Fact Checking the President
The President’s campaign is releasing a booklet this morning featuring the President’s re-election “plans.” Unfortunately, many of them involve funny money and fuzzy math. Take for instance the section on retirement security, which claims that ObamaCare “strengthened Medicare by cutting overpayments to insurance companies and cracking down on billions in health care waste, fraud and abuse. The President added eight years to the Medicare Trust Fund.”
There’s just one problem with these assertions — they aren’t true. Take the claims about “waste, fraud, and abuse.” First, ObamaCare’s $300 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage will reduce the program’s enrollment by half and plan choices by two-thirds. Moreover, the non-partisan Medicare actuary said that ObamaCare would have a direct impact on beneficiaries in traditional Medicare as well. He has concluded that over the long-term, up to 40 percent of providers would become unprofitable due to ObamaCare, and could “have to withdraw from providing services to Medicare beneficiaries.” Earlier this month, an Alabama hospital took a different course — it decided to shut down entirely, due to the impact of ObamaCare on its business model.
More from Chris Jacob.
The myth of Obama as the healthcare savior is something that should be challenged more loudly, as there aren’t really many facts the President can stand on.
Right, cutting payments without overarching reform will have net negative effects. If you pay less for something you will get less of it.
Now days, we need fact checkers to fact check the fact checkers.
So ready for November 7th!
Talking about being shady, greedy and a liar. When you have nothing to back up your “plan” with but a good number of businesses closing down, hospitals shutting down, a low standard of living, sick people getting sicker and the poor getting poorer…then you know you are doing something wrong.
“Vote for Obama because he’s the incumbent” doesn’t seem to be working for them, hence this pamphlet.
Alex, it seems like that’s the way to be these days. Intentions can get you a peace prize and make you the leader of the free world.
No ones lost those Medicare Advantage enrollment yet, thanks to the bonus system!
Obama is a phony, no doubt, but the last sentence of the Jacobs piece is not true.
If you read the actual article about the hospital closing down, there is NO proof that Obamacare had anything to do with it.
The president of the hospital chain just mentioned Obamacare as a general comment. For all we know, there are just too many hospitals in this particular city.
It is way too early to blame any hospital closing on Obamacare.