Medicare

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The American left, as we’ve had occasion to remark in these pages before, suffers from a paucity of new ideas. Or maybe it’s truer to say it suffers from a surfeit of old ones. In any case, one old idea making the rounds among Democrats these days goes by the moniker “Medicare for All.” The…

It took the United States 193 years to accumulate its first trillion dollars of federal debt. We will add that much in the current fiscal year alone.

More and more Democrats are embracing socialized health insurance, but calling it that won’t necessarily help.

Washington fiddles while the entitlement problem metastasizes

The federal price tag of Bernie Sanders's proposal is not surprising. But the implications are kind of insane.

Plus, when you should leave the ballpark.

We all will—in about eight years.

Let’s be honest: Congress was never really going to reform entitlements under House speaker Paul Ryan. The subject is campaign poison—the only way lawmakers would act proactively is if congressional terms were measured in decades instead of years.

Are Republicans in the Trump era deficit-hawks-in-name-only? Or does the party still have faithfulness toward reducing the federal deficit in meaningful ways. Between last week’s Republican-forged budget deal that ended a severely flawed, but effective, system of spending caps and the advent of…

President Trump’s second annual address to Congress passed Tuesday night without him mentioning a sole word about entitlement spending, continuing a deviation from the economically conservative Congress he inherited.

The biggest scandal that nobody is talking about has nothing to do with the Donald Trump White House or the connection between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Russia dossier. It involves New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, who stands accused by the federal government of bribery,…

The biggest scandal that nobody is talking about has nothing to do with the Donald Trump White House or the connection between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Russia dossier. It involves New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, who stands accused by the federal government of bribery,…

There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:

There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:

President Donald Trump’s new willingness to deal with Democratic leaders of Congress has conservatives worried. Is the president really with us anymore? Is he going to help his fellow partisans in Congress hold the line of spending, or is he going to become a Rockefeller-style Republican, cutting…

Committee chairs in Congress look at White House budget proposals with something between indifference and disdain. Congress, not the White House, writes the budget, or so the thinking goes. So why, besides the law mandating he submit one, does a president spend so much time and energy crafting a…

It wasn't Ted Kennedy—not that he'd want it to be—but House speaker Paul Ryan quipped Tuesday morning that his dream of entitlement reform hadn't died.

Earlier Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation, incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told host John Dickerson that President-elect Trump is going to abide by his promise not to reform entitlement programs:

Tucked away in Jason Zengerle's New York magazine profile of outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid is a little nugget about what Senate Democrats and their new leader, Chuck Schumer, plan to take their first stand on in the new Congress: Donald Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services,…

When the U.S. Federal Marshal system was founded, its mission was to execute all lawful warrants as officers of the courts. The main association with marshals is a lone, Wild West-style lawman, like Wyatt Earp or Rooster Cogburn, but the program was started by George Washington and continues to…

On Monday, Andrew Ferguson wrote on the government's feeble and insulting attempt to explain why insurance premiums were rising precipitously under Obamacare, contrary to what was promised. This is just scratching the surface of Obamacare's current woes.

The Medicare trust fund that pays the hospital bills of elderly patients is set to run out of reserves two years earlier than previously projected, the program's trustees said Wednesday.

For decades, Democrats and Republicans have had very different positions on drug prices. Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton portrayed drug companies—like other profitable industries—as greedy profiteers whose prices should be cut by having government 'negotiate' drug prices as they do in Europe,…

The federal technocracy, like the old B-horror-movie monster The Blob, grows by sucking all surrounding life into its amoeba-like digestive system. There are never enough bureaucratic controls or government programs to “incentivize” us—in the jargon—to behave in ways the technocrats think best.

The media are cooing over the news that Medicare will reimburse doctors $86 for half-hour consultations about the kind of treatment patients would—or would not—want should they become incapacitated. Such coverage was slated to be part of Obamacare, but was dropped after it became controversial when…

Carly Fiorina says she disagrees with her Republican rival for president Donald Trump on the issue of Planned Parenthood. Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday that "we have to look at the positive also for Planned Parenthood" and said abortions were just a "small part" of what the…

On March 23, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a permanent “doc fix.” Now it heads to the Senate, where it is expected to pass easily. This bipartisan effort will end the yearly ritual of bypassing Medicare reforms imposed by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Much of professional…

