Claims of McCain Medicare 'Cuts' Debunked

Is Sen. John McCain going to “cut” Medicare to pay for his health care plan? He didn’t say so, but Obama’s campaign and many in the media have claimed it.

Two major news outlets have explained the facts – that McCain’s campaign said he wanted to eliminate waste and fraud in the gigantic government benefits program, finding cost savings that way.

The Washington Post gave the Obama campaign “three Pinocchios” for “significant factual errors.”

In its Oct. 22 article, “Obama’s Iffy Numbers on McCain Health Plan,” the Post referred to an Obama ad that tells senior citizens McCain threatens their “golden years,” but the Post said that wasn’t the case.

“In other words, contrary to the claim in the Obama ad, the McCain campaign was specifically promising not to ‘cut benefits’ but to provide the promised benefits at a lower cost.”

The Post illuminated the source of the numbers: “How did the Obama campaign come up with the claim of an $800 billion cut in Medicare (described in another Obama ad as an $882 billion cut)? Answer: some back-of-the-envelope calculations by a liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress.”

And the Post pointed out that Obama himself has claimed he will deliver similar savings.

“It may be that McCain is wildly optimistic in believing that he can find sufficient savings in Medicare and Medicaid to pay for his promised refundable health-care tax credit. But such a criticism also applies to Obama, who is relying on similar cost cuts to fund his health-care plan. The senator from Illinois says that a shift to electronic health records will generate savings of around $120 billion a year, a claim termed ‘wishful thinking’ by many independent experts.”

Before the Post handed out the Pinocchios, CBS’s Wyatt Andrews gave another well-reasoned report on the topic. Andrews previously fact-checked Obama’s claim that McCain wants to tax people’s health benefits, explaining that most people would receive a tax cut.

This time he took on Obama’s Medicare scare.

“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,” Andrews reported Oct. 17.

“So here's where the whopper starts,” Andrews said. “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.”

Kudos to these media outlets for fact-checking these misleading campaign claims.