The article states:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine a bigger electoral disaster for a president than seniors in crucial states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio discovering that he\u2019s taken away their beloved Medicare Advantage just weeks before an election.<\/strong><\/p>\n This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest \u201cOctober Surprise\u201d in US political history.<\/strong><\/p>\n But the administration\u2019s 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\u2019t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama\u2019s re-election bid.<\/strong><\/p>\n The money is to come from funds that Health and Human Services is allowed to use for \u201cdemonstration projects.\u201d But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it\u2019s doing an \u201cexperiment\u201d to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.<\/strong><\/p>\n That is, to \u201cstudy\u201d what happens when the government doesn\u2019t<\/em> change anything but merely continues a program that\u2019s been going on for years.<\/strong><\/p>\n 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 \u201cexperiments\u201d directly aimed at \u201cincreasing the efficiency and economy of health services.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I think this should be included on the list of reasons why the federal budget needs to be cut drastically. The taxpayers’ money is being spent irresponsibly, and we need to make sure Washington has less money to spend.<\/p>\n <\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n No, this isn’t about the Secret Service scandal or the GSA scandal–it’s about using taxpayer money intended for other things to prevent voters from feeling the impact of Obamacare and voting against President Obama because of it. Yesterday’s New York … Continue reading ![\"Enhanced](\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=9bf99704-a5eb-4b56-9628-2f78494a5844\")
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