Alternate title: Please note, Democrats: everybody claiming Obamacare will cut costs is now OFFICIALLY an idiot.
Mind you, they were idiots beforehand. It’s just that that particular fig leaf has been confirmed as being discarded, not to mention burned and the ashes scattered at sea:
The Obama administration announced Monday that planned cuts to Medicare Advantage would not go through as anticipated amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats [including the ones who voted for it in 2009 and 2010 – ML].
[snip]
The healthcare law included $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage over 10 years, in part to pay for ObamaCare.
As Hot Air (H/T) notes, this is cynical, opportunistic, and temporary: like everything else about Obamacare, the goal here is to get through the election cycle, not to fix the problem. This would annoy me more – actually, this would infuriate me – if I wasn’t already aware that the Democrats have shown real talent in letting their own health care rationing system repeatedly slam them in the primary sex characteristics, again and again and again. So under the circumstances I am able to take a more detached view of things. I might even place a mental bet or two on seeing which Democrat will be able to survive the longest in the quicksand pit, via the time-honored method of standing on the backs of his or her ‘comrades’…
Moe Lane
PS: Nice to see the Democrats adopt a bit of the Ryan budget, though. Would that they did more of that.
Alternate title: “Cost curve to Democrats: ‘Get bent'”.
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Mew
Any idea when the CBO study on the budget impact of this will occur? I’d love to see the revised study now that Obamacare is (kinda sorta) in effect.
Obama doesn’t have the authority to make budget changes like that, and Obama knows it. From a Constitutional standpoint, if Republicans don’t stand up and point out that the House of Representatives is the one with the Power of the Purse, not Obama, then we’ve got a real Constitutional crisis on our hands.