A New York Times post put up September 17 has more lies about the Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform plan. It's got ot the point where you can't keep up with the left-wing deception on this subject. The Times blogger misleads his or her readers right from the start with this sentence:
"When Claire Celsi’s father-in-law died in July, the one thing her mother-in-law did not have to worry about was the $300,000 hospital bill. Medicare covered most of it."
Well how much was "most of it?" It most likely was not for "a hospital bill" unless the poor gentleman was in intensive care for 60 days at $5000 a day. So I expressed my condolences and then asked Claire Celsi to check with her mother in law. As I suspected, the father in law depended on private insurance for his healthcare expenses, not on Medicare. It was a good bet that was the case because over 80% of us seniors already depend on the much maligned by the Times private insurance market.
Then the blogger says:
""But at 46, Ms. Celsi is well into her working life. She has contributed to Medicare and has been counting on it. “I’m 46; my husband is 52. At this stage of our lives, it’s already too late to start building up an emergency medical fund that’s big enough to pay for all the extra expenses we’d incur,” Ms. Celsi said. “I looked at that hospital bill and thought, what if that was me and I didn’t have Medicare? What would I do?”"
After the discussion about her father in law's private Medicare supplement, I suggested Ms. Celesi better start saving quickly for all the "extra expenses" Medicare as it stands now does not pay. It does not pay for drugs. It does not pay for long term care. It does not pay for the first $1200 of an admitted hospital stay. It does not include catastrophic coverage. It does not pay for annual physical exams. It does not pay for 20% of doctor visits or observed hospital stays. The list of things Medicare does not cover as it stands now is very long.
The New York Times blogger adds a few more deceptions, quotes the usual lefty suspects on how good "Medicare as we knot it" is, and concludes:
"The strategy (meaning the premium support proposal underlying most Medicare reform plans) has been supported by conservatives in Congress since the early 1980s...
And it's also been supported by Democrats and progressives and almost anyone who has looked at the issue other than through the New York Times blogger's Obamanista lens. It's really not that big a leap after all since it is how Obamacare is supposed to work.
-- Dennis Byron
