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More Jesse Kelly Lies About Medicare

by on May. 01, 2012, under Health

Jesse Kelly, Republican candidate for Congress, has launched his latest campaign with a lie about Medicare. This lie is the one about how Obamacare cuts $500 billion from Medicare. It has been used over and over by Republicans, and it is untrue.

For the Kelly campaign, this is just another version of the “Gabby stole your Medicare” signs that were posted all over Tucson in 2010. I hated those signs back then, and I’m really irritated by Jesse Kelly lying about Medicare yet again.

Here is the truth about Jesse Kelly’s lie, as reported in the Washington Post:

The savings actually are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries. These spending reductions presumably would be a good thing, since virtually everyone agrees that Medicare spending is out of control. In the House Republican budget, lawmakers repealed the Obama health care law but retained all but $10 billion of the nearly  $500 billion in Medicare savings, suggesting the actual policies enacted to achieve these spending reductions were not that objectionable to GOP lawmakers.

The Obama health care law also raised Medicare payroll taxes by $113 billion over 10 years, further strengthening the program’s financial condition, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Since about half of the $500 billion stems from reduced outlays for Medicare hospitalization expenses, the payroll taxes and those reductions would add about $358 billion to Medicare trust fund balances.

Repeat a lie enough times and it becomes the truth. 

That seems to be the Jesse Kelly and Republican strategy when it comes to Medicare.

I just checked back to what I wrote about Jesse Kelly in September 2010 when he was quoted in the Arizona Daily Star as saying, ““Giffords cut $500 billion from Medicare, and Giffords eliminated Medicare Advantage, and now she is lying about…..”. The title of my post was “Jesse Kelly: Misinformed on Medicare Advantage”.  It seems nothing has changed since his last campaign.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 8:15 am and is filed under Health. Tags for this post: , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • tiponeill

    That’s the Repub strategy when it comes to everything.

  • professor_fantasy

    While Kelly is clearly lying, the truth is that Congress cut Medicare benefits a few years before it passed the Affordable Care Act. They did this by making mandatory cuts to Medicare’s allowable maximums. That is the most that medical providers can get back from Medicare. Even though Congress has waived those automatic cuts every year, the result of that law has still been a host of doctors refusing to see Medicare patients. At least 250 billion dollars of the savings that the president claimed would come from Medicare come from actually implementing these automatic cuts to the allowable maximums. When the Congressional Budget Office refigured the cost savings for the Affordable Care Act without including the automatic savings from cutting allowable maximums, the bill wound up costing taxpayers money instead of reducing the deficit. I guess Jess Kelly isn’t the only one lying about Medicare costs and savings.

  • Denise_Early

    The Medicare payment cut to doctor fees was passed back in 1997 and our esteemed representatives in Washington have voted each year to ignore the law they passed and kick the can down the road. They did it again in 2011.  The required-but-never-implemented cuts to doctor fees do make the long-range Medicare budget look better than it actually is.

    This is not a new problem and it certainly was not created by Obama or Obamacare.

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