At least this isn't one of the usual scare-the-hell-out-of-Gramma New York Times articles that the Grey Lady is running as a series between now and Election Day. Instead Krugman's article is accidentally informative about why the two major portions of the over $700 billion (and rising) being cut by PPACA out of Medicare are going to fund free insurance for non-seniors.
First he claims
"private insurers... have never been able to compete on a level playing field with conventional Medicare."
What could he possibly mean. By private insurers, he is apparently referring to Medicare Part C. By conventional Medicare I assume he means Medicare Parts A and B; conventional Medicare is a new term on me. But some of his left-wing brethren from Harvard have just "proved" the opposite. On the average, almost a dozen Medicare Part C plans would have provided exactly the same coverage as Parts A and B (if not better) in 2009 for much less cost to both beneficiaries and the government.
In addition he says something like the money only goes to "private insurers." The money actually goes to me, the Part C beneficiary, Krugman, not to the insurer. I have already seen the direct cuts that Krugman claims will never happen.
Then when it comes to the biggest PPACA cuts to Medicare, Krugman lets us know that back story too:
"the key thing to know is that the hospital industry itself negotiated those cuts (with Democratic Senators and the White House).... hospital leaders were convinced that the revenue from the added covered (non-senior) lives would more than make up for their losses (of revenue) on the Medicare side..."
So Krugman says, despite what Obama and others have said to the contrary, that we seniors are losing benefits two ways because of PPACA. It must be true because The New York Times says so. In fact it says the hospital industry, the Senate Finance Committee and Obama sold us seniors down the river for a few bucks.
-- Dennis Byron
