GOP/Ryan Budget Plan Targets Seniors…Again
CouponCare for Medicare – Tax Cuts for the Wealthy ? Benefit Cuts for Everyone Else
Here is NCPSSM President/CEO, Max Richtman‘s reaction to the GOP/Ryan Budget Plan released today:
?Contrary to the lofty political rhetoric we?ve heard today, the GOP/Ryan plan is not a brave budget offered by ?adults?. This is a budget that doubles-down on an ideological quest to turn Medicare into a privatized voucher program–stacking the deck against traditional Medicare and creating a death spiral leading to its demise. Under the GOP/Ryan plan, if seniors want the same level of coverage and access to health providers they?ve had in the past, they?ll have to pay more. If they can?t pay more, they?ll have to settle for less. At the same time, under the GOP/Ryan budget, billionaires continue to enjoy tax cuts our nation simply can?t afford. The American people, of all ages, do not believe benefit cuts for the middle class and tax cuts for the wealthy are the right course for our nation, no matter how they?re repackaged for an election year.
Congressman Ryan has said his budget plan addresses a ?moral issue? because ?there is right and there is wrong?. But the American people don?t believe it?s ?right? to cut middle class benefits to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy. It?s not ?right? to continually target seniors? programs to foot the bill for an economic and fiscal crisis they did not create. Middle class Americans have already sacrificed more than their fair share with stagnant wages, plunging home values and vanishing savings. That?s why it?s simply wrong to target the average American to protect the wealthiest among us who continue to reap the benefits of decades of flawed fiscal policy. We don?t have to destroy Medicare to save it — the American people understand this and will make their views on ?right and wrong? abundantly clear come November.? ?Max Richtman
The Social Security & Medicare Double-Reverse
Kudos to the Center for American Progress for cutting through Paul Ryan?s Social Security & Medicare double-speak and putting the Budget Chairman?s relatively newfound concern for America?s poor in perspective. Rep. Ryan has taken the ?greedy geezer? myth to new heights to bolster his claims that wealthy seniors are draining resources from the poor. Scott Lilly with CAP exposes the many flaws in Ryan?s theory.We recommend you read the entire analysis but here?s just a glimpse to get you started — beginning with a look at Rep. Ryan?s commitment to the poor up to now:
Based on data published on his (Chairman Ryan?s) committee?s website he slashed Medicaid by more than $771 billion over 10 years, which would cut millions of poor children, seniors, and people with disabilities from eligibility. He is particularly savage on the category he lists as ?other mandatory,? which includes programs such as Supplemental Assistance for Needy Families, Temporary Aid for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income?funding them at only 75 percent of the level the Congressional Budget Office estimates as necessary to maintain current service levels. An analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities demonstrated that more than two-thirds of his budget cuts come from programs that help low-income families. Now he?s all of a sudden concerned about the poor?So, if Rep. Ryan is not attacking the elderly for the purpose of helping the poor, why is he doing it? I think the answer is relatively simple: He needs to slash huge amounts from federal retirement programs to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. His $5.8 trillion in overall spending cuts last year still left huge deficits because of his voracious appetite for tax cuts. Rep. Ryan proposed more than $4 trillion in tax cuts over the course of the decade, lowering the rate at which the wealthiest Americans pay taxes from the 35 percent level in the expiring Bush tax cuts to 25 percent. His plan would reduce total tax liabilities of many millionaires by more than 25 percent?to the tune of hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars or in some instances even millions of dollars per each millionaire.So Rep. Ryan?s March 5 column about taking from the rich (defined as old people living on more than $20,000 a year) and giving to the poor is in fact about taking from the elderly and giving to the rich?akin to a double reverse in football. Let?s hope the defensive backfield in Congress stays alert.
The Affordable Care Act and Medicare
Talking Points Memo has a good post on the New England Journal of Medicine?s new report on slowing the cost growth in Medicare spending. NEJM asks, ?Slower Growth in Medicare Spending ? Is This the New Normal??
