The lies mount. We knew it before it passed

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius didn’t tell the truth about Obamacare gutting Medicare

By: Mark Hemingway

A recent Examiner editorial, “If you like your health insurance, too bad,” noted that Obamacare guts Medicare Advantage:

President Obama’s most frequently repeated health care reform claim — “If you like your present health insurance, you can keep it” — sounds about as credible these days as the finger-wagging Bill Clinton did when he said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”On Tuesday, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Massachusetts dropped its Medicare Advantage program, leaving 22,000 senior citizens to find other coverage to take care of expenses not paid by Medicare. Harvard Pilgrim said the decision to drop its Medicare Advantage program resulted from the company’s concern for “the long-term viability of Medicare Advantage programs. … We know that cuts in Medicare are being used to fund national health care reform.” In fact, the $145 billion in Medicare Advantage cuts are routinely used by Obama and his spinmeisters to pay for yet another Obamacare fiction, that their masterpiece will reduce the federal budget deficit.

In 2003, 5.3 million Americans were enrolled in Medicare Advantage. Today, there are 11.3 million, or 24 percent of all Medicare enrollees.

An email today from the Republican Policy Committee notes that the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius didn’t tell the truth about Medicare Advantage in a speech last week, and HHS has been forced to issue a correction:

To follow up on my e-mail yesterday afternoon about Senator Grassley’s letter to Secretary Sebelius, Politico reports this morning that the Department of Health and Human Services has corrected its website account of the Secretary’s speech to AARP last week. Instead of stating that “there will be more Medicare Advantage plans to choose from” – a factually incorrect statement, given CMS’ efforts to reduce the number of plans for 2011 – the website was amended to read that “there will be more meaningful choices.” The revision comes nearly a month after the Secretary wrote to insurers objecting to their “misinformation” regarding premium increases as a result of the health law.