Every year since 2011, the White House has used tax time to post a "Federal Taxpayer Receipt" showing taxpayers how their federal tax dollars are being spent. President Obama introduced the concept in his 2011 State of the Union address, and Wednesday the White House posted the fifth installment so…

It is said that history is written by the victors. Maybe so, but in the United States over the last century, history has largely been written by the liberals. This inevitably leads to bias, which inevitably operates on even the most impartial of minds. While most historians try to be fair and…

Given that I’ve probably published more articles critical of Obamacare than anyone alive, I’m often asked to speak to conservative audiences about our new health law. Last month, I was at the big grassroots confab of Americans for Prosperity, the Defending the American Dream Summit. I asked the…

As I've made pretty clear, I am not a fan of the "explanatory journalism" trend that purports to take an empirical approach to explaining complex issues. Its chief practitioners are a bunch of young, terribly biased journalists who tend to treat politics and policy as some sort of game, even as…

The Mary Landrieu campaign is out with a new hit against the Louisiana Democrat's Republican opponent, Congressman Bill Cassidy. The 30-second ad focuses on Cassidy's support for policies that supposedly hurt senior citizens. Watch the video below:

Senator Mark Pryor is making entitlements an issue in the Arkansas Senate race. Both Pryor and his Democratic allies are hitting Republican nominee and House member Tom Cotton over his support for a budget proposal that would have, starting in 2022, gradually raised the retirement age for receiving…

May 22, 2014, marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” address, delivered at the spring commencement for the University of Michigan. That speech remains the most ambitious call to date by any president (our current commander in chief included) to use the…

On Sunday, the White House blog declared that Obamacare made this Mother's Day "particularly special."  On Monday, the Obamacare website Healthcare.gov got into the act, suggesting that "Health insurance with Medicaid is the perfect Mother’s Day gift":

In October 2013, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), was launching Healthcare.gov, CMS also launched a quieter initiative. As part of Ignite, an internal HHS program designed to spur innovation, a team within…

Four years after Obamacare became law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is notifying Medicare providers and suppliers of new fingerprint-based background checks.  Eventually, all individuals who hold a five percent or greater stake in a Medicare supplier or provider that is…

The contractor building the financial management system for Healthcare.gov is being blamed by a Houston hospital for delayed Medicare reimbursements that have caused the hospital to miss payrolls for weeks. Novitas Solutions is the federal government's new Medicare payment processor for the…

The Obamacare website Healthcare.gov has been grabbing all the headlines lately, but another aspect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) may come under increased scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead: Electronic Health Records (EHR).  The ACA requires medical providers to transition to electronic…

The Department of Health and Human Services released a statement today saying that gay spouses are now eligible for key Medicare benefits. The announcement is presented as "guidance" for "implementing Supreme Court’s decision on the Defense of Marriage Act."

A recent audit by the Office of the Inspector General for Health and Human Services found that in four out of five cases when elective surgeries were cancelled for one reason or another, Medicare still paid even though the claims submitted by the hospitals failed the "reasonable and necessary"…

The bankrupt city of Detroit may have found a way out of its health care woes for its retired city workers: shifting the costs to taxpayers nationwide via Obamacare. If Detroit and other struggling municipalities follow through, the result could be a "huge cost" to taxpayers.  The New York…

At least for now (although a statewide referendum may be pending), Arizona governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, has succeeded in her efforts to implement a key part of Obamacare in her state.  Brewer has very aggressively — and entirely voluntarily — spearheaded the charge to implement Obamacare’s…

The recent news on the economy, in general, and deficits, in particular, has been encouraging.  Seems the clumsy blend of tax increases and reduced spending – aka the sequester – brought in more revenue and reduced spending.  Funny how that works.

Earlier this month, President Obama released his fiscal year 2014 budget, which calls for $1.1 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade, cuts of $400 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, and alterations to Social Security’s benefit rate worth about $130 billion. 

