September 04, 2011 06:23 PM UTC

Tipton: Day Is Night, Black Is White, "GOP Budget Saves Medicare"

• 0 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

A few things to discuss in an opinion piece from Rep. Scott Tipton, published Friday at the conservative politics site The State Column:

I support a plan that ensures today’s seniors and those a decade away from retiring receive all of their benefits in full, while strengthening and securing Medicare for future generations…

The message of seniors in the Third District is clear: any health care or budget solution should strengthen Medicare and secure it for future generations. I ensured that this was incorporated in the Republican budget, which we passed in the House earlier this year. The Republican budget keeps Medicare as it is for those 55 and older, while strengthening and sustaining the program for our children and grandchildren.

While the House has passed a plan, the Senate has failed to fulfill the promise to seniors for more than 850 days, refusing to pass a budget and put forward a plan to protect Medicare and Social Security.

The Republican budget strengthens Medicare and increases affordability by targeting waste, fraud and abuse, which according to Medicare’s chief actuary, costs as much as $150 billion each year. Our plan roots out the causes of waste, fraud and abuse, and fixes the problem…

The president’s plan raided $500 billion from Medicare to fund his health care mandate at the expense of seniors. Not only did the President’s plan fail to increase affordability, it restricts access to health care by empowering a board of 15 arbitrarily appointed bureaucrats to unilaterally decide when and how to cut Medicare funding.

This isn’t the first time Rep. Tipton has tried to assert that the so-called “Ryan Plan” GOP 2012 budget proposal “strengthens and secures Medicare for future generations.” And it’s not the first time Tipton has asserted that President Barack Obama’s health care reform legislation “raided $500 billion from Medicare…at the expense of seniors.”

They are both, one more time, false claims. Politifact on Obama’s “Medicare cuts”:

[T]he Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, tagged Obamacare by critics, doesn’t eliminate benefits.

Indeed, portions of the law improve benefits and coverage, according to Tricia Neuman, director of the Medicare Policy Project at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit health care research organization. Medicare will cover more preventive health care services, such as wellness visits, and recipients won’t face the “doughnut hole” gap in prescription coverage imposed under an existing Medicare program.

Other provisions reduce the growth in Medicare spending by helping the program operate more efficiently and fund other coverage expansions to the uninsured. Other provisions are designed to improve the delivery of care and quality of care, Neuman has said…

The 2010 health care law will phase out extra payments for Medicare Advantage programs to bring their costs in line with traditional Medicare. The law also calls for slowing increases in payment rates to hospitals and other service providers each year. Also, the law directs a new national board to identify $15.5 billion in savings, though the board – the Independent Payment Advisory Board – is prohibited from proposing anything that would ration care or reduce or modify benefits. [Pols emphasis]

Now as for the 2012 GOP budget plan Tipton is lauding? The very same Politifact:

[T]he bottom line is that under the Republican plan, those who reach 65 in 10 years would pay more out of pocket for private health care. That’s the idea, to reduce the cost of the Medicare program to the government. [Pols emphasis] Republicans argue it the most responsible way to make the program fiscally sustainable. Obama argues that cost is too high and that savings can be achieved in other ways. Again, that’s a matter of political debate. The CBO compared the Republican plan to the status quo and to a somewhat modified Medicare. The CBO says either scenario would cause crushing debt, and would likely encourage legislators to cut Medicare benefits in the future. Obama too, is proposing reform. Obama’s figure is close to what the CBO estimated in one scenario — the least costly one — that the Republican plan would cost consumers in 10 years compared to what seniors pay today.

You can see from the nonpartisan fact-checking above that despite Tipton’s claims, the budget plan he supported is designed to dramatically increase the amount that seniors beginning in 10 years must pay for health care–by about $6,400 per year based on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate. On the other hand, the dire warnings of “cuts” to Medicare from Obama’s health care reform bill are false; “Obamacare” was in fact expressly designed to avoid reducing benefits to Medicare recipients.

So, if the truth of the matter is basically the exact opposite of what Tipton claims in this op-ed, and you can find that out in under five minutes of searching on the nation’s leading political fact-checking websites…why the hell would you write something like this?

That part is simple: cutting Medicare polls very, very badly. In a way, it’s an acknowledgement: that the drive to slash Medicare in the 2012 GOP budget plan was an absolute messaging disaster, just as we predicted it would be. Slowing becoming aware of this, the new message is all about how they’re not cutting Medicare. They’re “strengthening Medicare,” “increasing affordability” (this one is particularly bizarre), and it’s Obama who is “cutting Medicare!”

The more you look at what they’re trying to do here it becomes just breathtaking in its audacity: like watching a crime movie where you know the perp is outlandishly lying on the witness stand, but the jury believes him. Regardless of your position on health care reform, just consider the sheer chutzpah of this line of attack against the President. That Obama is the one who wants to “raid Medicare,” not the GOP. If Republicans are able to pivot like this from one position to its opposite, so freely abandoning the underlying facts–if you can get away with this, and Tipton is far from the only Republican trying, you can pretty much get away with anything.

Which could be the most unsettling part of all.

—–

UPDATE: More from ClubTwitty, who set to work debunking this column after its publication in the Grand Junction Sentinel today.