Fact Check on Medicare and Obamacare
The President just told the AARP that the claim that Obamacare took $716 billion from Medicare was “not true.” The problem is that the facts say otherwise:
- Last November, 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.
- The Congressional Budget Office agrees; that’s why the CBO 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.
- The non-partisan Medicare actuary also previously confirmed that the Medicare reductions in Obamacare “cannot be simultaneously used to finance other federal outlays and to extend the [Medicare] trust fund” solvency date – rendering dubious any potential claims that Obamacare will extend Medicare’s solvency.
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.