Excerpt from article by EZRA KLEIN, Blomberg View
The Romney Medicare Chart Comes Up Blank
Let’s unpack that. The “$716b cut” refers to the Medicare cuts in the Affordable Care Act. The bulk of those cuts come in two areas. First, private insurance plans in the Medicare Advantage program have been getting paid about 20 percent more than traditional Medicare. Those overpayments are ratcheted back. Second, in negotiations with the White House, hospitals agreed to take a cut in reimbursements with the understanding that they’ll make more money from the 30 million previously uninsured people who will have insurance as a result of the law. The cuts to insurers and hospitals were sufficiently obvious that Paul Ryan included them in his budget....
“No change” is clear enough. But in case you were confused, Romney emphasized that there will be “no changes, no adjustments, no savings” to Medicare for the next decade. So Romney plans to keep paying Medicare Advantage plans about 20 percent more than traditional Medicare, and he intends to give hospitals payments that they have already agreed to give up.
Romney’s description of what happens to the next generation of retirees deserves to be quoted in full: “The Medicare trustees have notified the president that the plan will go bankrupt, Medicare Part A, in the next 12 years,” he says. “Under the plan I have proposed, it is solvent.”
That’s ... it. Those are the only details he provides. He literally tosses his marker away after saying those words.
But the words aren’t true. [MORE]



Your new post is loading...

