Hard-Hitting White House Talking Points Blast GOP For Lying About Medicare
In a sign that the White House is taking the gloves off for a newly aggressive phase in the health care wars, a hard-hitting new set of White House talking points urges Congressional Dems and outside allies to blast the GOP for lying about Medicare with “outright falsehoods” and “disingenuous scare tactics.”
The talking points — which were sent over by a source and are being privately distributed on the Hill and among liberal groups — contain some of the toughest and most partisan language yet used by an administration that had long held out hope of winning over Republican support. A sample:
Talking Points: Republicans’ Disingenuous Scare Tactics on Medicare
• Recently, as part of an ongoing effort to revive their political fortunes by killing health insurance reform, many Republicans have been attempting to scare America’s seniors with false myths about what reform would mean for Medicare.
• These distortions and outright falsehoods would be offensive under any circumstances, but they’re especially disingenuous coming from a group who has a long history of opposing Medicare and who very recently tried to kill the program as we know it.
• Just this past April, nearly four-fifths of Republican House members voted to end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher program that provides a fixed sum of money to buy private insurance.
• And this most recent assault on Medicare is just the latest in a war Republicans have been waging on the program for decades.
The talking points suggest the White House is concerned that Republican claims about Medicare are gaining traction, and that the administration recognizes that a tougher response — complete with a history lesson about GOP intentions towards the program — may be necessary to reverse that tide. Read the full talking points right here.
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These points echo the DNC ad that came out a few weeks back.
About time.
Reality Check.
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health.
What Private Health Care Insurance has provided is today’s national health care disaster, where the government covers the elderly, and millions of children, because Private Insurance would not, and where millions and millions of paying members have had their Insurance taking away from them by Private Insurance Companies, and millions and millions more have been refused coverage by Private Insurance.
That is the reality of the situation.
Private Insurance has had decades to make things better, and instead they have made things far worse, for many millions, and they have only accelerated the soaring premium rates that people must now pay.
Private Insurance is not about providing Health care for all the people. It is about providing great wealth to the Insurance Operators, out of the pockets of the healthy pool, only. They do drop those pool members who they profile as being a potential future medical risk, and thus a risk to their profit margins.
Profilers in our midst. Why is that a crime against society.
Attention all Private Health Care Insurance members. Your Insurance Provider is profiling your health risk factors, on an ongoing basis, and should your profile set off any warning signs, they will drop you.
How do you like being profiled. Does that make you feel safe, secure, and proud.
Reality Check.
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health.
Greg:
…attempting to scare America’s seniors with false myths…
False myths? Is this an ingenious attempt by the White House to spin true claims by Republicans as being false without lying about it? Or do they just have a buffoon writing their talking points?
Liam:
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health
Do you support them by purchasing their product?
If private insurers are making such huge profits, why haven’t some smart, hard-working, caring progressives set up their own insurance company sometime during these decades and decades, covered all these millions of people, charged lower premiums (e.g. been satisfied with say kept only 50% of the available huge profits), and solved all these problems?
Seems to me that the admin is not so much fighting back against the Repubs as it is fighting back against the CBO.
“Congress’ chief budget officer on Tuesday contradicted President Barack Obama’s oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn’t see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.
The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.”
That’s the Associated Press:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090923/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_seniors
Wow, the level of hysteria and wild rhetoric just keeps going up.
We just got lectured by Obama last week about not questioning each other’s integrity and motivations, but then that was right after he called his opponents liars in the same speech. So this is just more of the same dictatorial “do as I say and not as I do.”
Look at the trolls dance. It works.
Scott C….nobody is objecting to the Repubs genuine concern about cost…nobody is objecting to their conern that a P.O. might eventually lead to Medicare for all…quite ironic however that given in the same breath the Repubs generally point out the incompetence of Government…
However…for the Repubs to act as defenders of Social Security or Medicare after 40 years of trying to dismantle the programs is more than distortion to me…it’s lying of the worst kind. Just be honest..Repubs hate Social Security and Medicare and would repeal them if they could get away with it…there are too many of them on the record to deny that…there is the recorded voice of Saint Ronnie talking about the evils of Medicare and how it would end up with the Government telling our kids where they could go to school and where they could work…the first step to complete socialism and totalitarianism. Hindsight is 20/20 and Reagan was full of bulls*&t! NONE of that happened.
