May 29, 2011
Alright, they only did the first, telling readers:
“Several [Republican House freshmen] said they had been frustrated with town-hall meetings. That’s been especially true after the House passed a Republican budget that would alter Medicare — shifting seniors to private insurance plans, subsidized by the government, beginning in 2022.”
This paragraph is part of an article that puts the Medicare debate in a he said/she said context: Democrats say that the Republicans will end Medicare, Republicans say they just want to change it.
That would be appropriate language for a gossip column but not for a newspaper. The reality is that the Republican plan ends what everyone thinks of as Medicare, a program through which the government provides insurance for seniors.
Instead, it will hand people a check that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects will be grossly inadequate to buy care. The CBO projections show that the Republican plan would increase the cost to seniors of buying Medicare equivalent policies by $39 trillion. Of this additional cost only $5 trillion is savings to the government. The remaining $34 trillion is higher costs to seniors in the form of additional payments to insurers and providers.
The article also erred by not correcting a Republican assertion that their plan would not hurt people already receiving Medicare. Their proposal repeals the Obama health care plan which would have closed the donut hole in the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
This sort of article undoubtedly leaves many readers looking forward to the day when the Post is altered.
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