"All In Perspective" column, week of August 20.
As with every presidential election, Democrats are ardently
working the ‘scare grandma’ angle this year. In Florida, they have been running
commercials depicting GOP Congressman Allen West punching an elderly woman in
the face, and now that Congressman Paul Ryan has joined the Romney ticket,
swing states will be treated to television spots depicting a Ryan look-alike
pushing a wheelchair-bound grandma off a cliff.
These completely over-the-top ads are clearly designed to distract
voters from the fact that the Obama agenda has been anything but good for
America’s seniors.
For starters, although Team Obama wants seniors to think Republicans
hate your grandma, it is the President’s health care legislation that takes$716 billion from Medicare to pay for new Obamacare entitlements. Furthermore, even though Medicare is
projected to reach insolvency by 2024, the new so-called Medicare payroll tax
hikes won’t be used to shore up Medicare at all, but rather to offset other
ObamaCare costs. In the meantime,
Obama’s plan to underpay doctors and hospitals for Medicare services will
effectively force many providers to drop Medicare patients altogether.
While proponents argue that ObamaCare helps seniors, fiscal
realities and the underlying philosophy of the plan do not bode well for older
Americans. The President has admitted
that government will have to limit health care spending and make some difficult
decisions. In 2009 he told Jane Sturm
that her elderly mother might be better off taking painkillers rather than
receiving life-saving treatment. While
many were shocked by his callousness, Obama’s statement was consistent with the
approach taken by his top health care advisor Ezekiel Emmanuel. Dr. Emmanuel has long argued that health care
resources should be prioritized for individuals aged 15 to 40 years, while care
for the very young and those over 50 should be “attenuated.”
Supposedly, overt health care rationing is prohibited under
ObamaCare, but the new law also creates a special government panel to oversee
costs. This so-called IndependentPayment Advisory Board (IPAB) will issue “legislative proposals” to control
Medicare spending, and the board has been granted extensive powers. If Congress fails to act on an IPAB
“proposal,” the law requires Health
and Human Services to implement the proposal anyway. In reality, if IPAB decides to grossly
underpay for procedures for elderly Medicare patients, those services will
become largely unavailable to individuals above the ‘optimum age.’ The result will be back-door rationing for
Medicare-dependent seniors.
By contrast, the Ryan budget plan, described by at least one
Democrat as “sensible” and “honest,” preserves current Medicare provisions for
individuals 55 and older. In addition,
his proposal allows America’s future seniors to choose among plans, including
the option to avoid government-run health care altogether. This approach, of course, is a complete
reversal of the Democrat plan to gradually shift the entire nation onto a
‘single-payer-system’ where government controls health care for all Americans.
While Team Obama hopes very much to gain electoral advantage
by misleading on Medicare, the reality is that the Ryan’s plan is far better
for both seniors and the nation as a whole.
Even so, the most important electoral issue for 2012 is still the
economy. Under Barack Obama’s
leadership, there are fewer jobs, higher energy prices, and both individuals
and businesses are bracing for Obama’s ‘Taxmageddon’ beginning next year. These issues affect everyone, seniors
included.
