Hope and Fail

Lying in Portsmouth: Medicare Advantage provides duplicitous coverage

During his town hall in New Hampshire, President Obama continued to lie about the ways he can save money in Medicare. The president likes to paint portions of Medicare and duplicitous — offering double coverage.

Here’s what he said:

We do think that systems like Medicare are very inefficient right now, but it has nothing to do at the moment with issues of benefits. The inefficiencies all come from things like paying $177 billion to insurance companies in subsidies for something called Medicare Advantage that is not competitively bid, so insurance companies basically get a $177 billion of taxpayer money to provide services that Medicare already provides. And it’s no better — it doesn’t result in better health care for seniors. It is a giveaway of $177 billion.

Now, think about what we could do with $177 billion over 10 years. I don’t think that’s a good use of money. I would rather spend that money on making sure that Lori can have coverage, making sure that people who don’t have health insurance get some subsidies, than I would want to be subsidizing insurance companies. (Applause.)

Actually, Medicare Advantage is a program that offers additional coverage for services that Medicare on its own doesn’t cover.

From USA Today:

About 10.2 million Medicare recipients are in Medicare Advantage. Under that program, the government pays insurers a set amount per Medicare beneficiary. Obama ridiculed it as costly and redundant, but the plan provides additional benefits, such as vision, dental and hearing, to seniors and helps coordinate health care for those with chronic conditions, says Robert Zirkelbach at the trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans.

So the president plans to cut vision, dental and hearing coverage for seniors, while also denying that his plan would cut benefits?

Also, from Heritage:

Under the current system, more and more seniors are discovering that it is becoming harder and harder to find and keep doctors who will accept Medicare patients. A 2008 survey found that 29% of the Medicare beneficiaries it surveyed who were looking for a primary care doctor had a problem finding one to treat them. Obamacare will only make this problem worse by cutting $313 billion in Medicare reimbursements to health care providers over the next 10 years. This will only force more doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients. Obama also mentioned yesterday that he wants to pay for subsidized health care by killing the Medicare Advantage program. Medicare Advantage plans cover all of the traditional Medicare benefits and much more, including coor­dinated care and care-management programs for enrollees with chronic conditions as well as additional hospitalization and skilled nursing facility stays. 22% of all Medicare patients, which translates to 10.5 million seniors, are currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans.

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