An op-ed urging Massachusetts voters to elect Professor Elizabeth Warren Senator in the Boston Globe on October 15 (possibly gated) is total Mediscare. It's supposedly written by the Rationing Man, former un-confirmed Medicare Director Donald Berwick, but it strangely looks to be word for word the same as many Warren speeches and comments on Medicare. Berwick himself likely does not depend on Medicare. He didn't even sign up prior to turning 65, as the Medicare bureaucracy recommends, when he was the unconfirmed Medicare director.
Rationing Man says:
"it is a false claim.. that (seniors) are about to lose the security they have"
I've already lost my security. Tufts dropped its Medicare health plan in Worcester County on October 2. I will have to go to a much more expensive Medigap plan to keep my doctor or possibly change my doctor to keep the capitated/coordinated care I have had for 35 years.
He says:
"(Scott Brown and fellow Republicans) propose to turn Medicare into a voucher program, which shifts major costs onto seniors.”
I have seen no proposal that involves vouchers and as former Medicare director he knows that the cost sharing and shifting in Medicare happened 40 years ago. Seniors now pay well more than 50% of their healthcare costs themselves on average. Medicare pays well less than 50% on average.
He says
"Republicans... claim that Obamacare cuts $700 billion from Medicare. As the former administrator of the Medicare program, I know that that claim is wrong.”
Actually the person that said this is Richard Foster, the Medicare Actuary, a guy who used to work for Rationing Man.
Berwick says
“(closing the donut hole is) a policy that has already saved Massachusetts seniors an average of about $610.”
What a deceitful person. This is the biggest Berwick lie of all. Obamacare’s effect on the Part D donut hole only saves money for the few high-income people in Massachusetts who reach the hole and have so much income (there is no asset test) that they cannot qualify for the Federal Extra Help program or the state Prescription Advantage program.
Obamacare does not save Massachusetts seniors an average of about $610. That is simply a lie. Last count, so far in 2012, it saved a few thousand of us out of 1,100,000 a few dollars (and I'm not saying turn down found money).
-- Dennis Byron
