Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
This morning, the Washington Post fact checker gave Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
three Pinocchios—that
means "significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions"—and declared that "she should be ashamed" for her "eye-popping" and "outrageous" claim. So what did she say that was so eye-poppingly outrageous?
“I think there's no question if you take a snapshot, people will run out of money, very quickly [under the GOP Medicare plan if you have cancer]. And if you run out of the government voucher and then you run out of your own money, you're really left to scrape together charity care, go without care, die sooner. There aren't really a lot of options.”
Wow, that's quite an eye-popping statement. In fact, the fact checker compared it to the Republicans' completely ludicrous "death panels" accusation. What a whopper, eh?
So what is the "significant factual error" in Sebelius' statement? Well, first of all, a spokesman for Ryan said, "There is nothing to substantiate her claims of lower life expectancies." Oh, well, I guess that settles it. Sebelius is a shameful liar because a Ryan spokesman said so.
Second, there are a "number of unanswered questions about the Ryan Medicare plan." And since there's a lot we don't yet know, we don't know if Sebelius is right. Thus, she must be wrong.
But here's what we do know:
The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan arm of Congress, analyzed Ryan’s plan. It estimated that by 2030, the government would pay just 32 percent of the health care costs, compared to 70 to 75 percent if traditional Medicare stayed in place. The other 68 percent of the plan would have to be shouldered by the retiree.
Further, as Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress points out:
Ryan would get rid of the existing matching fund program—under which the federal government pays 50 to 75 percent of each state’s Medicaid costs—and give states block grants that are smaller than projected funding. As a result, states would have to make up the difference by increasing spending or (more realistically) capping enrollment, cutting eligibility, limiting mandatory benefits and lowering provider reimbursements. In fact, an analysis of Newt Gingrich’s 1995 block grant proposal concluded that had that plan been adopted, 48 states would have experienced a reduction in federal dollars and "more than 6 million people would have lost Medicaid coverage in 2002."
So, in other words, the GOP's plan would force seniors to pay more—a lot more—of their own health care expenses. And if they don't happen to have that extra cash laying around? It's not like being unable to afford to pay for health care means it'll kill you or anything. Just ask the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they can't afford the cost of health care.
Apparently, though, WaPo's fact checker subscribes to the Republican theory that the free market will magically cure seniors before they run out of money.
Now, that's eye-poppingly outrageous.