Now when Palin/Grassley/Gingrich and others bring up death panels..that is absolutely..”attempting to scare America’s seniors with false myths…” When the Repubs refer to potential rationing without ever mentioning that private insurance companies already ration (pre existing conditions-recission-partial payments) far more than the Government does with Medicare is again…”attempting to scare America’s seniors with false myths…”
Why does this indicate ‘concern’? You say this every time the White House fights the latest GOP bullshit. Maybe … just possibly … the WH is out front of the nonsense. Given the fact that Obama and his people won the election over the ‘certain’ nominee HRC and the best (of an admittedly sorry lot) the GOP could cough up, isn’t it possible they actually know what they are doing? I see no evidence of any ‘traction’ on anything the Republicans are trying lately. If their goal is to stop reform, they are well on the way to another massive failure. It might not be an ideal bill, but it will pass.
# Scott C. | September 23rd, 2009 at 02:11 pm
Liam:
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health
Do you support them by purchasing their product?
……………………….
You keep trying to score points with that specious argument. For the record, I am a diabetic, so they would not cover me. Furthermore, I am old, retired and on medicare, so they definitely would profile an old diabetic off their rolls.
Just because lots of people have no other option, but to purcase a product from the only game in town, does not mean that they should not be allowed to call for competition, that would give them a choice, such as the Public Option would. Enough with your specious sophistry.
Of This I Am Certain.
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health.
What Private Health Care Insurance has provided is today’s national health care disaster, where the government covers the elderly, and millions of children, because Private Insurance would not, and where millions and millions of paying members have had their Insurance taking away from them by Private Insurance Companies, and millions and millions more have been refused coverage by Private Insurance.
That is the reality of the situation.
Private Insurance has had decades to make things better, and instead they have made things far worse, for many millions, and they have only accelerated the soaring premium rates that people must now pay.
Private Insurance is not about providing Health care for all the people. It is about providing great wealth to the Insurance Operators, out of the pockets of the healthy pool, only. They do drop those pool members who they profile as being a potential future medical risk, and thus a risk to their profit margins.
Profilers in our midst. Why is that a crime against society.
Attention all Private Health Care Insurance members. Your Insurance Provider is profiling your health risk factors, on an ongoing basis, and should your profile set off any warning signs, they will drop you.
How do you like being profiled. Does that make you feel safe, secure, and proud.
Reality Check.
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health.
Of This I Am Certain.
sbj, don’t be worried. Nelson of FL is introducing an amendment that will ensure existing policies are grandfathered in and no seniors will lose any sort of coverage.
Great news! Long past time for the WH to bash these amoral liars’ empty skulls in — figuratively speaking, of course.
Why haven’t some progressive types set up an insurance company? Easy – its too much work. They would rather put in a liesurely week in a government job or a grant funded project. This isn’t about health care; its about power and control. The government belongs to them; its theirs, and it must control as much as possible.
Liam said:
“Enough with your specious sophistry.”
Some would describe the notion of “competition” to be provided by a government program that way. You, like Ron Wyden, are engaged in Orwellian doublespeak when you say that government insurance is necessary to provide proper “competition” to private insurance and force it to behave.
You are one who has argued here that insurance provides nothing of any value, because insurance companies do not provide medical care. As Scott’s question points out, most of the same people making this assertion pay for insurance, proving that they are just spouting ridiculous rhetoric.
And, must you really litter this blog with the same copy and paste rant every ten minutes? Really, I don’t support banning in general, but it’s a little much. Your rant isn’t more persuasive the 5th time than it was the first.
Scott C
Exactly which true claims by Republicans are you referencing.
Well in that case, you leave me not option. Lest you be left with the false impression that you get to control what I say.
# Scott C. | September 23rd, 2009 at 02:11 pm
Liam:
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health
Do you support them by purchasing their product?
……………………….
You keep trying to score points with that specious argument. For the record, I am a diabetic, so they would not cover me. Furthermore, I am old, retired and on medicare, so they definitely would profile an old diabetic off their rolls.
Just because lots of people have no other option, but to purcase a product from the only game in town, does not mean that they should not be allowed to call for competition, that would give them a choice, such as the Public Option would. Enough with your specious sophistry.
Of This I Am Certain.
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health.
What Private Health Care Insurance has provided is today’s national health care disaster, where the government covers the elderly, and millions of children, because Private Insurance would not, and where millions and millions of paying members have had their Insurance taking away from them by Private Insurance Companies, and millions and millions more have been refused coverage by Private Insurance.
That is the reality of the situation.
Private Insurance has had decades to make things better, and instead they have made things far worse, for many millions, and they have only accelerated the soaring premium rates that people must now pay.
Private Insurance is not about providing Health care for all the people. It is about providing great wealth to the Insurance Operators, out of the pockets of the healthy pool, only. They do drop those pool members who they profile as being a potential future medical risk, and thus a risk to their profit margins.
