Budget Office projects that the payment cuts will result in an enrollment drop of 3 million for Medicare Advantage.

...Obamacare will relentlessly restrict the choices seniors have by forcing them into traditional Medicare with all of its attendant contradictions, restrictions, and waste [and] the media are ignoring the Obama administration’s bigger, more brazen threat to vulnerable American seniors.

Obamacare represents the greatest redistribution of wealth in America since LBJ's colossal failure known as "Great Society".

Obamacare has nothing at all to do with your health. As Landmark Legal Foundation's Amicus Curiae brief in the abysmal Supreme Court decision observed (for which the name John Roberts will live in infamy), this despicable, unconstitutional law "forever changes the relationship between the individual and the government."

Obamacare is about control over the you -- the individual -- and your mental and physical well-being. It is a tool of tyrants.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And a lot of clueless Seniors voted against Romney because they thought he was going to take their Medicare...schadenfreude

David Bynon said...

The cuts to Medicare Advantage might be less painful to insurers than you think. Insurers will fix the profitability issue by raising deductibles and copayments. Seniors are the ones that will take it in the shorts. Plus, some experts now believe that volume from more baby boomers will grow the business, despite Obama's best efforts to kill it off.

Anonymous said...

I don't know if you know this, but medicare and Social Security are Ponzi schemes.

So, this money is not money that seniors have contributed -- that money was stolen and spent long ago -- it's money taken from a decreasing number of the currently working.

In other words, the whole thing is simple THEFT, regardless of who recieves it. What anyone "contributes" has already been spent. NO ONE gets that money back.