Obama's health care whopper

CBS:

Obama: "Senator McCain would pay for part of his plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare -$882 billion worth." Roanoke, VA., October, 17

Senator Barack Obama's newest claim (also made in a television ad) that Senator John McCain's health care plan will cut $882 billion in Medicare health care benefits for seniors, has to rank among the biggest whoppers of the whole campaign.

It's a poorly calculated estimate drawn from a suspect report, and the disputed figures in question don’t represent benefit cuts.

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So here's where the whopper starts. Even if the McCain health plan digs a massive hole in the deficit, McCain has always argued he would make up the difference with savings. This is a whole different concept from what Obama is claiming: "drastic cuts" in actual health care benefits delivered to seniors. Not to mention that Obama himself proposes every single item from the list of Medicare savings above, with the exception of Medicare Part D reform.

The $882 billion dollar whopper itself was calculated by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for American Progress Action Fund, October 2008] a left of center group inclined toward Obama. The group comes up with the $882 billion figure by taking the Tax Policy Center's estimate of a $ 1.3 trillion shortfall, and simply breaking it up into its Medicare ($882) and Medicaid ($419 billion) component parts.

Either way, even if you believe McCain's health plan is a train wreck and that none of his math adds up, he proposes to fix that with Medicare savings, not with $882 billion worth of "cuts."

Health care has never been a big issue with me. If neither of them did anything, that would be fine with me. I know this is supposed to be a big issue with some voters, but I am not one of them. I did this post to demonstrate, again, how Obama and the Democrats practice the politics of fraud.