Profilers in our midst. Why is that a crime against society.
Attention all Private Health Care Insurance members. Your Insurance Provider is profiling your health risk factors, on an ongoing basis, and should your profile set off any warning signs, they will drop you.
How do you like being profiled. Does that make you feel safe, secure, and proud.
Reality Check.
Private Health Care Insurance Companies Are A Danger To Your Health.
Of This I Am Certain.
Thanks, Mike. I understand that extant plans will be grandfathered. But my understanding is that any newly retired seniors will be able to enter Advantage plans that will have reduced benefits compared to these grandfathered plans. Is that correct?
rukidding:
I think perhaps you missed my point. Given that a myth is false by definition, wouldn’t that make a “false myth” true? Obviously I knew what was meant…just thought it was amusing.
Dr. John Geyman of Physicians for a National Healthcare Plan lays the Repub strategy out pretty well.
“• Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) and member of the Gang of Six charting policy in the Senate Finance Committee, warns that “Democrats are cutting hundreds of billions from the elderly and planning to limit or deny care based on age or disability of patients.”
• House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) claims that projected reductions in the growth of Medicare spending means “fewer choices and lower health care quality for our nation’s seniors.”
• In order to “assure that our greatest generation will receive access to quality health care”, Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, recently proposed a ‘Seniors’ Health Care Bill of Rights’ with these provisions:
“(1) We need to protect Medicare and not cut it in the name of ‘health insurance reform’;
(2) We need to prohibit the government from getting between seniors and their doctors;
(3) We need to outlaw any effort to ration health care based on age;
(4) We need to prevent government from dictating the terms of end-of-life care; and (5) We need to protect our veterans by preserving Tricare and other benefit programs for military families.”
“The cynicism of these statements almost defies belief, given the long Republican track record of trying to undermine Medicare at every turn. These would-be defenders of Medicare pretend to be protecting seniors from an uncaring government, while raising such scare words as rationing and loss of choice, coverage and benefits. Their real goal is to advance their narrow agenda of undermining public programs by privatizing them to their best advantage.”
Scott,
I chuckled about the same redundancy when I first read Greg’s post. It gives the talking points that special semi-literate touch.
And asking whether it is a deliberate rhetorical maneuver is a perfect way to poke fun at the deep paranoia with which Republican comments and talking points are typically parsed by the left.
Raise your hands, all those of you who are still feeling bad that The Republicans did not Privatize your Social Security funds. Don’t you wish that you had been able to ride the Wall St Wave, late last year. Wouldn’t that Social Security investment bonanza have made you financially secure for the rest of your life.
@Greg: Amusing link from The Campaign Spot to this post:
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDE3MTUxNDY4NDkwMDhiZjQyOTRhNDk3YjlmNDA0OTc=
Liam
It would almost be funny if they weren’t trying to destroy medicare and hcr along the way. Oh wait, lower taxes and de-regulate, because that’s been proven to be so successful.
A Viewers Heads Up.
Rahm Emanuel is the listed guest on Charlie Rose’s show tonight.
You might want to watch it, to see if Rahm drops any hints of where they stand on the Public Option, Afghanistan, and the desperately needed tightening of regulations on Financial Institutions.
Private insurance companies are profit-driven. They have huge advantages that in a ‘free’ market, they wouldn’t have.And they have the politicians in their back pocket.We will never have health insurance for all, nor keep costs under control as long as these things are true. And also as long as so many Americans seem to be fines with things as they are. 45,000 people die every year because they didn’t have insurance.A million bankruptcies a year, 70% had insurance. Many small businesses are unable to off er insurance to their employees and more companies drop it every day. Meanwhile, businesses have to compete in a global world, where the major countries all have universal coverage at much more affordable cost. We are crippling ourselves, but many people just want to protect the profit makers. Blind ideology will be the ruin of this country.
The posted full version of the talking points is incomplete… it stops abruptly without the out-of-pocket analysis that it refers to…
A PO won’t work. The Federal Government already has a “public option” which controls first class mail – it’s called the US Postal Service and they HEMORRHAGE CASH!!!! This means that UPS and FedEx cannot compete with them (1st class postage, anyway) because of the ability of the Govt to just keep pumping cash into that sinking ship. They lost $2.3 billion last yr and $5.14 billion in 2007. The same thing is going to happen with a PO for Healthcare. It stifles competition, not increase it. And costs matter: Bush’s estimate for the Medicare Prescription Plan was $534 billion over 10yrs but was/is closer to $1.2 trillion. The original Johnson Admin’s (& Congress) cost estimate for Medicare was $12 billion for 1990 – actual cost: $111 billion. Obama and the Dems are lying when he estimates his to be less than $1 trillion – and deficit neutral. THEY’RE ALWAYS WRONG. Something needs to be done but A PO is going to bankrupt us.