?On the whole, we do not believe that the recent slowdown in Medicare spending growth is a fluke,? wrote the researchers Chapin White and Paul Ginsburg. Thanks to the cost-control reforms over the last decade, they added, ?the CBO projects that over the next decade Medicare spending per enrollee will grow substantially more slowly than the overall economy.? They argued that the ACA in particular lays the framework for longer term cost-control by transitioning the provider reimbursement system from paying for quantity to paying for quality, something even Republicans quietly believe is a good idea.?
TPM also writes:
?If the cost-growth slowdown continues into the foreseeable future, it could have dramatic implications on the future of health care policy.The conservative movement has disliked Medicare ever since its inception in the early 1960s, when Ronald Reagan argued it would spell the end of freedom in America. Half a century after enactment, Republicans have found a potent pretext to dismantle the senior safety-net program: impending fiscal doom. Indeed, official projections in recent years have found that Medicare spending is on course to swallow the entire federal budget in half a century. And that has been the central justification for the GOP?s plan, written by Rep. Paul Ryan, to phase out traditional Medicare and replace it with a subsidized private insurance system.But if the NEJM projections hold, the threat of fiscal catastrophe would lose steam. And that means Republicans would have to resort to ideological arguments against Medicare if they want to end its basic structure ? a hard sell given the program?s immense popularity. Prior efforts to dramatically scale back Medicare benefits have fallen flat, and without being able to portray privatization or ?premium support? as critical to avoiding fiscal apocalypse, as Ryan does on a regular basis, there?s no reason to expect a different outcome.?
What this piece doesn?t mention is the fact that not only has healthcare reform slowed cost growth, it also uses some of those savings to provide new benefits for seniors — a fact never discussed by conservatives who want the Affordable Care Act repealed before seniors even realize these new benefits exist.The Patients Aware campaign has launched a nationwide campaign to cut through all this political rhetoric on Medicare. You can check it out at
www. patientsaware.org
Did You Know? – Busting Medicare/Healthcare Myths
Confused by what health care reform really means for seniors? Join the crowd. Take a few minutes and let this video help break it all down for you…The Patients Aware campaign, created by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Foundation, the Herndon Alliance, and the National Physicians Alliance, has released a new video to help America?s seniors understand the new Medicare benefits available to them thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The video, ?Did You Know??, highlights new preventive benefits for seniors, Part D coverage improvements like closing the donut hole, and describes how savings have already reduced Part B premiums for seniors. The video can be seen on the Patients Aware website at: www. Patientsaware.org. Patients Aware has assembled a national network of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare experts to give Medicare presentations during educational meetings and town halls beginning in March. Medical professionals are among the most trusted sources of health care information for seniors and their families. They understand how vital Medicare is to the health and wellbeing of their older patients which is why they have agreed to donate their free time to provide information and answer questions for seniors in cities throughout the country.?America?s seniors want and deserve the facts about Medicare, prescription drug policy, and what federal health reform will mean for them. Most Americans know very little about the important new benefits and protections provided by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The National Physicians Alliance has found that providing non-partisan, factual information about the law is the best antidote to widespread confusion and anxiety.? Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, NPA PresidentThe video release and town hall tour follows a successful December 2011 campaign kick off in which more than sixty thousand Americans participated in a Patients Aware tele-town hall with Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee, and a panel of doctors, nurses, and healthcare policy experts. Seniors and their families dialed in to this national forum to ask questions about the Affordable Care Act and what it means for millions of Medicare beneficiaries. The hour-long event kicked-off one of the most effective education efforts to date since the law was passed in March 2010.
Telling the WHOLE Medicare Story
While Presidential candidates and Washington politicians continue to claim ?we can?t afford Social Security and Medicare?, few– if any–want to talk about what their proposals will actually mean for millions of middle-class Americans who depend on these programs. Columbia Journalism Review?s Trudy Lieberman wrote a memo to political journalists urging them to start asking some tough questions so that voters can understand what their plans to cut benefits will actually mean for our nation.
