Center for American Progress: Hypocrites You CAN’T Believe In
Two events in as many days show that the liberals at the Center for American Progress will say anything – anything – to throw up roadblocks for comprehensive Medicare reform. Earlier this afternoon, CAP released a blog post touting a study claiming that premium support proposals would raise Medicare premiums for seniors:
Critics charged that in areas where private plans make bids that are lower than the cost of traditional Medicare, seniors would see increase costs and now, a new study finds that had the plan been implemented in 2009, 24 million beneficiares [sic] enrolled in the program would have paid higher premiums.
It’s particularly ironic that CAP talked about “private plans mak[ing] bids that are lower than the cost of traditional Medicare” – because just yesterday, CAP released a paper claiming that “increasing the privatization of Medicare does not make sense because traditional Medicare costs less than comparable private coverage.” Which is it? Does “traditional Medicare cost less than comparable private coverage” – as CAP alleged yesterday – or do private plans have costs “lower than the cost of traditional Medicare” – as CAP alleges today?
The fact remains that those who spent years complaining about Medicare Advantage “overpayments” have now acknowledged that private plans CAN provide policies “lower than the cost of traditional Medicare.” One might think that this admission – a devastating blow to those who think government and not competition is the only way to lower health costs – would prompt a re-assessment by the left when it comes to their obstruction of true Medicare reform. But that presumes that organizations like CAP value things like intellectual integrity or consistency.
The Queen of Hearts famously said that she trained herself to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Given their performance over the last two days, it appears that the “scholars” at CAP have only five more impossible things to go.