Robert Samuelson's fine column in the Washington Post, “America the retirement home,” argues that “The budget debate’s central reality is that federal retirement programs, led by Social Security and Medicare, are crowding out most other government spending,” and that this is endangering the other…

It’s an old basketball adage that teams that apply a full-court press don’t like to be pressed themselves. They like to force the action, not have it forced on them.  In a similar vein, those who seek to centralized power by spearheading the passage of new federal laws generally don’t like to obey…

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan knocked President Barack Obama for "shadowbox[ing] a straw man" in his inaugural address. Speaking Tuesday morning on the Laura Ingraham Radio Show to guest host Raymond Arroyo, Ryan responded to Obama's statement that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security "do not…

The head of the AARP has stated clearly where his organization stands on the matter of cutting entitlements. As Kate Ackley reports in Roll Call:

Among the many items bundled into the fiscal cliff fix there was another delay in implementing cuts to physician payments for Medicare services.  It wasn't hard, though.  Congress has had plenty of practice handling what is called the "doc fix," since it has been doing it almost routinely for the…

President Barack Obama won't touch the eligibility age for Medicare, Senator Dick Durbin told reporters. The AP reports:

Journalist Bob Woodward explained this morning on CBS that "there's a civil war in the Democratic party":

One problem with the unearned income Medicare contribution tax is the name Congress chose for it, which is a triple misnomer. The income that will be subject to the tax isn’t unearned -- it is earned by savers who receive market rewards for delaying consumption and providing funds to finance…

Many states are wisely signaling that they aren’t interested in doing the Obama administration’s bidding on Obamacare. As a result, many if not most of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — the heart of the beast — will have to be set up and run by the Obama administration at the federal level.

First off, it’s not a “fiscal cliff.” What we’re slated to hit as of New Year’s Day, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is a tax cliff. Our fiscal cliff, which drops off into a far deeper canyon, is what looms because of our $16,000,000,000,000 debt and the runaway entitlement spending that fuels it…

At Real Clear Politics, Tom Bevan and Carl Cannon rightly note that “[Mitt] Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan cheered fiscal and social conservatives within the Republican Party and provided a much needed shot in the arm for Romney’s campaign.”  But they also argue that, “by choosing Ryan, Romney…

Politico writes that Nancy Pelosi’s “drive to regain the [House] majority for Democrats is on the verge of a complete collapse.”  It adds, “Democrats are expected to pick up five seats at best — a fraction of the 25 they need.  On the eve of the election, some party officials are privately worried…

Several months ago, President Obama’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, initiated the Senior Swindle, an $8.35 billion ploy (far more than either presidential campaign will raise this year) to hide the effects of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts from seniors until…

In 2008, Barack Obama promised to cut federal spending, cut wasteful programs, reform Medicare and Social Security, and create "5 million new jobs" in a "new energy economy." At Buzzfeed, Andrew Kaczynski has four videos of Obama making those promises at the town hall debate in 2008. Here, for…

During last Wednesday’s presidential debate, President Obama claimed that the private sector just can’t match the leanness and efficiency of the federal government. He was speaking specifically about privately covered health care versus government-run health care. Obama said, “Jim, if I — if I can…

After staring in some amazement at PolitiFact’s ostensibly unbiased rulings on the truthfulness of various statements made during Wednesday night’s presidential debate, I finally realized what the problem is: PolitiFact’s self-described Truth-O-Meter is clearly broken. Thankfully, however, it’s…

“Can we stay on Medicare?” Mitt Romney asked debate moderator Jim Lehrer after several minutes of back and forth on the issue between himself and President Barack Obama. It was a characteristic moment in Romney’s strong performance in Denver, when the former governor of Massachusetts sensed an…

Yesterday, when speaking via video to the AARP, President Obama said, “But what I’m not going to do, as a matter of principle, is to slash benefits or privatize Social Security and suddenly turn it over to Wall Street.”

Addressing the audience at an AARP convention today, Paul Ryan declared, "The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obamacare." He explained to those in attendance how Obamacare would turn "Medicare into a piggy bank," while also putting "15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of Medicare’s…

Dear Governor Romney,

In his speech Wednesday night, Bill Clinton said, "President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president—not me or any of my predecessors—could have repaired all the damage in just four years." Yet, under FDR, who inherited a much weaker economy than Obama did, real GDP growth…

At the official kickoff of his reelection campaign, President Obama offered a tacit (although unintended) admission of four years of failure, declaring, "We have to move forward, to the future we imagined in 2008. ... That’s why I’m running for a second term as president of the United States."…

Perhaps if we all ignore PolitiFact, they'll go away. But for the time being, the supposedly independent organization continues to crank out skewed and partisan work. There's no better example of this than the the current jihad the "fact checking" organization is waging against the Romney-Ryan…

The end of Medicare and Medicaid as we know them—through reform, the Ryan way, or -bankruptcy, the Obama way. The direction of the country—via the Romney-Ryan right track, or the Obama-Biden wrong track. Those are the choices, made stark by the addition of Paul Ryan to the Republican ticket.