Last week, speaking to business leaders in Detroit, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney mentioned that Medicare-eligible Americans ought to wait longer for their benefits. The media glossed over Romney?s remarks; but I kept thinking about them as I was chatting with a woman who had one leg, amputated because of complications from diabetes. And they stayed in my mind as I talked to another woman?a 67-year-old who had a stroke last year, and had had to quit working as a presser for a local dry cleaner ten years ago, when she was 57. She had a seizure, and a hot press fell on her hand. A long scar shows how her work life ended. She qualified for a Social Security disability check?all of $795 a month that?s been her only income ever since. How on earth could someone like her pay for medical care if she had had to wait a few more years?A CNBC blog picked up an AP story which noted that Mitt had said the federal health reform law was too expensive; that it raised taxes and cut $500 billion from Medicare. Not another half truth! For the fourteenth time, the law did cut payments to hospitals and to sellers of Medicare Advantage plans, but it did not cut basic benefits for seniors. Yet the GOP keeps using the number to scare seniors into voting for them. The blog post linked to a CNBC primer on Medicare and Medicaid, which at least offered some basics. For the record, the CNBC primer didn?t correct that misperception. Please indulge me in a digression. Research from respected sources like the Kaiser Family Foundation has challenged the notion that raising the age for Medicare benefits saves money. Kaiser found that lifting the age from 65 to 67 would reduce Medicare spending by $7.6 billion. But before you run with that number, you need to know that cost would merely be shifted to employers and individuals, who would have to pay more for health coverage to replace the lost Medicare benefits. It would mean spending $10.1 billion in the private sector to save $7.6 billion for the government. How?s that for bending the nation?s cost curve?
You can see the Kaiser Family Foundation report here. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also looked the costs of raising Medicare?s eligibility age here.
GOP/Ryan Budget Plan Targets Seniors…Again
CouponCare for Medicare – Tax Cuts for the Wealthy ? Benefit Cuts for Everyone Else
Here is NCPSSM President/CEO, Max Richtman‘s reaction to the GOP/Ryan Budget Plan released today:
?Contrary to the lofty political rhetoric we?ve heard today, the GOP/Ryan plan is not a brave budget offered by ?adults?. This is a budget that doubles-down on an ideological quest to turn Medicare into a privatized voucher program–stacking the deck against traditional Medicare and creating a death spiral leading to its demise. Under the GOP/Ryan plan, if seniors want the same level of coverage and access to health providers they?ve had in the past, they?ll have to pay more. If they can?t pay more, they?ll have to settle for less. At the same time, under the GOP/Ryan budget, billionaires continue to enjoy tax cuts our nation simply can?t afford. The American people, of all ages, do not believe benefit cuts for the middle class and tax cuts for the wealthy are the right course for our nation, no matter how they?re repackaged for an election year.
