Ryan: Medicare should not be a piggy bank for ObamaCare

Paul Ryan stayed on the attack today in Florida, appearing at the retirement center The Villages, along with a special guest — his mother. “When I think about Medicare,” Ryan told a cheering crowd, “it’s not just a program. It’s not just numbers. It’s what my Mom relies on.” Continuing to attack Barack Obama over the transfer of $716 billion in future Medicare spending to fund the subsidies and Medicaid expansion in ObamaCare. “The President raids $716 billion from the Medicare program,” Ryan tells the crowd, “to pay for the ObamaCare program.” Ryan then went on to slam the Independent Payment Advisory Board as a rationing system, a message that Mitt Romney also delivered in a podcast earlier today. “In addition to that,” Ryan continued, “he puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of Medicare — who are required to [cut] care in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.”

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It’s a tough attack — and very much on point to Obama’s record on health care “reform.” Via National Review, here’s the clip:

“Four million seniors are projected to lose their Medicare Advantage plans that they enjoy and they chose, today, under this ObamaCare plan.” That is the Romney/Ryan Medicare “advantage” — the stripping of choice for extended coverage combined with the arbitrary rationing of the IPAB in basic Medicare. That message has to be hammered home as often as possible. Romney obviously agrees, as he hit the exact same issues Ryan did in The Villages:

President Obama’s healthcare law raided $716 billion from the Medicare trust fund. And he did that to finance his takeover of the healthcare system.

Now if that wasn’t bad enough, his healthcare law also put in place a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats and gave them the power to make additional cuts to Medicare without even having to get approval from Congress. This means they could deny elderly Americans the care they’ve worked for their entire lives – all because President Obama trusts bureaucrats more than he trusts seniors and their doctors.

And here’s one more troubling aspect of all this: According to independent, non-partisan scorekeepers, these cuts the President’s people will take to Medicare won’t prevent it from going bankrupt: Experts estimate that Medicare’s trust funds will be exhausted just twelve short years from now.

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National Review has more of the video from Ryan’s speech. Be sure to check it all out.

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