Isn't it great to see Dems take the fight directly to the GOP and to point out the falsehoods of the Ryan Plan too?
Dems To GOP: Stop Lying To Seniors That Republican Budget Won’t Impact Current Medicare Beneficiaries
Brian Beutler, TPM-DC -- May 19, 2011,
Republicans have been using the 10-year buffer to protect themselves from attacks from current seniors ever since they unveiled the plan earlier this year. Democrats have been slow to point out that the argument is false.
"What the Republicans are saying -- that this won't affect seniors now, that the cuts are all off in future years -- is flat out false," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). "In the reform bill that we passed, we solved, over time, the problem of the Donut Hole -- the dreaded coverage gap that seniors fall into when their prescriptions can't be paid for any longer. That solution to the donut hole problem gets repealed by the Ryan budget. And that will hit home right away to seniors in Rhode Island and seniors across this country."
Remember the Affordable Care Act, that Democrats passed last year?
Well that Dem Plan fixes the 'Donut Hole' gap in prescription coverage that Seniors now often have to pay "out of pocket" -- often with money they don't have.
Well, if the GOP got their way, the Paul Ryan Medicare-ending Plan, would also put that 'Donut Hole' squarely back into Seniors personal Budget decisions.
Pain NOW -- Not later. Not 10 years from now, like Ryan likes to say.
Here's Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, Barbara Mikulski taking the Medicare fight -- right at, those Lying Ryan Republicans:
GOP Budget Would Hurt Millions of Seniors, Destroy Medicare
Senate Democrats
http://youtu.be/...
Here, let Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explain the benefits of The Affordable Care Act -- Benefits that Ryan Republicans would take away in one fell swoop, if they got their way ...
[continuing ...]
"The Affordable Care Act this year added an annual wellness benefit to the guaranteed benefit that seniors have," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a Capitol press conference Thursday.
It takes a huge step in closing the donut hole, 50 percent this year of the cost of drugs purchased in the coverage gap would disappear, and over time the whole coverage gap would disappear.
Seniors now qualify for screenings -- cancer screenings, mammograms, a variety of preventive care without copays out of pocket. That would disappear. A lot of new anti-fraud rules -- building a kind of system that can identify fraud at the front end, strike-forces that are now in 10 cities across this country, on the ground, going after people who would steal out of the Medicare trust fund. All of that would go away this year.
You can hear more from Kathleen Sebelius, on the SenateDemocrats YouTube channel.
Finally, the Dems are seeing an opportunity, to put the GOP in their Place
-- and they are taking it.
Harry Reid will put the Ryan Budget Plan to a Vote in the Senate too.
Let the Medicare two-faced weasels in the Senate, be forced to pick which side they're on too.
The side of the Tea Party Radicals, or on the side of 80% of the American people -- who say "Hands Off! Leave Medicare Alone."