Senator McCain wrote an opinion piece for USA Today Opposing view: Don’t slash Medicare. It’s a common sense opinion piece that one would hope would be something of a no-brainer for Democrats and Republicans alike. Cutting MediCare benefits to institute a new government health care program just isn’t logical…
The Democrats have proposed slashing Medicare by nearly $500 billion, one-half a trillion dollars, to create a new federal government-run health care entitlement and are trying to package it as “health care reform.”
Among other cuts, the proposed reductions in Medicare include $120 billion to the Medicare Advantage program; $150 billion to providers, including hospitals, hospices and nursing homes; and $23 billion in unspecified decreases to be determined by an “Independent Medicare Advisory board.”
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I have consistently been a strong advocate of making Medicare a more efficient and stronger program through improving incentives for better coordinated care, reducing Medicare fraud and abuse, and eliminating preventable errors. These are common sense.
Unlike slashing the Medicare program by half a trillion dollars in order to finance more Washington spending and mandates, I have advocated putting any savings created by improvements to Medicare back into the program to improve it for our seniors and ensure its viability.
Simply put, the Democrats’ proposed cuts to Medicare would impact seniors’ access to quality care. This is a price that Americans should not be asked to pay.
Senator McCain is sponsoring an amendment to send the health care bill back to the finance committee so that it can be re-written in a way that doesn’t use MediCare cuts to fund reform. His web site is also sponsoring a petition against using MediCare cuts to fund the health care bill.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: mccain health care, mccain health care petition, mccain medicare, mccain medicare petition
[...] Senator McCain is sponsoring an amendment to send the health care bill back to the finance committee so that it can be re-written in a way that doesn’t use MediCare cuts to fund reform. His web site is also sponsoring a petition against using MediCare cuts to fund the health care bill. Some Health Care Common Sense From Senator McCain [...]
Yes, and the AARP has already called out Senator McCain for his hypocritical position: these ‘cuts’ are actually ’savings’ by slashing wasteful spending that McCain campaigned AGAINST while running for president.
The AARP endorses these measures as they recognize that the substantial savings can best be used elsewhere - such as in the provision of quality care to the uninsured and the under-insured.
Wake-up, America - you are being lied to by those who purport to represent your best interests but have been purchased by Big Pharma and the Insurance Companies. Why else would there be so much drama about giving people health care? Profits. It all boils down to profits. So long as health CARE is a profit driven industry people will die. Period. That’s just the way it is; you may love capitalism, but it cannot work for everything.
Unfortunately the math doesn’t add up. These are huge Medicare cuts that dems have previously called out as being “wrong”. If they want support for this bill then they just need a better explanation of how we’ll be paying for it.