Wow. You people are truly amazing.
The Bill itself SAYS it will cut millions of dollars from Medicare Advantage.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates Medicare Advantage benefits will be cut by approximately 50%.
But seniors shouldn’t be told the truth because (choose one):
a. Americans have no right to know how proposed health care reforms will affect their current coverage?
b. The Congressional Budget Office is “smearing” health care reform with all those pesky calculations that insist on looking at irrelevant details like the cost of reform or reductions to current coverage.
c. Knowing what your President and the Democrats are ACTUALLY proposing is “scary”?
It is to laugh.
Speaking of privatizing social security…
Everyone remember Bush’s 60 day taxpayer-funded ’round the country excursion on social security privatization. 2 months. Non-stop. All about something that was never even remotely going to happen. If Obama did anything remotely like that he would get skewered.
2 months. Non-stop privatization tour. Kills me. Anyone have any juicy tidbits about that run by Bush? I’ve always wanted to calculate the amount of Federal money he spent trying to destroy one of America’s finest quality-of-life institutions.
Greg, any reax/recollections? I’d love to see some more details on this trip by Bush not only b/c of the waste of tax-payer funds, but because it is illustrative of the kind of morally bankrupt policy that the GOP pushes when they are in power.
Greg: The reason for the talking points is not that Repub claims re Medicare are getting traction as you say in your post. It is because Humana sent out a misleading mailer falsely claiming Medicare was at risk from the proposal to quit subsidizing private companies offering Medicare.
I am glad to see that the Obama administration has come to the same conclusion as many observers in that negotiation on health reform was not really something that the power brokers of the Republican party wanted despite strong efforts made among some in their ranks. If they had wanted negotiation, the tactics would have been different.
Now we will see if the Democrats can act in a united manner to bring forth something of value to the public. The worst thing to do after all of this would be to fail with bad legislation.
Deep Thought-
Will the GOP be defending the Ted Kennedy Health Reform Act of 2009 in 40 years?
They seem to be falling over themselves to defend the (Lyndon B. Johnson) Social Security Act of 1965.
Raise your hands, all those of you who are still feeling bad that The Republicans did not Privatize your Social Security funds. Don’t you wish that you had been able to ride the Wall St Wave, late last year. Wouldn’t that Social Security investment bonanza have made you financially secure for the rest of your life.
Me (hand goes up).
The same number of dollars (and remember the employer match) that went into Social Security, split 50/50 between a private annuity and conservative mutual fund (say 60% stock index and 40% bond index) would have resulted in more monthly income for life, and substantial assets (hundreds of thousands of dollars) which could be left to heirs.
Social Security is – by definition – a Ponzi scheme. Of course I’d rather not play.
Everytime the GOP talked about Medicare cuts the Dems accused them of wanting to kill grandma. Now the roles are reversed and the Dems are crying foul. You should have thought about that before you (the DNC) made a cartoon showing GWB push an elderly lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs.
The Republicans don’t have standing to criticize Medicare cuts, it’s true. But that makes both sides hypocrites, not just one side.
“Just this past April, nearly four-fifths of Republican House members voted to end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher program that provides a fixed sum of money to buy private insurance.”
If the White House doesn’t want scare tactics on Medicare, perhaps it shouldn’t describe any change to Medicare as “ending Medicare as we know it.” Does this mean that it’s okay for Humana to refer to ending Medicare Advantage as “ending Medicare as you know it” to their subscribers that have it?
Wow, the insurance company sock-puppet trolls are out in force, aren’t they? Getting rid of Bush’s incompetent Medicare Advantage program enacted only a couple years ago is “ending Medicare as we know it”. And Social Security is a ponzi scheme, and investing it in the amazingly failed stock market would have been better.
I don’t know whether to be amused or insulted. Either these people are amazingly stupid, or they think the rest of us are.
While I realize its more fun to make ad hominem attacks, if you think Social Security is not reasonably well characterized as a Ponzi scheme, you might suggest why you belive this to be true.
Current benefits are paid by current contributors. Current contributors have no right to future benefits, other than what Congress decrees (per court decisions). There is no “trust fund” in any meaningful sense of the word. There is a very large (Trillions) unfunded liability.
What would you call it?
For starters; The Social Security Fund was raided, and used for other budget purposes, than it was collected for. They never kept it in that “lockbox”, like they were supposed to.
Now to the main difference.
A Ponzi scheme is when more money is collected than is ever paid out. You are describing the exact opposite of that.
