OBAMA DEMAGOGUERY

OBAMA DEMAGOGUERY FEBRUARY 26, 2013 4:00 A.M. Squeezing Medicare Advantage Obama slashes a private-sector approach while decrying cuts everywhere else. By John Fund The Obama administration is sparing no effort to scare people about the automatic spending cuts that are scheduled to hit this Friday. But the Obama administration doesn’t want to talk about its own devastating cuts in Medicare. On Friday, February 15, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced $716 billion in cuts over the next ten years. Instead of being put toward the debt, most of the money will go toward a new entitlement: Obamacare’s vast expansion of coverage for the uninsured. To add cynicism to injury, the Obama administration postponed the Medicare Advantage cuts until after the 2012 election, using a slush fund to tide the program over and conceal the true costs of Obamacare to seniors. Seniors are now going to confront a new chronic condition — politics. Unless it is changed, Obamacare will relentlessly restrict the choices seniors have by forcing them into traditional Medicare with all of its attendant contradictions, restrictions, and waste. Medicare Advantage has its problems, but they could be surgically addressed.