Obamacare would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist discovered only after the complex bill was signed.
Obamacare is like any other pile of feces – you gotta pass it to find out what’s in it. One year later, Obama’s signature piece of legislative diarrhea still reeks with surprises.
Yahoo has the latest poop:
[Obamacare] would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.
If you think healthcare is expensive now...oh, wait, that's what the sign says
… 3 million more people could qualify for Medicaid in 2014 [because]…. most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility. It might be compared to allowing middle-class people to qualify for food stamps.…administration officials and senior Democratic lawmakers say it’s not a loophole but the result of a well-meaning effort to simplify rules for deciding who will get help with insurance costs….
Good intentions, the best pavement for certain roads we know. But who’s getting pooped on?
…states have been clamoring for relief from Medicaid costs, complaining that just these sorts of federal rules drive up spending and limit state options.
States, the guys that CAN’T print money at will. This will be fixed ASAP, then….
A spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee… said if the situation does become a problem there’s plenty of time to fix it later.
Sure, things will be less hectic after the apocalypse. Now for the good news…
“The fact that this is being discovered now tells you, what else is baked into this law?” said [Mike] Leavitt, [HHS secretary under President Bush.]
Chris Matthews told regular guests Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe that Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan “is going to kill half the people who watch this show.”
Here’s Chris Matthews at his spittle-spewing best. Or worst. Take your choice.
He told regular guests Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe that Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan “is going to kill half the people who watch this show.”
That’s the best endorsement for Ryan’s plan that we’ve heard so far.
Medicare’s chief actuary says rosy ObamaCare projections are complete nonsense
The Obama administration just got caught trying to slip another one past the American people. They used data in the annual Medicare Trustees Report to prove that that ObamaCare would inject new life in the Medicare monster.
Unfortunately for the President, that argument didn’t hold up when economics21.org analyzed the report and learned that Medicare’s own chief actuary disagrees. Strongly disagrees, in fact. He says they underestimated future costs by 68%.
To repeat, the administration underestimated costs by a remarkable 68%:
68%! They underestimated Medicare costs by a remarkable 68%.
“(T)he financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range. . . or the long range. . . . I encourage readers to review the ‘illustrative alternative’ projections that are based on more sustainable assumptions for physician and other Medicare price updates.”
These remarkable words are found, in all places, in the “Statement of Actuarial Opinion” in the back of the 2010 annual Medicare Trustees’ Report.
It is difficult to overstate how unusual this development is. The normal process with the annual Trustees’ Reports is for the Trustees to develop and publish the best available projections for the future finances of Social Security and Medicare. The respective Social Security and Medicare actuaries then sign a pro forma blessing of those projections, which is tacked to the back of the report when released to the public.
This year, the Medicare Chief Actuary clearly did not feel he could in good conscience sign such a declaration.
Our initial inclination was to criticize the Obama administration on this error. But on second thought, we say it deserves a little credit here. After all, they’re only off by 68% and that’s a lot closer than they’ve come on any of their other economic projections.
Anthony Weiner: “Medicare has actually been a pretty successful program. It’s got some financial problems, but as far as consumers are concerned, they like it.” Some financial problems? That’s like saying the Titanic had some ice problems.
Anthony “pronounce my last name any way you want and it’s still appropriate” Weiner, the liberal Democrat congressman from New York, is a piece of work. Here are a couple quotes from a recent CNBC interview that show just how out-of-touch he is with the average American:
“Medicare has actually been a pretty successful program. It’s got some financial problems, but as far as consumers are concerned, they like it.” Some financial problems? That’s like saying the Titanic had some ice problems.
“The real question is not, in my mind, should there be a public plan? I’m not quite sure what private insurance companies are bringing to the table. $200,000,000 a year go into overhead and profit that should be going into healthcare.” You tell ’em, Tony. We certainly wouldn’t want the purity of healthcare to be tainted by the profit motive, would we?
He also said that 100 other libs will vote against any plan that doesn’t include the single payer plan. Has anyone told President Obama that he can’t be a leader if he doesn’t have any followers?
The Obama administration made a big show out of announcing an agreement in which the nation’s hospitals agreed to sacrifice $155 billion (with a “b”) in future Medicare and Medicaid expenses.
The Obama Shell Game™, coming soon to an industry near you
The Obama administration made a big show out of announcing an agreement in which the nation’s hospitals agreed to sacrifice $155 billion (with a “b”) in future Medicare and Medicaid expenses.
This was supposed to be one of the lynchpins of Obama’s healthcare plan, clear evidence that this bloated fiasco could be paid for with cost cuts rather than tax increases.
Except for one thing: It’s all smoke and mirrors. Here’s how the Associated Press reported it:
Of the $155 billion in projected savings from hospitals, about $40 billion to $50 billion would come from reducing federal payments hospitals receive for providing care to uninsured and low-income patients, according to lobbyists. Those payments are now made through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The Medicaid cuts would be apportioned by state, as 10 percent annual reductions beginning around 2015.
About $100 billion more would come from reductions in planned Medicare payments to hospitals. A small amount of savings would come from trimming the money hospitals get for preventing patients from being readmitted for additional care.
Hospitals would also get something out of the deal. They won an agreement that if the Finance Committee’s legislation includes a public health insurance plan, it would reimburse hospitals at above the rates Medicare and Medicaid pay, which hospitals have long complained are insufficient.
Got that? The nation’s hospitals have agreed to cut payments from the government in exchange for increased payments from the government.
Everybody sing along: “There’s no business like show business, if you tell me it’s so…”
2003: Democrats insist Medicare can’t be cut. Democrats insist Medicare must be cut.
When that cold-hearted son of a bitch George Bush wanted to make relatively modest cuts in Medicare, Democrats had a hissy fit. They said he was trying to to kill old people.
Now that The Greatest President In the History of The Universe wants to cut $622 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, Republicans are still cold-hearted sons a bitches. But now it’s for some reason we really can’t fathom.