As you note, more money has been collected than has been paid out. There is, for all practical purposes, no money there.
The scheme only keeps going as long as new money keeps coming in.
You or I could have a “lockbox”. Buy stocks, bonds, real estate, buy gold in the backyard. When we open the box, we could sell the assets.
Social Security can’t have a lockbox in an amount that matters. They would need to have a couple of Trillion dollars in it, and there is just no way to do that. What they have – all they could have – are a bunch of IOUs. When they get ready to spend these, the taxpayers are going to have to provide the funds to cash them it at that time.
Yes, I remember Bush running around the country saying Social Security was going broke and we needed to fix it.
I remember the Democrats calling him a liar and saying Social Security would still be in the black for decades.
Now, we find out it could well be in the red by NEXT YEAR.
Well, we did vote for “change” starting in 2006. And pretty much everything has changed since 2006.
Here’s a letter from 2001 from a democratic congressman asking George Bush to not raid either the SS or Medicare funds. The numbers clearly reflect what happened to these funds in the name of tax cuts and this was before Iraq. These raids have been going on for 40 years and it needs to stop. And yes, Repubs and Dems have both done it.
http://www.house.gov/andrews/archive/90501.html.filename
Here’s another one that explains how the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% hurt the medicare fund and the results of how the money was being diverted from part A to part B.
http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/Archives/ArchivedPages/WAUpdate_BushTaxCuts.htm
Freehold
That would be the taxpayers whose SS and medicare funds were raided? The ones we all paid money into? And since when do conservative mutual funds make any money?
Imsinca
I believe the practice of using Social Security funds to help fund general expenditures started in 1968 under LBJ, but I haven’t spent time to confirm that. You are certainly correct that it goes back a long way, and is bipartisan.
Money is fungible. I don’t think we can resolve whether the SS dollars went to fund activity A or B, and in the end, I don’t think it matters.
On your last point, yes, it would be those taxpayers, and those funds. There are IOUs for those funds, but even assuming those IOUs were real (and they aren’t), SS is still over promised and underfunded.
I think Concord Coalition is considered bipartisan and fair. They have some discussion of the SS trust fund and underfunding here
http://www.concordcoalition.org/publications/2005/0311/social-security-series-social-securitys-trust-funds-mask-problem
Overall, I think SS illustrates part of the problem we face. Congress has huge short term incentives to promise more, and understate future costs, until the crisis gets closer than the next election. Its almost impossible to tell the truth about whats coming and survive politically.
That is part of what makes me have such low expectations for Congressional action on health care, or energy. They have HUGE incentives to sell us a “no money down, easy payments” fake solution.
“an administration that had long held out hope of winning over Republican support”
This is a joke, right? Please. Tell me you don’t believe this kind of delusion.
“many Republicans have been attempting to scare America’s seniors with false myths about what reform would mean for Medicare.”
No. That would be the CBO. If it were just Republicans, no one would know about it, given the liberal pro-Obama bias in the elitist media.
If Republicans can be held responsible for raiding the SS Trust Fund (Dems didn’t seem to mind feeding from that trough either, if memory holds) then Dems should be responsible for the MASSIVE unfunded pension obligations at the State level due to their blinding love for unions. A conservative estimate is $278 billion – that’s just for the largest state and local pension fund accounts. Illinois has $39 billion in unfunded obligations, Ohio $30 billion, Michigan and Massachusetts $15 billion each. Congress and the local Govts promise more now and try to defray paying that bill when it starts to come due. Social Security, Medicare, ObamaCare – promise the world, pay for it in IOU’s.
Translation:
How dare Republicans scare senior citizens about Medicare! That’s OUR job, dammit!
LauraNo makes an excellent point. I will take it one further. I am an entrepreneur. I maximize my profits by providing a product/service that the public want/need, and are willing to pay a premium for.Think of Apple..no one would deny the billions Steve Jobs is worth. The perception is the $300 paid for an Ipod is worth it, no matter how little it cost to produce. How does the private health insurance industry most efficiently maximize their profits…by denying said services to their clients and rescinding the policies of 50% (industry figures) of clients that they lose money on over a rolling 3 year period. The industry simply does not work in an efficient free market system. That is because they do not produce a product but act as a pass through much like your mortgage servicer. The difference is your mortgage servicer charges .25-.35% of the principle and private health insurance companies have an 85% payout ratio (85% of premiums go to benefits) .25% vs 15%…does anyone really expect this industry to drive efficiencies. Why do you think they are paying 1.4 million per day in lobbying fees and why all the major players in Congress (both R and D) opposed to the public option are getting the biggest scratch from the industry.