As was expected, AARP has doubled down on their stance of supporting the Obama policy to rob the Medicare program of $716 billion to finance Obamacare.  The reason for their support of this indefensible plundering of the nation's medical safety net for seniors, is strictly the profit motive.  AARP has become a profitable entity in the insurance industry providing commercial insurance products to those they purport to advocate for.   As if robbing the medicare program to finance a new highly unpopular, untested federal program...Obamacare...the Obamacare program through its stautory provisions eliminates Medicare Advantage that many seniors, of limited means depend on.  The Obamacare plan has exhibited a total failure to contain costs to the extent that the cost of the program has increased from $930 billion at its inception to a current estimate of $2.6 trillion over 10 years according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.  This has resulted in an increase in the amount of funding taken directly from the Medicare program from the original estimate of $500 billion to the current estimate of $716 billion and growing.  The Obama administration says the funds will come from savings in waste fraud and abuse, and cuts in doctors fees and costs of services.  This simply is not a credible explanation, as cuts in doctors fees and costs of services will result in a reduced level of doctor availability, service and care.  The Medicare program has been in place since the 1950's and while there is waste, fraud and abuse, there has never been enforcement savings that  even approach this magnitude...it is a pipe dream. Seniors should be outraged that an advocacy group such as AARP would sell out  for the sake of profits to their insurance program.   Misdirecting seniors for the sake of insurance profitability is simply UNACCEPTABLE.
Posted by jvcleve2

But of course it's all lies. The notion of $500 billion in "cuts" ostensibly "stolen" from Medicare has been thoroughly debunked and discredited by everyone from Politifact to The Washington Post , both of which note that there aren't any cuts to benefits -- none. So it's no surprise to learn that the bigger lie about $700 billion (or $717 billion or $716 billion) in cuts has also been widely debunked by fact-checkers everywhere including Bloomberg . And yet they keep repeating it over and over and over, and, as we get closer to NOV. Regarding the mysterious $700 billion number, let's rewind the Way Back Machine to June. Not a single Republican was saying $700 billion. It turns out, the commonly repeated number was $500 billion. That's a huge difference. After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Obamacare, with the help of a Republican chief justice who was appointed by a Republican president and decided in favor of a Republican policy proposal (the mandate), Republican Rep. Jon Runyan said , "My constituents simply cannot afford the $500 billion in new tax increases and $500 billion in Medicare cuts required to pay for this flawed legislation." Mitt Romney said something similar in June, "Obamacare cuts Medicare -- cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion dollars." As far back as a year ago, the quoted number remained $500 billion. Here's Michele Bachmann during a debate in June, 2011 : "Senior citizens get this more than any other segment of our population, because they know in Obamacare the president of the United States took away $500 billion -- a half-trillion dollars -- out of Medicare, shifted it to Obamacare to pay for younger people." Mitt Romney in the same debate, "Obamacare takes $500 billion out of Medicare and funds Obamacare." So somehow in the last few days, the amount that was "stolen" from Medicare has magically increased by $200 billion! That's amazing.
Posted by JANMB

In Response to Re: AARP Doubles Down on Obamacare : Short and sweet . . . . both figures, representing a decrease in (proposed) spending in the Medicare program, are correct.  The CBO analysis at different periods verifies both of the figures based on the hypothesis of how it will all work. The difference in the figures comes purely from the fact that different time periods were covered in each CBO analysis.
Posted by GailL1