LABRADOR: Just check the facts

This is in response to Congressman Raul Labrador’s recent medi-scare letter that he is in no doubt blanketing all of Idaho with at taxpayers’ expense.

Mr. Labrador says Mr. Obama’s health-care law “raids” $500 billion from Medicare to be used on the new law and establishes a new panel of bureaucrats called the Independent Physicians Advisory Board (IPAB). He asserts that the IPAB will manage the health care of millions of seniors and that these bureaucrats will have control of our health and our benefits. He also states that the Obama health-care law gives government bureaucrats (the IPAB) the power to deny care to seniors.

According to the FACT CHECK sources I consulted, when you hear about $500 billion in cuts to Medicare they are not talking about cuts in one’s benefits. While it is true that $500 billion will be taken out of Medicare it will be over a 10-year period and will not be coming out of benefits. The money will actually be saved from three main sources. 1) tougher negotiations between Medicare and managed health-care plans, 2) reduction in payments to providers and 3) efforts to make the Medicare program more efficient and reduce waste, fraud and abuse.

As for the IPAB function it is a board of independent experts who can recommend ways for Medicare to save money with Congress approving their recommendations. The IPAB absolutely cannot by law recommend cuts to benefits or tell doctors how to treat patients.

It saddens me to receive a letter from one of Idaho’s congressmen wherein he resorts to lies and distortions of the truth, in hopes, I suppose, of furthering his particular agenda. This is a man we’ve sent off to Washington to represent the state I love who has done nothing toward finding integrative solutions to our critical national problems. While he offers rosy solutions to Medicare concerns in his letter how can I trust them when he distorts the truth about the current realities surrounding the Medicare issue?

EMMIT ROUTSON

Hayden