Obama: Tax Health Benefits, Cut Medicare and Medicaid

In 2008, Barack Obama approved this message:

"It Gets Worse" highlights that first we learned John McCain wanted to tax health care benefits to pay for part of his health care plan, and now the Wall Street Journal reports that McCain would pay for the rest of his plan by making "major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid," eight hundred and eighty two billion from Medicare alone. We simply can't afford John McCain.

Does Obama think we have very short memories?

WASHINGTON -- With lawmakers trying to crunch the numbers on a $1 trillion health care overhaul, President Barack Obama is leaving the door open to a new tax on employer-provided health care benefits.

Senior senators said Wednesday the benefits tax could be essential for the complex plan to be fully financed.

"I don't want to prejudge what they're doing," Obama said, referring to proposals in the Senate to tax workers who get expensive insurance policies. Obama, who campaigned against the tax when he ran for president, drew a quick rebuff from organized labor.

...At the White House, Obama sidestepped when asked if he was open to taxing health care benefits, a proposal he opposed vigorously in the campaign for the White House.

"I have identified the ways that I think we should finance this. I think Congress should adopt them. I'm going to wait and see what ideas ultimately they come up with," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Organized labor weighed in quickly.

Gerald W. McEntee, president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in an interview that union leaders believe Obama is "a person of his word." He was referring to Obama's opposition to taxing those benefits during last year's campaign.

"They're not going to tolerate that," McEntee said of workers' views of that proposal.

Once again, Obama breaks a promise or at least is open to breaking it.

He's not a man of his word. He was elected on empty promises and flat-out lies.

In addition to taxing health benefits, Obama railed against McCain for proposing cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. That was just more deception by Obama.

From the Heritage Foundation:

Even before the Congressional Budget Office put $1 to $1.6 trillion price tags on the latest Senate health care plans, President Barack Obama proposed to cut Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates for various health care providers by an additional $313 billion over 10 years. Those cuts came on top of the $309 billion the President proposed in his 2010 budget submission to Congress, for a total proposed reduction in Medicare and Medicaid of $622 billion over 10 years.

As admirable as the President’s desire to control health care costs is, the proposed reductions are emblematic of how the government runs a health insurance plan. Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow James C. Capretta explains:

After much talk of trying to pay for value instead of quantity, the government is resorting to arbitrary, across-the-board fee cuts–which generally hit all providers, regardless of quality or cost–to meet budgetary goals.

Furthermore, these fee cuts are not likely to change the underlying cost structure in health care. In the past, when Medicare has cut reimbursement rates, providers of medical services have raised rates for private insurers to make up the difference. There is every reason to believe President Obama’s proposed payment rate cuts would also lead to cost shifting.
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The government can and should play an effective oversight role in such a marketplace, much as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have done with the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. But the government cannot bend the cost curve from Washington without resorting to arbitrary caps and price controls that always lead to a reduction in the willing suppliers of services and waiting lists.

When running for president, Obama said, "We simply cannot afford John McCain."

The truth: "We simply cannot afford Barack Obama."