As you all know by now Raul Ryan's much ballyhooed speech at the Republican Convention has been torn asunder by analysts and journalists for its numerous distortions and falsehoods.
I want to focus on how the most glaring and indefensible lie of them all. Ryan's claim that "Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly" was not just exposed by it shows Ryan wanted to implement those same changes himself and claim the credit.
THE PAUL RYAN SPEECH: FIVE HYPOCRISIES
BY RYAN LIZZA
3. Ryan criticized Obama for cutting seven hundred billion dollars from Medicare:
You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health-care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it.
Ryan’s famous budget plan, the Path to Prosperity, repealed every aspect of Obamacare except the changes to Medicare.
FactCheck exposes Ryan as a Fraud in no uncertain terms.
Ryan’s VP Spin
Taking Money from Medicare?
Ryan continued the campaign’s false line of attack that Obama had “funneled” money out of Medicare to pay for the federal health care law “at the expense of the elderly.” But that’s contradicted by Medicare’s chief actuary, in a statement at the end of the most recent report of the system’s trustees (our emphasis added):
Medicare Actuary, April 23, 2012: [Obama's] Affordable Care Act makes important changes to the Medicare program and substantially improves its financial outlook …
Medicare’s money isn’t being taken away. The Affordable Care Act calls for slowing the growth in spending, a move that — if successful — would keep the hospital insurance trust fund solvent for longer than if the reductions didn’t happen.
Ryan himself proposed keeping most of these same spending cuts in his most recent “Path to Prosperity” budget. Yet, Ryan criticized Obama’s cuts as “the biggest, coldest power play of all” and suggested seniors would suffer as a result.
Ryan, Aug. 29: And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. … [T]hey just took it all away from Medicare, $716 billion funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.
The Affordable Care Act calls for a $716 billion reduction in the future growth of Medicare spending over 10 years, with most of that — about $415 billion — coming from a reduction in the future growth of payments to hospitals through Medicare Part A. And Medicare Part A’s trust fund, as we’ve explained before, is in trouble financially. It’s set to be insolvent in 2024, even with these spending cuts. Without them, the trust fund wouldn’t be able to fully pay projected benefits in 2016, the Medicare trustees estimate.
Of course none of this will pierce the hyper partisan media bubble most rank and file Republicans restrict themselves to. Too bad.