Side Effects: Floridians Will Lose Medicare Advantage

Vivek Rajasekhar / April 28, 2010

On the stump, Candidate Obama identified government entitlement spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as the largest contributor to the federal deficit. If Congress doesn’t rein in the costs of these programs, he said,, these three programs will “consume all of the federal budget.”

Candidate Obama was right.  (Still is:  just check out The Heritage Foundation’s new 2010 Budget Chart Book.)  Unfortunately, the President’s health care law will only exacerbate the entitlement crisis.

While Obamacare seeks some cost-savings (witness its ham-fisted treatment of popular Medicare Advantage plans), it does nothing to reform the overall structure of the Medicare entitlement. While the new law carves out $529 billion in Medicare “savings,” it calls for using those funds—and trillions more—to bankroll even more expansive health care entitlements. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis : “Instead of fixing the health care programs for seniors and those who cannot afford insurance, this law cuts Medicare and adds more people to the failing Medicaid system.” (more…)