Via Politico, here's the latest Obama campaign ad attacking Mitt Romney on Medicare reform:

Noemie Emery, writing in the Washington Examiner:

The oddly convenient academic study has long been a weapon in the Democratic party’s arsenal of election-season demagoguery. Do you need to say that conservative policies would sink the republic? Here’s a paper by scholars from a respected university, published in a respected journal, and released…

The Villages, Fla.

Lanhee Chen, the Romney campaign's policy director, is circulating this memo (below). The memo seems similar to what Yuval Levin and Jeffrey H. Anderson have written about Medicare, Obamacare, and the 2012 election. 

“Old age puts more wrinkles in our minds than on our faces; and we never, or rarely see a soul that in growing old does not come to smell sour and musty. Man grows and dwindles in his entirety.”—Montaigne Before the sun had set on Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan, the Obama campaign was out with…

President Obama is creative. He’s given up on a palpable falsehood about the Romney-Ryan plan to reform Medicare. But he’s retained a few old canards and trotted out a new one.

Warren, Ohio

Oxford, Ohio

The conventional wisdom on the state of the 2012 presidential race is that, thanks to his endorsement of the House GOP Budget and his selection of Paul Ryan to be his running mate, Mitt Romney has opened himself up to one of the Democrats' favorite attacks -- fear-mongering over Medicare, or…

President Obama and the Democrats have been ambushed. They blindly walked into the political trap Republicans set for them on Medicare.

Mitt Romney's latest campaign advertisement knocks President Obama for "[cutting] Medicare to pay for Obamacare." The Romney campaign appears to be addressing the Medicare criticisms that come with adding Paul Ryan to the ticket head-on. It's a strategy that's worked for Republicans before,…

A new ad from the Romney campaign takes the Democrats' Medicare attacks on Paul Ryan head on. Watch the video below:

In 2009, President Barack Obama conceded that 1/3 of Obamacare funding is taken from Medicare: 

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, has just sent out a fundraising letter criticizing her House colleague Paul Ryan, saying a Vice President Ryan would be a "nightmare" and that "we cannot afford to let this man be a heartbeat away from the presidency."…

President Obama's campaign uses its Tumblr page to introduce supporters to vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan: 

In the single most important test of his leadership prior to November 6, Mitt Romney chose the ideal running mate in Paul Ryan, who will now help Romney in a myriad of ways. Some on the left, however, appear giddy at the thought of running against Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms, which would keep…

Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter defended President Obama's $700 billion cuts to Medicare: 

This morning on CNN, President Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, rolled liberal Oregon senator Ron Wyden:

Today, at 9:22 a.m., Obama campaign manager Jim Messina sent out an email blasting Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate, Wisconsin congressman and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan. "[Ryan's] plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting…

Last night on Twitter, New York Times blogger Nate Silver said, "I think Ryan pick ...indicates (a) bearish view from Romney campaign." Silver elaborates here, saying that Romney picked Ryan in part because he believes "he had a losing position" against President Obama.

Democrats are responding to the Paul Ryan VP pick by calling him "the architect of the Republican plan to kill Medicare." A spokesman for the Romney-Ryan campaign responds:

Now that Americans are becoming more acutely aware that Obamacare would be funded in large part through higher taxes, it’s all the more crucial for President Obama to keep voters from discovering the overhaul’s other principal source of funding — its Medicare raid. 

The Hill reports:

In his speech yesterday, President Obama said, “[M]y plan would reduce our yearly domestic spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy in nearly 60 years.”  Such an amazing claim is made possible only by excluding the two domestic programs that have contributed the most to our nearly $16…

The most politically brazen feature of Obamacare has always been its looting of Medicare. About half of Obamacare’s costs are to be covered with money taken from an already nearly bankrupt program for seniors. And the most politically perilous aspect of this ploy is Obama-care’s cuts in Medicare…

To the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and Gator Aid, President Obama has now added the Senior Swindle — a ploy to spend $8.35 billion in taxpayer money to hide the effects of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election. Under Obamacare, millions of seniors would lose…

Charles Blahous and James C. Capretta, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

