Ok, so I just had a rather interesting twitter discussion.
@rickklein tackling Mediscare tactics tonight @ABCWorldNews. this time, it's Democrats' turn 2 use the strategy.
To which I responded.
Vyan1 Read the CBO REPORT! @rickklein
Which is pretty much the typical thing I would do because I have read the report and written about here several times. Such as Here and Here and Here.
The CBO is supposed to be the neutral non-partisan arbiter of the impact of proposed public policy right? Should be reasonable to ask ABC to include their conclusions in their report right?
Apparently not.
@rickklein @Vyan1 read @Politifact?
@rickklein @Vyan1 you don't think showing grandpa working as a stripper puts the ad in the "Mediscare" category?
Ok, so what exactly did Politifact say? Follow me over the Jump.
Recently Politifact has criticized the DCCC and Bill Maher as what ABCNews is now calling "Mediscare Tactics".
Here's the DCCC ad.
Politifact Says:
The DCCC released a web ad in which seniors are shown running a lemonade stand, cutting the grass and even stripping at a bachelorette party -- all to raise money to pay for Medicare.
"Seniors will have to find $12,500 for health care because Republicans voted to end Medicare," the ad says.
We found that Ryan’s plan for Medicare is a dramatic change of course, but we didn’t agree with the contention that the proposal ends Medicare. For this and other reasons, we rated it Pants on Fire.
....
One of the its major features is dramatically restructuring Medicare, the government-run health insurance program for those 65 and older. Right now, Medicare pays doctors and hospitals set fees for the care beneficiaries receive. Medicare beneficiaries contribute premiums for some types of coverage, and younger workers contribute payroll taxes.
Ryan’s plan leaves Medicare as is for people 55 and older. In 2022, though, new beneficiaries would receive "premium support," which means they would buy plans from private insurance companies with financial assistance from the government. People who need more health care would get a little more money. Some call this a voucher program, but the proposal says it’s not a voucher plan, because the government would pay the insurance companies directly.
The proposal requires private insurers to accept all applicants and to charge the same rate for people who are the same age. The plans would comply with standards to be set by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which administers the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. The plan gradually raises the Medicare eligibility age to 67, and it provides smaller premium support to high earners.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed Ryan’s proposal and found that it will save the government money. But it does so by asking future Medicare beneficiaries to pay more for insurance.
To me this is not really a difference of opinion. Medicare in it's current form acts as the Insurance Company for Seniors. The Ryan plan effectively phases this out starting in 2022, so that that insurance plan will accept no more new applicants. Instead it will be replaced by cash payments to private insurance plans for those reaching 65, then eventually 67, in future years. Medicare will not be supplying insurance - which it does as a significantly more efficient rate then private insurance companies - period.
As far as I'm concerned, if Medicare isn't providing an insurance function - it's NOT Medicare anymore. This plan would turn it simply into an ATM machine for the private insurance industry.
CBO actually specified how much more seniors would have to pay in out of pocket costs for private plans based on the Ryan proposal compared to current law under health reform and found that those costs alone would be greater than the entire combined costs of current Medicare for that individual.
I screen grabbed this JPG from the CBO pdf myself.
CBO estimated that these private plans would be 25% more expensive than Medicare, and that seniors would be paying 68% of the costs of that care themselves. the combined Federal and Individual cost for current Medicare would only 66%! Anyway you count it, out of pocket costs for Seniors would more than double!
If the current Medicare system were allowed to continue, CBO found that an average 65-year-old beneficiary's costs would be only 25 percent of what it'd be in the individual private insurance market. Under the GOP plan, those costs would jump to 68 percent.
The reason for this cost jump is simple, rather than having the large pool for cost sharing that Medicare currently has, individual private insurers would each have a smaller number of older, and sicker, clientele - meaning the additional costs for providing their care would be spread much less broadly. This cost sharing is another critical pillar in Medicare. Also Ryan's plan wouldn't allow for the cost sharing of the Exchange because it Repeals It, and would also repeal the Mandate allowing those who are far healthier to opt-out and continuing driving up costs for those who have no choice but to seek care.
Political also claims this.
Another problem with the ad is that it claims that participants would have to find $12,500 to pay for Medicare. That number is based on statistics compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The ad doesn’t mention, though, that the number includes money that would go to Medicare in any case. The CBO estimates beneficiaries would contribute about $6,150 in premiums in 2022 if the program isn’t changed at all. So the extra money seniors need to pay under the Republican proposal is more like $6,350.
So Politifact says that the DCCC is wrong, because CBO claims the Ryan plan is only $200 (or $6350 ht comments) more costly?
What the CBO actually said is this.
