Obama’s $8.3 billion ruse postpones major cuts to Medicare Advantage until after election

WASHINGTON, D.C. — When President Obama was trying to push his health care bill through Congress, he was desperate to hide its true cost.  He knew that if the American people understood how expensive his plan was, they would never support it. Democrats packed the law with budget tricks, accounting gimmicks and empty promises.  One by one, the President’s gimmicks are now coming to light. Most recently, investigators at the Government Accountability Office (GA)) uncovered an $8.3 billion ruse designed to help Mr. Obama win reelection.  Unfortunately, it’s a blatant political stunt paid for with tax dollars. The President’s scheme targets seniors on Medicare Advantage.  One out of four seniors rely on the program as part of their healthcare coverage. The program is popular because it helps with preventive medicine and with coordinating patients’ care.  Seniors like it because it helps cover the cost of things like eyeglasses and hearing aids.  Every one of the 12-million seniors on Medicare Advantage has made a choice to go on the program. As people all around the country remember, the White House and Democrats cut $500-billion from Medicare with their healthcare law.  The cuts were not to strengthen Medicare, but to start a whole new government program for other people. About $145-billion of that money came from Medicare Advantage.  The cuts were scheduled to hit seniors this fall when they register for their Medicare Advantage plans for the next year. Registration is scheduled for October, the month right before the presidential election.  Millions of American seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage would suddenly see their rates increase because of the President’s healthcare law.  Others would have found that the plan they belonged to and liked would suddenly not be available any more. Those seniors would have been justifiably angry with President Obama.  The President and his advisers saw this political problem developing.  So what did the administration do? It created an $8.3-billion “demonstration program” that would temporarily postpone most of the Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has done demonstration programs before to test ways to improve Medicare’s quality.  This particular program, though, is at least seven times larger than any other demonstration program Medicare has tried since 1995. In fact, it’s more expensive than all the other demonstrations for the past 17 years combined.  What’s more, the GAO investigation concluded that HHS designed this demonstration so badly that it would not produce any reliable information. To the Obama Administration, however, that’s beside the point.  The demonstration was never intended to give them useful information or to improve Medicare. It was an election-year sham intended to give the President political cover.  The administration simply did not want to stand up and tell America’s seniors the truth. The truth is that President Obama’s healthcare law gutted the popular Medicare Advantage program, reducing choices and raising premiums.  Once again, this unaccountable administration is not being transparent and is not leveling with the American people. This is what happens when Washington Democrats turn our healthcare system over to the federal government. The President claimed his massive healthcare plan would save money. All of thesavings came from vague “reforms” that will never happen because career politicians like President Obama are more focused on winning their next election than they are on looking out for America’s seniors. The Medicare Advantage cuts were a bad idea in the first place.  We should be giving patients more control of their healthcare and strengthening Medicare. Instead, President Obama chose to slash its funding by $500 billion.  Mr. Obama should cancel this bogus demonstration program and come clean about his plan for seniors on Medicare Advantage. Sen. John Barrasso is a second-term Republican from Wyoming and one of a few physicians serving in Congress.  An orthopedic surgeon, he received his medical degree from Georgetown University. Readers may write him at 307 Senate Dirksen Office Building, Washington DC 20510