Are Republicans for or against cuts in Medicare? Do they care if cuts in Medicare hurt seniors or not? Pinning the Republicans down on this question looks to be about as hard as chasing the feather in the movie Forrest Gump would be.
Deficit Plays Into Health Reform
Friday, August 14, 2009:
With polls showing rising concern over the government's grim financial situation, key Republicans and a growing number of Democrats say it will be hard to push an ambitious health reform bill through Congress unless it reduces projected federal spending on medical care and begins to bring the national debt under control.
Meanwhile, some Republicans are attacking the very notion of reining in out-of-control Medicare spending, charging that efforts to force hospitals and other providers to become more efficient would lead to "fewer choices and lower health-care quality for our nation's seniors," as House Republican Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) put it this week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01712.html
Will Health Reform Cut Medicare Benefits?
AUG 31 2009, 5:26 PM ET
Democrats say they'll slash spending from Medicare without reducing benefits, trimming wasteful spending from the program without reducing seniors' coverage. Republicans say President Obama's Medicare spending cuts would hurt seniors (in fact, the National Republican Congressional Committee just launched ads against three House Democrats today alleging that the projected Medicare spending cuts--projected at $500 billion by sources with knowledge of Senate Finance Committee talks--would pay for health care reform "on the backs of America's senior citizens.") AARP agrees with the Democrats. Who is right?
I asked the NRCC why they say Medicare cuts will put seniors' health coverage at risk; they pointed me to PolitiFact.com, which gives Obama a "half true" on his claim that "we're not talking about cutting Medicare benefits."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... its/24171/
2009: Against health care reform; For seniors and Medicare.
But here we have an entirely different story.
2011: For cutting the deficit; Against seniors and Medicare.
G.O.P. Blueprint Would Remake Health Policy
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: April 4, 2011
WASHINGTON — The proposal to be unveiled by House Republicans on Tuesday to rein in the long-term costs of Medicaid and Medicare represents a fundamental rethinking of how the two programs work, an ambitious effort by conservatives to address the nation’s fiscal challenges, and a huge political risk.
House Republican aides said the budget blueprint to be issued by the chairman of the Budget Committee, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, would slice more than $5 trillion from projected federal spending in the coming decade.
Mr. Ryan and fellow House Republicans are wading into tricky waters, where many other politicians have run aground.
But with the nation’s fiscal problems looming larger, Republicans say the politics of the issue have shifted. They expect to receive credit from the public for trying to hold down the deficit and the debt.
“We have a moral obligation to the country to do this,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview last week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/healt ... s&emc=tha2
I guess Republicans are now "for cuts in Medicare after being against it!" Republicans such as John Boehner like to say they are just "carrying out the will of the American people." But are they really?
WASHINGTON— Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the country's mounting deficit, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, illustrating the challenge facing lawmakers who want voter buy-in to alter entitlement programs.
In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... TopStories