GOP for and against Medicare cost-savings

[ProSense]

GOP for and against Medicare cost-savings

By Steve Benen

If you receive press releases from congressional Republicans, and your inbox seemed unusually full on Friday afternoon, there’s a reason for that.

The Obama administration ignited a new election-year controversy Friday when regulators handed down fresh cuts to Medicare Advantage (MA).

Next year, plans in the program will see their payments cut by at least 2 percent on average between ObamaCare and a regular annual update, the announcement stated.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) argued that the reductions will help to strengthen the program – an increasingly popular alternative to traditional Medicare – and guard against waste.

Republicans, despite already having embraced the Obama administration’s Medicare cost savings into their own budget plan, did their very best to pretend to be outraged.

Even on a surface level, the GOP condemnations are hard to take seriously. For five years, Republicans have argued, “The Obama administration must do something to get health care spending and entitlements under control! Our future depends on it! Why won’t the big-spending liberal do something?”

And as the Obama administration moves forward on cost-savings in Medicare, these exact same Republicans – the folks who voted to end Medicare and replace it with a voucher scheme – are now comfortable arguing, “Obama is cutting Medicare! We’re infuriated by the Democratic president’s willingness to spend less on seniors’ health care needs!”

C’mon, congressional Republicans. Show a little self-respect.

- more -

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-and-against-medicare-cost-savings

Medicare Overpayment(s) to Private Plans
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024561713

[ProSense]

1. Kick! n/t

[sheshe2]

2. K&R

From your link...

Jonathan Cohn did a nice job capturing the larger context, explaining why Republicans “have actually found a way to be more hypocritical than before.”

For the last few weeks, Republicans and their allies have been in high dudgeon about Obamacare’s so-called risk corridor program, in which the federal government will subsidize insurers that take heavy losses for the next three years. Republicans and their allies have decried risk corridors as a “taxpayer bailout” of the insurers. But the policy justification for risk corridors is straightforward and, even to some conservatives, incontrovertible: They will ease the transition to a newly regulated insurance market, so that it’s possible to provide universal coverage through a system of private plans. And unlike the additional Medicare Advantage payments, the risk corridor program might actually end up being a net boon to the taxpayers, since the government also shares in unexpected insurer gains. (The Congressional Budget Office has actually predicted as much, though, as with many such projections, there’s a lot of uncertainty there.)

[ProSense]

3. Kick! n/t