Ryan booed for slamming Obamacare

[Guest]

deleted

[_Droopy]

I suspect that you fully believe an act of God is in the cards, but it didn't happen for Joseph in Carthage and there is no reason to believe it will happen for Mitt.

Following upon other recent comments of a similar kind by another illustrious denizen of the Trailerpark, this, yet again, tells us what kind of people we are actually dealing with in the anti-Mormon world.

[_Kevin Graham]

From Factcheck.org:

Republicans claim the president’s $716 billion “cuts” to Medicare hurt the program’s finances. But the opposite is true. These cuts in the future growth of spending prolong the life of the Medicare trust fund, stretching the program’s finances out longer than they would last otherwise.

Mitt Romney has claimed that President Barack Obama has “robbed” Medicare. Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, said Obama “turned Medicare into a piggy bank to fund Obamacare,” promising to “stop the raid on Medicare.” And the Republican National Committee is promoting on its website a feature it calls “Obama’s Countdown to Medicare’s Bankruptcy,” which lists the days, hours, minutes and seconds left until the Medicare Part A trust fund is exhausted. But there would be even fewer days until the fund’s exhaustion if Obama’s health care law hadn’t included those $700 billion in spending reductions.

From Politifact.org:

We reviewed this history in detail in a fact-check of Romney’s statement from December, "Only one president has ever cut Medicare for seniors in this country . . . Barack Obama." We rated that False. Many presidents have sought to rein in Medicare spending.

Here are a few highlights from that fact-check:

• President Ronald Reagan cut Medicare by reducing payments to hospitals, and he cut benefits by raising deductibles.

• President George H.W. Bush cut benefits by repealing a law that would have expanded coverage for drugs and catastrophic illness.

• President Bill Clinton cut Medicare by changing payments to doctors and other providers, which could be considered to have an indirect effect on beneficiaries.

Our ruling

Romney said, "There's only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare."

The only element of truth here is that the health care law seeks to reduce future Medicare spending, and the tally of those cost reductions over the next 10 years is $716 billion. The money wasn’t "robbed," however, and other presidents have made similar reductions to the Medicare program.

We rate this statement Mostly False.

And of course the added insult to injury is the hypocritical fact that Romney/Ryan supported the exact same Medicare "cuts" implemented by Obama. Those same cuts they're now whining about. I thought you guys predicted Obama would be be all about massive government and here he is successfully doing what Conservatives have claimed they've always wanted; improvements in wasteful government spending. It just pisses you guys off that he has made Medicare solvent another decade when you were hoping to be able to claim it was going bankrupt this election year, just so you could justify getting rid of it.

I'm not surprised you care nothing about factcheckers. Like the Romney campaign, Facts mean little when you have propaganda machines like FOX and Heritage dishing out assertions we're all just supposed to take for granted.

[_mledbetter]

This looks fine on the surface, but already many doctors are saying they will refuse to accept Medicare patients.
http://news.yahoo.com/boomers-retiring- ... 44311.html

i don't know if you've noticed this, but doctors have been whining about medicare reimbursement rates and threatening to bail on the program for decades. we get this same bluff every time another medicare "doc fix" bill comes up in congress, and yet somehow through the magic of the markets we never run out of doctors willing to take money from these tens of millions of ready customers.

"Magic of the markets": I'm assuming you mean that seniors will have to buy insurance plans to supplement their medicare. I have no problem with that. I can see doctors not taking patients who only have medicare, however. We'll see how the trend goes though. I'm being open-minded about it.

[_Quasimodo]

I suspect that you fully believe an act of God is in the cards, but it didn't happen for Joseph in Carthage and there is no reason to believe it will happen for Mitt.

Following upon other recent comments of a similar kind by another illustrious denizen of the Trailerpark, this, yet again, tells us what kind of people we are actually dealing with in the anti-Mormon world.

It's delightful to see your quoting me, Droopy! I'm sorry to see you find us all a disappointment. I was just pointing out how thin your and bc's expectations are. It will take that sort of devine intervention for Mitt to do well at this point. It looks to me like God is voting Obama.

[_Droopy]

From Factcheck.org:

Republicans claim the president’s $716 billion “cuts” to Medicare hurt the program’s finances. But the opposite is true. These cuts in the future growth of spending prolong the life of the Medicare trust fund, stretching the program’s finances out longer than they would last otherwise.

Mitt Romney has claimed that President Barack Obama has “robbed” Medicare. Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, said Obama “turned Medicare into a piggy bank to fund Obamacare,” promising to “stop the raid on Medicare.” And the Republican National Committee is promoting on its website a feature it calls “Obama’s Countdown to Medicare’s Bankruptcy,” which lists the days, hours, minutes and seconds left until the Medicare Part A trust fund is exhausted. But there would be even fewer days until the fund’s exhaustion if Obama’s health care law hadn’t included those $700 billion in spending reductions.

From Politifact.org:

We reviewed this history in detail in a fact-check of Romney’s statement from December, "Only one president has ever cut Medicare for seniors in this country . . . Barack Obama." We rated that False. Many presidents have sought to rein in Medicare spending.

Here are a few highlights from that fact-check:

• President Ronald Reagan cut Medicare by reducing payments to hospitals, and he cut benefits by raising deductibles.

• President George H.W. Bush cut benefits by repealing a law that would have expanded coverage for drugs and catastrophic illness.

• President Bill Clinton cut Medicare by changing payments to doctors and other providers, which could be considered to have an indirect effect on beneficiaries.

Our ruling

Romney said, "There's only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare."