The 2012 Medicare and Social Security trustees’ reports have been released (see here and here). The headline is that the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will have insufficient reserves to pay full benefits beginning in 2024 (the same year that was projected in last year’s report).…

In today's New York Post, Benjamin Sasse and Charles Hurt report that the White House is again playing politics with Medicare. Obamacare guts Medicare Advantage, the popular market-based program to get Medicare coverage. (And it's very popular -- the program had 5.3 million enrollees in 2003, and…

At the end of 2008 — the year President Obama was elected —our national debt was $9.986 trillion. It’s now $15.542 trillion and counting — a increase of $5.556 trillion, or 56 percent, in just over three years.  With that staggering — and unparalleled — record of fiscal profligacy in mind, let’s…

Paul Ryan unveils the House Republican budget proposal Tuesday, as Illinois Republican primary voters go to the polls. I dare say the Ryan budget will be much the more consequential of the two events, and that victory or defeat in the intellectual and political battle over Paul Ryan’s budget will…

At a hearing today on Capitol Hill, Illinois congressman Peter Roskam had this question for Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute: “Under IPAB, will healthcare providers ability to provide care to patients be affected by reimbursements being cut for particular…

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

At a campaign rally in Florida Monday evening, Mitt Romney told the crowd: "We will never go after Medicare and Social Security."

Des Moines

So the liberal punditry woke up today to find that PolitiFact has declared the "Lie of the Year" to be Democrats's claim that Paul Ryan's budget will "end Medicare" or "end Medicare as we know it." They're having quite the collective freakout—see Paul Krugman, Jonathan Chait, Matt Yglesias, Brian…

Your Paul Ryan-Ron Wyden Medicare Round-up: Josh Barro urges "On Medicare, Save Money Now"; Ben Domenech has "Eight Answers from Paul Ryan"; Phil Klein discusses "Ryan's bombshell Medicare compromise"; and James Pethokoukis on "My Q&A with Paul Ryan on his new Medicare reform plan."

Sioux City, Iowa 

The New York Times reports:

Paul Ryan and Newt Gingrich have had a bit of a testy relationship over the past year. Gingrich called Ryan's plan "right-wing social engineering" on Meet the Press in April. "With allies like that, who needs the left?" Ryan shot back the next day.

Remember those ads with a Paul Ryan-lookalike rolling granny’s wheelchair off a cliff? Well, just a few short months later, the New York Times writes: 

Associated Press: "Appeals court upholds Obama health care law"

While some of the Republican presidential candidates continue to focus almost exclusively on the economy, Politico writes, “Medicare-aged seniors could have the biggest impact on the 2012 elections — and that’s a bad sign for the person who just overhauled their health care, according to the LA…

During a major speech today at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Paul Ryan laid out his vision of health care reform, saying, “Choice and competition are critical to controlling costs…[and] improving quality….And yet, across the federal landscape, choice and competition are undermined…

Although Indiana governor Mitch Daniels would like to see his New Jersey counterpart run for president, Daniels said today that he doesn't see any signs Chris Christie will change his mind. “I personally didn’t press him, so I have nothing to report,” Daniels said of his meeting last Thursday with…

Princeton professor Paul Krugman, talking about Paul Ryan's budget:

In the Hill, former Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt and former HHS deputy secretary Tevi Troy write about the one part of Medicare that has succeeded in controlling costs — Medicare Part D (the prescription drug program), which works a lot like Paul Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms.

Check out this Rachel Maddow segment from July 18:

“The fundamental question for you is not how we got here, but where you want the country to go,” said Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, to the members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (or the supercommittee) today. “What role do you and your…

President Obama said the following during his jobs speech last night:

Rick Perry's doubling down on his "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme" rhetoric during last night's debate could be beneficial for him in a Republican primary but hurtful in a general election. And while the Mitt Romney campaign was quick to pounce on the statement with its not-so-subtle "PERRY DOES…

On Labor Day, during the GOP presidential forum in South Carolina, Mitt Romney had the following exchange with the host, Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.).  DeMint asked, “As you know, if you’re the nominee, the president is going to say that you implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts. How would you…

Sometime late this summer—the Friday before Labor Day if historical patterns hold—the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will announce the beginning of something called Medicare Round Two of “the Competitive Bidding Program for certain Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics,…

Every time you think Harry Reid can't be even more crassly political and partisan, you're proven wrong. He's now appointed Patty Murray—chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)—to be co-chair of the new deficit supercommittee. Murray has little in the way of widely recognized…

