Doctor Spin

"Don't vote Republican. They will take away your Medicare."

Really?

Do you mean like Medicare Advantage plans? 

More than a quarter of the 50 million beneficiaries receive coverage through private Medicare Advantage plans, mostly health maintenance organizations, and Medicare’s drug benefits are delivered exclusively by private insurers, subsidized by the government.NY Times, Private Medicare plans find success, August, 2012

Those who claim the Paul Ryan plan will eliminate Medicare either have no idea what they are talking about, or they know exactly what they are saying and just want to scare you with a lie.

The CURRENT Medicare system offers you a choice.

The Ryan plan does the same thing, but hopes to expand options by allowing private insurance carriers to expand the current offerings.

Why do Democrats say that Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan would “end Medicare as we know it,” even as private plans have helped hold down costs and have satisfied most beneficiaries?

In the past, federal and state officials say, insurers used improper hard-sell tactics to persuade Medicare beneficiaries to sign up for private health plans. Also, some insurers offered benefits that were likely to attract healthy retirees and discouraged the enrollment of those with costly chronic conditions.

Sounds like consumer choice to me.

Choice is a good thing. Right?

“There is no strong evidence that competition among health plans is a powerful lever to generate a lot of savings,” said Marsha R. Gold, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research who has been studying private plans in Medicare for more than two decades.

But yet, Obamacare proposes to introduce competition to reduce the cost of health insurance. At least that is what they say . . .

A premise of the new law (Obamacare) is that consumers will benefit from more competition. The law will set up markets, known as exchanges, where people under 65 can shop for private insurance and get subsidies to help pay for it. Massachusetts set up such an exchange under a 2006 law that Mr. Romney championed when he was governor. Mr. Ryan’s proposal would establish a similar exchange for Medicare.

So exchanges are a good thing when Obama is behind it but a bad thing if Paul Ryan wants it.