Slight of Hand

 

Nothing is more repugnant to a civilized culture than to have its most vulnerable exploited.  Even the more appalling are revelations that such behavior could be practiced by the leaders we entrust with guardianship of the domestic tranquility.  Sadly, this reviled behavior has raised its festering head as the election tips the horizon.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) has called out the Obama administration for a Medicare bonus payout that the White House was trying to quietly work into the Medicare system.  The payout consists of an $8 billion bonus program that is to be divvied out to various healthcare groups throughout the United States.  The GAO calls these groups “mediocre” and admonishes the President that the plan is “badly designed” and is “unlikely to have meaningful results”; in fact, the plan would only delay the impending Medicare disaster until….after the election.

“What disaster?” the reader might ask?  The Medicare trustees announced that Medicare would crash, run out of money, between 2016 and 2020. With so small an amount of money, comparative to the Medicare crises, being pushed forward, obviously that’s not the disaster that the President is worried about.  What, then, is the looming Medicare disaster so close to the election that has the White House wringing their hands?  In order to fund ObamaCare, the Democrats cut $500 billion from Medicare, $150 billion of which is from Medicare Advantage.  These cuts to Medicare will hit seniors a month before the election, in enough time for the realization to set in before millions of Medicare recipients cast their ballot.  Instead of joining Paul Ryan, Republicans and some Democrats who are desperately and repeatedly trying to save Medicare, the President prefers to stealthily move money from a Medicare slush fund into the Medicare Advantage program even though it is “unlikely to have meaningful results”.  Simply put, $8 billion cannot cover, by any stretch of the imagination, $500 billion.

The President calls this an “experimental” program.  The flippant tossing of $8 billion at an “experiment” is, for the reader, representative of an unfortunate pattern with this leadership especially in the light of the administration’s litany of fiscally “prudent” expenditures such Solyndra, GSA, TARP, General Motors, etc., etc.  The President also claims it is to reduce the deficit.  Moving monies from one fund to another does not change the deficit…period.   Has this man ever balanced or budgeted anything?  This arrogant disdain for the citizen’s perception and intellect is, in itself, repugnant.  The move to inject a temporary “bonus” into the system is nothing more than a seedy political move by the President to anesthetize the electorate against the effects of his failed policies until after the election.  Once the election is done, it is simply too late.  The cuts will still devastate Medicare and Medicare Advantage.  The President is just working feverishly to keep some of our most vulnerable Americans oblivious to their calamity until he can be elected.  And then…well…he’s elected.  In essence, what President Obama and the Democrat Party are saying to our seniors and retirees is this, once we’ve gotten what we need from you, we’ll take from you what you so desperately need and thought you had.  Are we the people going to stand for it?  The true test of a society is how it cares for its most vulnerable.

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