Getting the “Politifacts” Right
Politifact this afternoon issued a “ruling” calling Mostly False a statement that Obamacare utilized Medicare funds to pay for its coverage expansions. The Politifact piece claims – correctly – that other Presidents have signed laws reducing Medicare spending, and that therefore claims about Obamacare’s impact on Medicare are overblown. However, there’s a BIG difference between those prior laws and Obamacare – Obamacare used Medicare savings to pay for more government spending. On that count, there is near universal agreement that’s exactly what the law did:
- The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said that the Medicare reductions in Obamacare “will not enhance the ability of the government to pay for future Medicare benefits” – because those savings will be used to fund other unsustainable entitlements. If Democrats want to use the Medicare savings provisions to extend the life of the Medicare trust fund – and not to fund the new entitlements created by the law – the Congressional Budget Office previously estimated what the fiscal impact would be: “A net increase in federal deficits of $260 billion” through 2019.
- Likewise, the Medicare actuary has written that the Medicare provisions in the law “cannot be simultaneously used to finance other Federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions under the PPACA) and to extend the [Medicare] trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.”
- Back in November, even Nancy Pelosi admitted that Democrats “took a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare in [Obamacare], the health care bill” to pay for more federal spending.
President Obama himself admitted the problems with Obamacare’s supposed logic in a 2010 interview, when he stated that “You can’t say that you are saving on Medicare and then spending the money twice.” Yet that’s EXACTLY what the law did – and no amount of spin can change that fact.