Michael O'Brien at the Hill reports:

In today's Washington Post, Robert Samuelson argues that it was liberal protectors of the entitlements, not the Tea Party, that "won" the most in last week's debt deal. The military, he says, was the real loser:

New York Times: "Giffords’s Return Marks Moment of Unity in Divided House"

In his remarks on the debt ceiling deal, President Obama said, “The first part of this agreement will cut about $1 trillion in spending over the next 10 years....The result would be the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president.” This claim is utterly false, as…

A new report from federal officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says that Obamacare will increase nationwide health care spending. Particularly interesting are the report’s findings for 2014, the year that’s slated for Obamacare’s grand opening (if the overhaul isn’t…

Students for Solvency released its first ad today, suggesting that failure to reform Medicare and other entitlement programs is tantamount to throwing our kids off cliffs:

Why, exactly, do we need to extend the debt limit to the point where the federal government can borrow another $2.4 trillion (hardly a nice round number) — about the same amount of money, even in inflation-adjusted dollars, that we borrowed to fight all of World War II? Because, as Treasury…

President Obama and the Democrats claim that the Medicare reforms proposed by Paul Ryan and the Republicans would shift the burden of health costs onto the backs of seniors. This has been the central—and essentially the only—argument the Democrats have made against the GOP plan. But the Democrats’…

At his press conference Friday, President Barack Obama repeatedly claimed that the American people support a “balanced approach” and “shared sacrifice” when it comes to a debt and deficit solution.

No, Rupert Murdoch does not pay negative income taxes: "Oh David Cay Johnston, You’ve Done It Again! Reuters Nixes Serial Misreporter’s Debut Column"

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius defended the Independent Patient Advisory Board (IPAB) and attempted to redirect focus from IPAB to the House GOP’s proposed Medicare reforms at a House hearing this morning on Capitol Hill.

Here are two clips from yesterday’s House Budget Committee hearing on Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). In the first, Chairman Paul Ryan asks Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about her views on competition and choice:

Downplaying the role of the controversial Independent Patient Advisory Board (IPAB), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today that the Affordable Care Act “leaves all final decisions” on changing Medicare payment costs in the hands of Congress. “IPAB is a backstop, a…

In the wake of rising Democratic — and universal Republican — opposition to Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will appear on Capitol Hill this morning to testify before the House Budget Committee, chaired by Paul Ryan. IPAB,…

James Capretta has a must-read over at NRO: "Budget Danger Ahead: How Republicans could get snookered again." 

Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the House Budget Committee this morning that his office was unable to estimate the long-term viability of the "budget framework" President Obama outlined in his April 13 budget speech.

At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing today, two Medicare trustees, Charles Blahous and Robert Reischauer, testified about necessary cuts to Medicare's Hospital Insurance program (commonly known as Medicare Part A) once the trust fund runs out of money. According to the recently…

The CBO’s newly released 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook forecasts that federal spending will soon exceed spending during parts of World War II. In 1942, federal spending equaled 24.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) (Table 1.3). Less than 25 years from now (in 2035), according to the CBO,…

Obamacrats think their man is in trouble because (as usual) he’s got “communication problems.” He seems to suffer from these all the time, which is odd given that he was elected mainly because of his flair for communicating; given that the queen of England is still, no doubt, enjoying the audio…

Jay Cost has written that, in 2008, Barack Obama ran “a bandwagon campaign with a simple purpose. When your candidate lacks the experience traditionally thought to be necessary to run the government, and you have two wars and an economic slowdown, you need something to cover the gap. And that…

A recent National Journal article misrepresents the effects of the proposed Medicare reforms in the House of Representatives on current seniors. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has repeatedly noted that these proposed Medicare reforms — which would not go into effect until 2022 — would…

Robert Samuelson: "Why we must end Medicare ‘as we know it’"

This floor speech from Paul Ryan is about as fiery as the Wisconsin congressman gets:

A CNN poll of 1,007 adult Americans asks: "From everything you have heard or read about the Republicans' plan to change Medicare so far, do you favor or oppose it?"