Congressman Ryan has said his budget plan addresses a ?moral issue? because ?there is right and there is wrong?. But the American people don?t believe it?s ?right? to cut middle class benefits to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy. It?s not ?right? to continually target seniors? programs to foot the bill for an economic and fiscal crisis they did not create. Middle class Americans have already sacrificed more than their fair share with stagnant wages, plunging home values and vanishing savings. That?s why it?s simply wrong to target the average American to protect the wealthiest among us who continue to reap the benefits of decades of flawed fiscal policy. We don?t have to destroy Medicare to save it — the American people understand this and will make their views on ?right and wrong? abundantly clear come November.? ?Max Richtman
The Social Security & Medicare Double-Reverse
Kudos to the Center for American Progress for cutting through Paul Ryan?s Social Security & Medicare double-speak and putting the Budget Chairman?s relatively newfound concern for America?s poor in perspective. Rep. Ryan has taken the ?greedy geezer? myth to new heights to bolster his claims that wealthy seniors are draining resources from the poor. Scott Lilly with CAP exposes the many flaws in Ryan?s theory.We recommend you read the entire analysis but here?s just a glimpse to get you started — beginning with a look at Rep. Ryan?s commitment to the poor up to now:
Based on data published on his (Chairman Ryan?s) committee?s website he slashed Medicaid by more than $771 billion over 10 years, which would cut millions of poor children, seniors, and people with disabilities from eligibility. He is particularly savage on the category he lists as ?other mandatory,? which includes programs such as Supplemental Assistance for Needy Families, Temporary Aid for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income?funding them at only 75 percent of the level the Congressional Budget Office estimates as necessary to maintain current service levels. An analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities demonstrated that more than two-thirds of his budget cuts come from programs that help low-income families. Now he?s all of a sudden concerned about the poor?So, if Rep. Ryan is not attacking the elderly for the purpose of helping the poor, why is he doing it? I think the answer is relatively simple: He needs to slash huge amounts from federal retirement programs to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. His $5.8 trillion in overall spending cuts last year still left huge deficits because of his voracious appetite for tax cuts. Rep. Ryan proposed more than $4 trillion in tax cuts over the course of the decade, lowering the rate at which the wealthiest Americans pay taxes from the 35 percent level in the expiring Bush tax cuts to 25 percent. His plan would reduce total tax liabilities of many millionaires by more than 25 percent?to the tune of hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars or in some instances even millions of dollars per each millionaire.So Rep. Ryan?s March 5 column about taking from the rich (defined as old people living on more than $20,000 a year) and giving to the poor is in fact about taking from the elderly and giving to the rich?akin to a double reverse in football. Let?s hope the defensive backfield in Congress stays alert.
The Affordable Care Act and Medicare
Talking Points Memo has a good post on the New England Journal of Medicine?s new report on slowing the cost growth in Medicare spending. NEJM asks, ?Slower Growth in Medicare Spending ? Is This the New Normal??
?On the whole, we do not believe that the recent slowdown in Medicare spending growth is a fluke,? wrote the researchers Chapin White and Paul Ginsburg. Thanks to the cost-control reforms over the last decade, they added, ?the CBO projects that over the next decade Medicare spending per enrollee will grow substantially more slowly than the overall economy.? They argued that the ACA in particular lays the framework for longer term cost-control by transitioning the provider reimbursement system from paying for quantity to paying for quality, something even Republicans quietly believe is a good idea.?
TPM also writes:
?If the cost-growth slowdown continues into the foreseeable future, it could have dramatic implications on the future of health care policy.The conservative movement has disliked Medicare ever since its inception in the early 1960s, when Ronald Reagan argued it would spell the end of freedom in America. Half a century after enactment, Republicans have found a potent pretext to dismantle the senior safety-net program: impending fiscal doom. Indeed, official projections in recent years have found that Medicare spending is on course to swallow the entire federal budget in half a century. And that has been the central justification for the GOP?s plan, written by Rep. Paul Ryan, to phase out traditional Medicare and replace it with a subsidized private insurance system.But if the NEJM projections hold, the threat of fiscal catastrophe would lose steam. And that means Republicans would have to resort to ideological arguments against Medicare if they want to end its basic structure ? a hard sell given the program?s immense popularity. Prior efforts to dramatically scale back Medicare benefits have fallen flat, and without being able to portray privatization or ?premium support? as critical to avoiding fiscal apocalypse, as Ryan does on a regular basis, there?s no reason to expect a different outcome.?
What this piece doesn?t mention is the fact that not only has healthcare reform slowed cost growth, it also uses some of those savings to provide new benefits for seniors — a fact never discussed by conservatives who want the Affordable Care Act repealed before seniors even realize these new benefits exist.The Patients Aware campaign has launched a nationwide campaign to cut through all this political rhetoric on Medicare. You can check it out at
www. patientsaware.org
Did You Know? – Busting Medicare/Healthcare Myths
Confused by what health care reform really means for seniors? Join the crowd. Take a few minutes and let this video help break it all down for you…The Patients Aware campaign, created by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Foundation, the Herndon Alliance, and the National Physicians Alliance, has released a new video to help America?s seniors understand the new Medicare benefits available to them thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The video, ?Did You Know??, highlights new preventive benefits for seniors, Part D coverage improvements like closing the donut hole, and describes how savings have already reduced Part B premiums for seniors. The video can be seen on the Patients Aware website at: www. Patientsaware.org. Patients Aware has assembled a national network of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare experts to give Medicare presentations during educational meetings and town halls beginning in March. Medical professionals are among the most trusted sources of health care information for seniors and their families. They understand how vital Medicare is to the health and wellbeing of their older patients which is why they have agreed to donate their free time to provide information and answer questions for seniors in cities throughout the country.?America?s seniors want and deserve the facts about Medicare, prescription drug policy, and what federal health reform will mean for them. Most Americans know very little about the important new benefits and protections provided by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The National Physicians Alliance has found that providing non-partisan, factual information about the law is the best antidote to widespread confusion and anxiety.? Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, NPA PresidentThe video release and town hall tour follows a successful December 2011 campaign kick off in which more than sixty thousand Americans participated in a Patients Aware tele-town hall with Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee, and a panel of doctors, nurses, and healthcare policy experts. Seniors and their families dialed in to this national forum to ask questions about the Affordable Care Act and what it means for millions of Medicare beneficiaries. The hour-long event kicked-off one of the most effective education efforts to date since the law was passed in March 2010.
Telling the WHOLE Medicare Story
While Presidential candidates and Washington politicians continue to claim ?we can?t afford Social Security and Medicare?, few– if any–want to talk about what their proposals will actually mean for millions of middle-class Americans who depend on these programs. Columbia Journalism Review?s Trudy Lieberman wrote a memo to political journalists urging them to start asking some tough questions so that voters can understand what their plans to cut benefits will actually mean for our nation.
Last week, speaking to business leaders in Detroit, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney mentioned that Medicare-eligible Americans ought to wait longer for their benefits. The media glossed over Romney?s remarks; but I kept thinking about them as I was chatting with a woman who had one leg, amputated because of complications from diabetes. And they stayed in my mind as I talked to another woman?a 67-year-old who had a stroke last year, and had had to quit working as a presser for a local dry cleaner ten years ago, when she was 57. She had a seizure, and a hot press fell on her hand. A long scar shows how her work life ended. She qualified for a Social Security disability check?all of $795 a month that?s been her only income ever since. How on earth could someone like her pay for medical care if she had had to wait a few more years?A CNBC blog picked up an AP story which noted that Mitt had said the federal health reform law was too expensive; that it raised taxes and cut $500 billion from Medicare. Not another half truth! For the fourteenth time, the law did cut payments to hospitals and to sellers of Medicare Advantage plans, but it did not cut basic benefits for seniors. Yet the GOP keeps using the number to scare seniors into voting for them. The blog post linked to a CNBC primer on Medicare and Medicaid, which at least offered some basics. For the record, the CNBC primer didn?t correct that misperception. Please indulge me in a digression. Research from respected sources like the Kaiser Family Foundation has challenged the notion that raising the age for Medicare benefits saves money. Kaiser found that lifting the age from 65 to 67 would reduce Medicare spending by $7.6 billion. But before you run with that number, you need to know that cost would merely be shifted to employers and individuals, who would have to pay more for health coverage to replace the lost Medicare benefits. It would mean spending $10.1 billion in the private sector to save $7.6 billion for the government. How?s that for bending the nation?s cost curve?
You can see the Kaiser Family Foundation report here. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also looked the costs of raising Medicare?s eligibility age here.