Hey Paul Ryan, Obamacare Doesn't Steal From Medicare

[Celebration]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-30/hey-paul-ryan-obamacare-doesnt-steal-from-medicare

To hear Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican convention Wednesday night, you’d think President Obama was robbing from the elderly. “The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it,” Ryan told the crowd.

He went on: “Even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health-care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.”

The Romney campaign has been making this argument a lot lately. The $716 billion line gets people pretty riled up. When Ryan delivered it Wednesday, the convention floor roared. The problem is, the claim is flat-out wrong. “The Affordable Care Act doesn’t steal anything from Medicare,” Henry Aaron, a health-care expert at the Brookings Institution, tells me. “It actually improves Medicare’s finances. No matter how you slice it, the Affordable Care Act strengthens medical hospital insurance.”