The payment for 65-year-olds in 2022 is specified to be $8,000, on average, which is approximately the same dollar amount as projected net federal spending per capita for 65-year-olds in traditional Medicare (that is, the program’s outlays minus receipts from the premiums enrollees pay for Part B and Part D, expressed on a per capita basis) under current law in that year. People who become eligible for Medicare in 2023 and subsequent years would receive a payment that was larger than
$8,000 by an amount that reflected the increase in the consumer price index for all
urban consumers (CPI-U) and the age of the enrollee. The premium support payments would increase in each year after initial eligibility by an amount that reflected both the increase in the CPI-U and the fact that enrollees in Medicare tend to be less healthy and require more costly health care as they age. (For example, projected net federal spending per capita for all people age 65 and older in traditional Medicare would be about $15,000 in 2022, CBO estimates, in comparison with about $8,000 for 65-year-olds.)
These number are completely different from what Politifact claims.
For those age 65, many of whom may not have an chronic ailments CBO estimates their care would be about $8000. But when you include those much older it jumps to $15,000. Remember that number as it will be significant soon because the second person Politicfact criticized was Bill Maher in reference to this exchange.
Maher (at 4:41): What happens to a person who uses the $15,000 - which by the if they're in an assisted living facility they'll go through it in three months - what happens to them if they use up the $15,000 by this time of the year?
Politifact also called this assertion "False".
We found that his description of the plan’s mechanics is not accurate. The average Medicare beneficiary in 2022 wouldn’t have $15,000 to spend on all health-care-related expenses -- they’d be given $15,000 to purchase a health insurance plan. That plan, in turn, would pay at least part of their medical bills. That plan might have limits and co-pays and deductibles -- as current Medicare does -- but the money the plan could spend on any given beneficiary’s health expenses would not be capped at $15,000 per year. The $15,000 limit only refers to what the government will pay for the insurance plan itself. We rated the statement False.
Technically the $15,000 was a per capita average, not a cap. But ultimately based on the particular persons age There is a Cap based on how much the Federal Government will provide for the plan. Politifact ignores a key point in the CBO analysis - that $8,000-$15,000 (depending on age) will only cover about 39% of the actual cost of the plan and the Beneficiary will either have to make up the difference or GO WITHOUT COVERAGE.
That was the point of Bill Maher's question. Would they have their coverage dropped for lack of payment?
What did Politifact say again?
But it does so by asking future Medicare beneficiaries to pay more for insurance.
Poli estimates that this additional payment might only be about another $200 - but that's NOT what CBO says. CBO says the per capital amount for CouponCare would be $15,000 on average. But also that cost of Private Care would be 25% greater than that bring it to $18,750. And finally 68% of that is --- wait for it -- $12,750! (Which means the DCCC, who were using numbers from the Center for American Progress is very likely Correct!)
What Would happen to these people? Would they have to re-enter the workforce in order to get the extra funds (which is the point of the DCCC ad) or not?
Now Rick Klein, which I didn't initially know until after I was done responding, happens to be Senior Washington Editor of ABC "World News with Diane Sawyer" (something I wouldn't know because I've been boycotting ABC ever since their $Million in-kind contribution to the GOP "Path to 9/11" and their deliberate Brietbarting of the Reverend Wright Tapes, and he's relying on Politifact's Opinion of the CBO report, rather than the CBO Report itself?
That's not what I call Journalism. It's not even good stenography. All I said to him was Read the Original Source Material for yourself.
Politifact has at times done great work, such as when it named "Death Panels" the Political Lie of the Year But sometimes in the effort not to seem "biased" toward one particular mode of political thought or the other, the media creates "False Balance" by deliberately trying to find a equal number of false or wrong statements by opposing camps. In this case of "Death Panels" the statement was wildly and completely incorrect, and in this case they've elevated a difference of opinion on whether Ryan's new plan would qualify as "Medicare" or not to Pants on Fire Status? They've argued that Maher didn't describe the system correctly, when in fact CBO does state that out-of-pocket costs would be at least more than Double from (27% to 61%) under the Ryan plan - ignoring his underlying point.
What happens when you can't afford that anymore?
Klein argues that a Senior Citizen Stripper is a "scare tactic"? No, Seniors who have to Self-Ration their Care and forego doctor appointments because they can't afford the co-payment, have to extend their medications by cutting them in half or skip buying food because their out of pocket costs and going through the roof is what's Scary.
And frankly nothing said by Democrats, the DCCC or Bill Maher about that subject has been shown to be incorrect.
Vyan
Updated by Vyan at Sun Apr 24, 2011 at 05:56 PM PDT
Here's the Report: