From the County Chairman ’s Desk
Walter D. (Wally) Wilkerson, Jr., MD
Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman
January 2010
In September President Obama stated that “our health-care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers”, especially Medicare. “We will eventually be spending more on Medicare than every other government program combined.” He is correct. Medicare’s unfunded liability-the gap between revenues and promised benefits-is currently #37 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. The Wall Street Journal on September 11th noted: “Yet the President uses this insolvency as an argument to justify the creation of another health-care entitlement, this time for most everyone under the age of 65. It’s like a variation on the old Marx Brothers routine: ‘The soup is terrible and the portions are too small’. As astonishing, Mr. Obama claimed he can finance government-run health care without adding “one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period,’ in a large part by pumping money out of Medicare.”
This is the old shell game or Medicare for dummies. While describing Medicare as a “sacred trust”, he proposes to pay for over one-half the ten year cost of the Democrat health care plan with more than $400 billion dollar cut in Medicare spending. This cut would presumably be used mostly for subsidies to help pay for coverage of millions of uninsured. $42 billion dollars of this cut would come from home health care provided for seniors and $177 billion dollars to slash the Medicare Advantage program that has enrolled 24% of all Medicare beneficiaries.
Advantage plans have excelled at filling in the gaps of traditional Medicare, contracting with doctors and hospitals to coordinate care and improve quality and covering items such as vision, hearing and management of chronic illness. Obama and the Democrats consider the Advantage program an “unwarranted” subsidy of greedy insurance companies, “waste and abuse”. However, the majority of Advantage plan enrollees come from the low income citizens who cannot afford Medicare Supplement (Medigap) insurance premiums.
The WSJ concludes: “Mr. Obama also called for ‘civility’ in debate even as he calls the arguments of his critics ‘lies’. So in the spirit of civility, we won’t accuse the President of lying about Medicare. We’ll just say his claims bear little relation to anything true.”
The Democrats tout AARP as supporters of their health care plan. Columnist Dick Morris has exposed one of AARP’s reasons for its support. “Medicare Advantage should be Obama’s favorite program. It combines all the elements he likes- premiums are subsidized for the low-income elderly……As a result its costs on the one hand and its premiums on the other hand are both much lower than with conventional insurance….AARP does not sell Medicare Advantage. But it makes a vast amount of money selling Medigap coverage. AARP has no higher political priority than to curb the Medicare Advantage program and replace it with Medigap insurance. The profit margins on Medigap are greater, and AARP has every intention of exploiting them with Obama’s help. His price? AARP’s backing for his program”. How about those greedy insurance companies Mr. Obama?
As a veteran of many election campaigns, I cannot count the number of times the Democrats have accused Republicans of planning to cut Social Security or Medicare benefits if elected. It is difficult to believe, but it is true. The Democrats have thrown our senior citizens under the bus. Wake up Americans! Let your voice be heard and your vote count in 2010.