The only element of truth here is that the health care law seeks to reduce future Medicare spending, and the tally of those cost reductions over the next 10 years is $716 billion. The money wasn’t "robbed," however, and other presidents have made similar reductions to the Medicare program.

We rate this statement Mostly False.

And of course the added insult to injury is the hypocritical fact that Romney/Ryan supported the exact same Medicare "cuts" implemented by Obama. Those same cuts they're now whining about. I thought you guys predicted Obama would be be all about massive government and here he is successfully doing what Conservatives have claimed they've always wanted; improvements in wasteful government spending. It just pisses you guys off that he has made Medicare solvent another decade when you were hoping to be able to claim it was going bankrupt this election year, just so you could justify getting rid of it.

I'm not surprised you care nothing about factcheckers. Like the Romney campaign, Facts mean little when you have propaganda machines like FOX and Heritage dishing out assertions we're all just supposed to take for granted.

First of all, I can here easily give Kevin a little dose of his own standard ad hominem circumstantial medicine, because the cleverly named "factcheck" and "politifact" are, in fact, both notorious left-wing spin sites very much like Media Matters, and are doing nothing here (as the first paragraph makes clear) then carrying the Democrats water (which is what they were intended to do).

Secondly, the documentary facts of the matter, which are easily obtainable online, show that the cuts to Medicare are absolute cuts in funding for services and payments to doctors for services rendered. If one wishes to claim that such cuts extend the lifespan of Medicare out a few more weeks (its dead in the mid to late 2020s, period, along with Medicaid and Social Security), fine, but these are cuts, and they mean "cuts" in an absolute and semantically clear sense.

Here they are again:

A $260 billion payment cut for hospital services.

A $39 billion payment cut for skilled nursing services.

A $17 billion payment cut for hospice services.

A $66 billion payment cut for home health services.

A $33 billion payment cut for all other services.

A $156 billion cut in payment rates in Medicare Advantage (MA); $156 billion is before considering interactions with other provisions. The House Ways and Means Committee was able to include interactions with other provisions, estimating the cuts to MA to be even higher, coming in at $308 billion.

$56 billion in cuts for disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments.* DSH payments go to hospitals that serve a large number of low-income patients.

$114 billion in other provisions pertaining to Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP* (does not include coverage-related provisions).

Factcheck.org and Politifact's primary technique is to take Democratic/leftist talking points at face value, compare them to conservative criticism, and find the conservative criticism wanting. That's the primary tactic. Factcheck.org is funded by the leftist Annenburg Foundation, which also funded - the Annenburg Challenge, Bill Ayers Marxist indoctrination initiative to Chicago school children.

Kevin needs to do a bit more...uh...fact checking.

[_Droopy]

It's delightful to see your quoting me, Droopy! I'm sorry to see you find us all a disappointment. I was just pointing out how thin your and bc's expectations are. It will take that sort of devine intervention for Mitt to do well at this point. It looks to me like God is voting Obama.

The reality is, given what we now know about the truly egregious cooking of virtually all the major polls regarding the relative popularity of both candidates, and given that after four years of first, a major recession triggered by a long and ugly Democrat party fixation known as a number of "affordable housing" initiatives, legislation, and bureaucratic intimidation, then a "recovery" so sluggish and economically weak that the difference between it and the continuation of recession is difficult to ascertain, and with the nation on the brink of a double dip recession, further unemployment, advancing inflation, and a shockingly reckless and irresponsible foreign policy, Romney will win by a comfortable margin in Nov.

This is the most shockingly failed Presidency in modern American history, and the pain threshold for suffering and endangerment by a critical mass of the American people has probably been reached, although there's no way to tell with absolute certainty.

Look at the record. Economics? Failure. Foreign policy? Failure. National security? Abject, disgraceful, frightening failure. The Takers and rent seekers, Romney is correct, will vote for Obama anyway, because they have hitched their wagon to the table scraps confiscated from their fellow citizens and thrown to them from the state and are not about to give up the gravy or the train.

The rest of us, I still must have confidence, are still Americans, in the underlying senses of that term, and will yet resist the socialization and infantalization of our society by the "progressives."

[_Kevin Graham]

"factcheck" and "politifact" are, in fact, both notorious left-wing spin sites

What a dumb remark. I suppose you wouldn't be at all interested in backing up this claim.

Going once... going twice...?

Anyone vaguely familiar with these outfits know they spend an equal amount of time factchecking the Obama administration

[_Kevin Graham]

Going three times....?

[_Droopy]

"factcheck" and "politifact" are, in fact, both notorious left-wing spin sites

What a dumb remark. I suppose you wouldn't be at all interested in backing up this claim.

Going once... going twice...?

Anyone vaguely familiar with these outfits know they spend an equal amount of time factchecking the Obama administration

There bias is wholly toward the Democratic/leftist side of the spectrum, as anyone actually familiar with these intellectual spin mills understands. The Annenburg Foundation is no more non-partisan or unbiased than is Kevin Graham. Annenburg has funneld millions of dollars to lefist groups, including Ayers Annenburg Challenge, and ACORN. These are not "liberal" groups, but leftist radicals bent on overthrowing the entire constitution and American political and social order. They are not benign. They are not neutral.

Politifact is nothing more than a tool used by leftist journalists to grease the skids, and I'll admit probably makes Factcheck.org look fairly good by comparison. This essay et al sets out quite nicely the particular techniques of "fact checking" used by this and other similar groups:

http://www.humanevents.com/2012/08/30/p ... ft-really/

http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/Politifact

http://www.politifactbias.com/