Don't let the seniors you know get bamboozled by the Romney-Ryan Tag Team -- now filled with TWICE the falsehoods, as before.
Help the seniors you know get the Medicare Facts, instead ...
Romney Slams Obama For Medicare Cuts In Ryan’s Budget
by Sahil Kapur, talkingpointsmemo.com -- August 11, 2012
With Paul Ryan as his vice presidential nominee, Mitt Romney’s central argument pushing back against critics of the House budget chief’s [Ryan's] Medicare plan is that President Obama cut deep into Medicare under the Affordable Care Act. But Ryan’s plan includes the same cuts, which don’t target beneficiaries.
“Unlike the current president, who has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion, we will preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security,” Romney said Saturday while introducing Ryan.
The trouble with this argument -- made frequently by Republicans, including Ryan himself -- is that Republicans have voted overwhelmingly for Ryan’s own budget which sustains the Medicare cuts in “Obamacare.” Conservatives argue that Ryan’s plan, unlike the Affordable Care Act, doesn’t use the Medicare savings to fund additional spending.
[...]
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found last month that the Medicare provisions in the health care law would save $700 billion over a decade and extend the life of Medicare.
The cuts don’t target beneficiaries -- they come largely in the form of reduced payments to hospitals, discounts on Medicaid prescription drugs, and pay cuts to private insurers under Medicare Advantage. The hospital and drug industries endorsed the law despite the cuts.
[...]
Ahh, the Affordable Care Act is designed to keep Medicare running --
Seniors (beneficiaries) are NOT targeted by these cost-cutting measures.
Who knew? Obviously not the Romney-Ryan Tag Team, if their rhetoric is intended to be taken at face value.
What's more, Romney was warned last year about how he was mangling the truth concerning the Medicare cost-saving measures, promoted by Obama.
Did Mitt change his truth-mangling ways since then -- does a wealthy-billionaire explain where all those millions came from? -- Hardly!
Romney says only Obama has cut Medicare
politifact.com -- Dec 12, 2011
Truth-O-Meter Says: FALSE
[...]
"Let's not forget, only one president has ever cut Medicare for seniors in this country, and it's Barack Obama," Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, said in a Republican presidential debate on Dec. 10, 2011.
We looked into the accuracy of that statement and found Romney is way off.
First, did Obama cut Medicare?
The Romney campaign did not respond to our inquiry about this statement. We assume that when he said Obama cut Medicare, he was talking about the 2010 health care reform law that, among other things, reduces future Medicare spending by $500 billion.
But that’s just it -- the cuts don’t come from the current Medicare budget, they put a leash on future growth and payment increases.
PolitiFact has explored this before:
"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," we wrote last month.
[...]
The Romney-Ryan Tag Team has no excuse on this one, other than they want to deflect seniors wary eyes from themselves, to their opponent.
To scare their votes out of them.
But the truth is always a bit more complicated than what the Republican let on, now isn't it? And far too often it's exactly the opposite of what they pretend that it is.
Seniors don't be taken in, by these modern-day snake-oil salesmen. Because what Romney-Ryan are trying to sell you, is only long-term prescription for pain.