I want to make this SIMPLE for those who don’t take the time to read.  Under the Obama plan for Medicare – seniors will pay nothing in out of pocket expenses by 2020 and every year thereafter; Medicare remains solvent until 2024 without new legislation.  Under the Romney plan – seniors will pay $12,500 a year in out of pocket expenses by 2022 increasing every year thereafter; Medicare becomes insolvent in 2016.

Some people like to say that President Obama hasn’t done anything regarding “entitlements” like Medicare, but most people do not realize that Obamacare actually extended the solvency of Medicare by 8 years.  Now – Obama inherited a very fragile Medicare program that thanks to 12 years of a Republican majority in Congress had Medicare trending to be insolvent by 2016.   Chris Wallace asks senior adviser Ed Gillespie about Romney’s intention to repeal Obamacare and thus altering Medicare’s solvency by 8 years from 2024 to being insolvent by 2016.  Gillespie’s response is that there are many things that they can do to stop Medicare from going insolvent.

Some of those things include benefit cuts to seniors like raising the eligibility age for Medicare; that is a rate cut.  So let’s look at the two candidate’s plans:

Under the Obama plan – Medicare is still solvent until 2024.  Obama’s plan thanks to Obamacare increases benefits and eliminates the donut hole for out of pocket expenses for seniors completely by 2020 (source).  That means by 2020 – seniors will pay NOTHING in out of pocket expenses by 2020.  Obama’s plan does not require increasing the retirement age.

Under the Romney/Ryan plan – Medicare would be insolvent in 2016.  Romney would cut benefits by raising the retirement age.  Romney’s repeal of Obamacare would mean seniors would continue to pay money out of pocket due to a gap in coverage in the Medicare program.  In 2022 – out of pocket expenses for seniors would balloon to $12,500 a year (source).  They would turn the Medicare Guarantee into a voucher plan increasing out of pocket expenses every single year by maintaining benefit increases at rates lower than the rate of inflation … thus equaling a tremendous rate cut.

And when Chris Wallace pressed Ed Gillespie on the fact that the Congressional Budget Office says the Romney/Ryan plan on Medicare will increase costs on future seniors by another $6,400 in out of pocket expenses – he said:

“We reject that in our analysis, Chris, and don’t believe that that is accurate.”

The CBO is the referee.  They are a non-partisan agency whose job is to eliminate politics and report FACTS.  When you ask the Romney campaign why they don’t believe its accurate – they don’t really have an answer.  They haven’t shared an actual model to highlight how their math works … because their math once again doesn’t work.  In other words – its all politics and no substance.

You can watch the whole interview with Chris Wallace and Ed Gillespie HERE.

Peter Orszag says healthcare competition doesn’t drive down costs like Republicans say HERE:

”The vast bulk of health-care costs arise from an extremely small share of patients, whose insurance will inevitably bear a substantial share of their expenses. That’s why competition in health care doesn’t work as well as in other sectors…Unfortunately, proponents of moving Medicare to a private “consumer-driven” system, including Republican vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, seem to instead believe in a health-care competition tooth fairy — that if we just increase the patient’s share of costs and bolster competition among insurance companies, the expense will come down…We don’t want to put all our chips down on the health-care competition tooth fairy.”

And the Ryan Plan isn’t popular – a poll conducted by PPP and paid for by Daily Kos and SEIU found 45 percent of registered voters are opposed to the Ryan plan; 36 percent support the Ryan plan.

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