So what exactly does the ACA do to Medicare spending? The ACA trims $428 billion in waste, fraud and abuse. No cuts to benefits, just increased efficiency and fraud protections, and Medicare Advantage payments to private insurance corporations are balanced out to the same levels as Medicare proper. The savings will add another 8-10 years of solvency to Medicare WITHOUT TOUCHING BENEFITS. ACCORDING TO THE CBO.

That's all. Put another way, let's say you spend $100 on food today, and you plan to spend $200 on food tomorrow because you're having guests for dinner. In the interim, you opt to spend only $150 on food tomorrow because you clipped some coupons. You're still spending 50 percent more money tomorrow, so it's not a "cut" in spending. Instead, you've decided to simply save money that you didn't need to otherwise spend. Make sense? If so, explain it to your Republican friends because they don't seem to get it.

The savings will add another 8-10 years of solvency to Medicare without touching benefits, while, according to the CBO, Medicare spending is expected to nearly double by 2020. Meanwhile, Medicare Advantage premiums are down and enrollment is up, according to HHS -- hardly indicative of a plan that's suffering due to the ACA.

The Republicans, including Mitt Romney, are vocally against these obviously positive changes to the system, and they've vowed to repeal Obamacare and all of the Medicare provisions within, including the streamlined savings, the preventative care coverage, and they'll re-open the donut hole, leaving retirees with potentially thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical expenses every year. But if a would-be President Romney repealed Obamacare, the system would be insolvent by 2016 and he'd be forced to reduce spending on the program with likely cuts to benefits anyway. At the same time, the Romney camp is positioning itself as the true savior of the program -- a claim that's absurd on its face and exactly the opposite of their true intentions.