Call it President Obama’s Committee for the Re-Election of the
President — a political slush fund at the Health and Human Services
Department.
Only this isn’t some little fund from shadowy private
sources; this is taxpayer money, redirected to help Obama win another
term. A massive amount of it, too — $8.3 billion. Yes, that’s
billion, with a B.
Here is how it works.
The
most oppressive aspects of the ObamaCare law don’t kick in until after
the 2012 election, when the president will no longer be answerable to
voters. More “flexibility,” he recently explained to the Russians.
But certain voters would surely notice one highly painful part of the
law before then — namely, the way it guts the popular Medicare
Advantage program.
For years, 12 million seniors have relied on
these policies, a more market-oriented alternative to traditional
Medicare, without the aggravating gaps in coverage.
But as part
of its hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts, the Obama
one-size-fits-all plan slashes reimbursement rates for Medicare
Advantage starting next year — herding many seniors back into the
government-run program.
Under federal “open-enrollment”
guidelines, seniors must pick their Medicare coverage program for next
year by the end of this year — which means they should be finding out
before Election Day.
Making matters even more politically dangerous for Obama is that open
enrollment begins Oct. 15, less than three weeks before voters go to the
polls.
This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest “October Surprise” in US political history.
But
the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year,
getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to
temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key
markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of
Obama’s re-election bid.
The money is to come from funds that
Health and Human Services is allowed to use for “demonstration
projects.” But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it’s doing an
“experiment” to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.
That is, to “study” what happens when the government
doesn’t change anything but merely continues a program that’s been going on for years.
Obama
can temporarily prop up Medicare Advantage long enough to get
re-elected by exploiting an obscure bit of federal law. Under a 1967
statute, the HHS secretary can spend money without specific approval by
Congress on “experiments” directly aimed at “increasing the efficiency
and economy of health services.”
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