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that Medicare reform would be a “defining issue” for his party’s plan to win back control of the House of Representatives next year. Speaking with reporters this morning, Israel said that the House…

The folks over at the Center for American Progress are up in arms over this statement by Rep. Paul Ryan, D-Wis.:

The New York Times’s Nate Silver claims that Paul Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms — which are part of a budget that would save a staggering $1 billion a day in relation to President Obama’s budget — are likely to become unpopular. Silver argues,

Do House Republicans want to kill the elderly? If you listen to the left these days, you’d certainly think so. Last week, a liberal advocacy group called “The Agenda Project”—which claims to advance “rational, effective ideas in the public debate”—released an ad showing a look-alike of House Budget…

Barney Frank -- unintentionally! -- sums up the problem: "'If it is (a conflict of interest), then much of Washington is involved (in conflicts),' Frank told the Herald last night."

Keeping hopes for Ryan-Rubio 2012 alive, in an op-ed for the Miami Herald  Sen. Marco Rubio, D-Fla., comes out swinging today in favor of Medicare reform:

"Bill Clinton to Paul Ryan on Medicare Election: ‘Give me a Call’"

Former Minnesota governor and presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty reiterated today that while he thinks Paul Ryan is a "very bright, courageous congressman," he doesn't wholeheartedly support Ryan's budget. "I think in general the direction of it is positive, but I'm going to have my own plan,"…

In June 2009, President Obama said, “Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin.” Two years later, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans have advanced a serious proposal to deal with these two biggest drivers of our debt. Obama…

When asked about Medicare reform this afternoon in the Capitol, Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) said, "We need to stop playing games and we need to come up with some solutions." What solutions might those be? "I already laid it out yesterday," Brown told me, referring to an op-ed he published in…

At a breakfast with reporters this morning, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who's currently vying for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, said his comments on Meet the Press last week, where he said he opposed “right-wing social engineering,” were not an attack on Paul Ryan or Ryan’s…

Today, on Meet the Press, Paul Ryan responded to a question in which David Gregory asserted that the Medicare reforms proposed by the House are unpopular. Such assertions are regularly made by the press but are not backed up by a realistic look at the polls.  The American people have actually…

When President Obama tours the country and touts Obamacare, one thing you never hear him highlight is that half of Obamacare’s projected decrease in the number of uninsured comes from people who would simply be dumped into Medicaid at taxpayer expense. Of the 32 million people that the…

It's the subtlety here that you really have to appreciate. I mean, here is a liberal group that has total faith that Americans want to understand the issues and make informed policy choices:

On a conference call with bloggers and reporters from conservative media outlets today, Newt Gingrich continued to do damage control in the wake of his comments on Meet the Press, in which he used the terms "radical change" and "right-wing social engineering" when discussing the House Republicans'…

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is ramping up its misleading campaign on this year's Republican House budget (which includes Medicare reforms). On a new microsite, DontEndMedicare.com, the DCCC is urging citizens to "Tell Republican Members of Congress to keep their hands off…

Speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago this afternoon, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) intensified his criticism of opponents of his "Path to Prosperity" budget plan, including President Barack Obama, calling their vision for the future of America one of "shared scarcity."

Sunday morning on Meet the Press, former House speaker Newt Gingrich ripped the Medicare reform proposed by Paul Ryan and supported by almost all House Republicans as "radical" and "right-wing social engineering."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will vote against increasing the debt limit unless President Obama agrees to spending cuts and long term reforms that satisfy the bond market, as well as foreign investors, and “astonish the American people.”

After several months of bipartisan gangs, presidential commissions and summits, and rhetoric from leadership, the Senate has still not passed a budget resolution. And even more meetings at the White House about budget deficits this week mean the delay continues. Finally, though, there seems to be…

That's the question Jennifer Rubin is asking about over at the Washington Post today, and it's a good one. While Democrats have been all Mediscare all the time, no one's really asking about Obamacare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The president claims this will cut a trillion and a…

There is an awful lot of rampant speculation right now, much of it masquerading as confirmed fact, about how well the House Republican’s proposed Medicare reforms are going over with the American public. But there is very little hard evidence. There have only been two polls, to my knowledge, that…

Since the introduction of Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, backed by the House GOP, Democrats have been heavily engaged in “Mediscare” tactics. “Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it,” said President Obama, attacking Ryan’s plan. 

Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services, lowered the bar of political discourse still further yesterday. Sebelius said that, under the proposed Medicare reforms authored by Paul Ryan and passed overwhelmingly by the House of Representatives, many seniors would…

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters and business leaders this morning at a breakfast on Capitol Hill that House Republicans have returned from their town hall meetings “energized” about their 2012 budget. "I talked to dozens of members yesterday…

Likely voters’ responses to two questions in a recent Rasmussen poll highlight both the challenge that Paul Ryan and the House Republicans face in persuading Americans to support their proposed budget, and why it’s likely that they will ultimately prevail. Rasmussen asked likely voters what they…

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) produced a highly misleading ad last week about the House GOP's Medicare reform plan. The ad portrayed seniors working tough jobs to pay for their health care under a plan the DCCC says would "end Medicare."

In what could be a sign of desperation on the part of opponents of the Paul Ryan’s budget, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein and Slate’s Simon Lazarus both argue that the House budget contains an Obamacare-like individual mandate that requires people to buy health insurance under penalty of law. The…

The April Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that, even among a group of respondents that lean Democratic by 15 points, support is divided right down the middle between leaving Medicare as it is and reforming it as Paul Ryan and the House of Representative have proposed.

Medicare's chief Donald Berwick writes in today’s Wall Street Journal,  

Greenfield, Wisc.

In light of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s shameless ad saying that the Paul Ryan-authored House Republican budget would “end Medicare,” it is worth noting that the Congressional Budget Office says that, in 2030, the Republican plan would give the average senior $18,276 in…

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is out today with a new advertisement targeting freshman Republican House members from districts that had previously elected Democrats. The ad juxtaposes campaign ads and appearances from last year's election, when the GOP candidates said…

Kenosha, Wisc.

"'People have to believe there’s a fundamental problem with Medicare that has to be fixed,' said Carl Forti, a veteran GOP strategist. 'If they don’t believe there’s a problem, then why would they support a change?'”

Paul Ryan, architect of the Republican budget for 2012, sat in the front row at George Washington University as President Obama delivered his thoughts on the deficit, debt, and Ryan’s spending plan. The White House had seated him there, directly in front of the president.

"But Other Than Being Shot to Death, Mr. Lincoln, How Did You Like the Play?"

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters once again shows double digit support for repeal (52 to 41 percent), and even higher support among independents (54 to 40 percent) than among likely voters as a whole. This comes on the heels of an AP/GfK poll that shows lower support for Obamacare than at…

In lieu of offering an actual budget to reduce deficit spending, President Obama has now given a speech saying that we should reduce deficits by raising taxes, cutting defense, and “strengthening” Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). But rather than signing on to Obama’s stated…

Late last month, Senator Charles Schumer of New York led a conference call in which Senate Democrats briefed reporters about the ongoing budget battle. At the outset, unaware that his comments were already audible to reporters on the line, Schumer provided some marching orders, advising his…

The House voted today 235 to 193 in favor of the 2012 budget resolution written by Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Talk about a successful budgetary proposal: House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would cut 46 percent and $4.4 trillion from proposed deficit spending under President Obama’s budget, reform Medicare and Medicaid to put these programs on solid financial footing, and repeal Obamacare.…

Just prior to the President's big budget speech, the White House released a fact sheet touting the fact that they were looking to strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) in the health care -- which is the primary mechanism in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act for…

In February, Defense secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sounded a cautionary note at a congressional hearing on the defense budget. "We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril," Gates warned members of Congress. "Retrenchment…

In proposing to cut another $400 billion from U.S. defense budgets over the next ten years as part of his deficit reduction counter-offer, Barack Obama’s words were few. Yet they were revealing.

West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, criticized House Budget chairman Paul Ryan’s recently released budget plan this afternoon in the Capitol. “According to our analysis,” Rockefeller said, “the size of the federal government will be cut 40 percent of where it is today at the…

On CBS's Face the Nation yesterday, the number three Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, and the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, debated the budget. But of particular interest is their discussion of Paul Ryan's budget plan, which was…

If there is one thing that political strategists, pollsters, and elected officials of both parties have agreed on for decades, it’s that entitlement reform is a sure political loser. Social Security is the “third rail”—touch it and you die. Suggest changes to Medicaid and you don’t care about the…

At his speech at AEI this afternoon, House Budget chairman Paul Ryan acknowledged that Senate Democrats and President Obama will likely choose not to adopt the House Republican 2012 budget, which offers sweeping, comprehensive reforms to Medicare and the federal tax code and pledges to cut over $5…