The Obama campaign came out with this ad to rebut Romney’s claims on Medicare “robbing $700 billion from Medicare”.  Politifact rates this ad “Mostly True” HERE; an excerpt:

The Obama ad would have been more accurate if it had specified that it was referring to a previous Ryan plan for Medicare rather than the current one. We simply don’t have enough details to know how much extra money seniors might have to pay under the current Ryan plan. Still, the Obama campaign gave itself some wiggle room by saying that the plan “could” raise out-of-pocket costs by more than $6,000. On balance, we rate the statement Mostly True.

The Romney campaign is committing political malpractice having overplayed a weak political hand.  Living in the land of the Fox bubble – they are certain they will be able to convince America’s seniors that somehow … black is white and white is black.  Conservatives have been attacking America’s “entitlement society”; Medicare and Social Security are THE entitlements that conservatives refer to.  Somehow conservatives are convinced seniors are going to vote against Democrats on the issue of Medicare.

The Romney campaign has put their chips all in on this one and the facts just aren’t on their side.  They want to lead people to believe there are only two choices … Medicare being insolvent under Obama or the Romney plan; that’s a false dichotomy.  Actually – no … we could eliminate the payroll tax cap and fully fund Medicare for another 75 years.  The Romney plan’s solution is to summarily dismantle Medicare as we know it and the American people don’t want that.

Obama’s ad quotes AARP from 2011; they were unequivocal that the Ryan plan would be bad for Medicare HERE:

(Paul Ryan’s) proposal, rather than tackling skyrocketing health care costs, would simply shift these costs onto the backs of people in Medicare.  It would undermine Medicare’s promise of secure health coverage—a guarantee that future seniors have contributed to through a lifetime of hard work.  If Congress is serious about reining in Medicare costs, it can start by allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices and speeding up access to generic versions of expensive biologic drugs.

The entire press release was a scathing indictment of the Ryan Plan’s attack on seniors.  This is the plan that Romney has said is almost exactly the same as his own.

And as I wrote about yesterday HERE - John McDonough from the Harvard School of Public Health said the Romney/Ryan plan would increase premiums for 70% of all new Medicare enrollees.  

Politifact said Romney’s claims about Obama relative to Medicare are “mostly false” – read that HERE.

Stephanie Cutter from the Obama campaign gives a blow by blow rebuttal to explain the differences between the Romney and Obama plans relative to Medicare:

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