Gag Order Does Not Apply to the Censors
During the debate over ObamaCare last fall, the Administration threatened health insurance companies who were informing seniors of potential losses of Medicare Advantage (MA) benefits. As far as I could tell, the mailings were completely truthful and consistent with the CBO and CMS estimates. Medicare’s Chief Actuary, for example, predicts that eventually as many as 7.4 million beneficiaries will lose their MA plan altogether and another 7.4 million will experience a loss of benefits.
This week the very same agency that gagged the insurers is sending out a propaganda pamphlet to more than 40 million Medicare beneficiaries – extolling the benefits of the new law, but ignoring all the costs (including the fact that more than half the cost of health reform is to be paid for by reduced Medicare spending). The pamphlet even claims that MA enrollees will be better off!
Republicans are outraged [gated]. CMS says it only wants to help seniors avoid confusion. But won’t the biggest confusion come when their MA plans are cancelled?
These guys are shameless.
You didn’t mention that our tax dollars are paying for this pamphlet. Not only do these guys refuse to listen to their own voters, they take our money and use it to spew lies back at us in return.
I think “shameless” is an apt word. I can think of worse ones that would also apply.
Republicans should be outraged. We should all be outraged.
I would like to think the career bureaucrats at CMS are not be required to put out propaganda as a requirement of keeping their job. Those shenanigans sound like the actions of a Latin American military junta rather than the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.
This is more akin to advertising than propaganda, although maybe the two are very similar.
This type of brochure could be produced by an insurance company, although the rhetoric here seems obviously too good to be true.
I am wondering if the average Medicare beneficiary is wondering “What are the drawbacks?”
Why is talk cheap – because the supply exceeds the demand.
Don Levit
77 million baby boomer retirees in 2011 is one hell of a voting block. Time to mobilize. Don’t screw with us, much less their parents. Don Ramsden