TIME - Joe Klien - "Romney’s Medicare Nonsense"

[TomCADem]

TIME Magazine has a nice article disecting some of Romney/Ryan's various Medicare lies. Nonetheless, even some "fact checkers" continue to simply print Romney/Ryan's lies side-by-side with Obama's campaign statements suggesting that the truth is simply a matter of opinion.

http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/16/romneys-medicare-nonsense/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true

The latest from the Romney campaign is that the President is “robbing” $716 billion from Medicare. Kate Pickert has put the lie to that here. And I must say, I’m outraged by the bald baloney-slicing Romney is attempting. It goes back to the cover story I wrote about the deaths of my parents. Romney and Ryan want to take the country in the precise opposite direction from sanity when it comes to end of life issues.

As Kate has written in the past, the bottom line on the cost reductions in the Romney-Ryan and Obama Medicare packages is pretty much the same. The question is, how do you get there? Romney-Ryan relies on mythology, the notion that a “free” market in Medicare will reduce the costs (and will reduce government spending by $6400 per senior citizen on average in anticipation of these efficiencies). But we’ve had an experiment in private Medicare delivery the past few years. It’s called Medicare Advantage and, as Kate has reported, it costs, on average, 14% more than standard fee-for-service Medicare.

Obama gets his many of his reductions by eliminating the bonuses to private insurers that participate in Medicare Advantage. He would also reduce some payments to hospitals. But the most important reforms in the Affordable Care Act have to do with the wasteful fee-for-service nature of Medicare as it now stands. Obama promotes electronic record keeping and reviews best medical procedures to see what really works and what’s really wasteful. He also encourages medical group practices to see how much money they would save–and allows them to keep some of those savings–if they try a “team” approach where doctors are paid salaries instead of paid for each test and procedure they perform.

It is impossible to know how much these reforms will save. “The Congressional Budget Office didn’t give us very much on the scoring here, since it’s something new,” an Administration Official told me. But the savings could be significant, if the results from the Geisinger Medical group in Pennsylvania are any gauge–a 10% reduction in cost, perhaps. (Of course, Romney would mischaracterize this as a cut).