I'll have to do some additional research for that. Don't know if I'll have the time or the patients to do all that and make a post here, given that I generally don't follow political discussions here. But I will go ahead and paste and type some things about the benefits of the cuts:
"How a Cut Helps the Medicare Budget
To some voters, it may sound counter-intuitive at first to think that cutting money from Medicare would improve, not weaken, its finances. But, again, this is a reduction in the future growth of Medicare spending over 10 years. And spending less is a good thing for Medicare’s finances — as it is for most people’s.
For instance, let’s say someone has a dedicated coffee budget but decides to drop a daily latte habit and instead buy regular coffee. That person’s coffee budget took a big cut in spending, enabling the budget to last longer. Instead of one month of lattes, this java fan can have two months of coffee.
The biggest savings from the Affordable Care Act come from reductions in the future growth of payments to hospitals — about $415 billion over 10 years. That’s Medicare Part A. Income for Part A comes mainly from payroll taxes. If Medicare doesn’t need to spend that income immediately, it’s credited to Part A’s trust fund, and Medicare gets a Treasury bond that it can cash in later. Anytime Medicare needs to cash in that bond, Treasury must pay it. Even if Treasury spent the original money on something else, it must pay the bond.
So, campaign claims that imply that Obama has taken money out of Medicare, and Medicare won’t ever get it back, are simply not true.
At an Aug. 21 campaign stop in West Chester, Pa., Ryan said Obama and the Democrats “turned Medicare into a piggy bank to fund Obamacare. They took $716 billion from Medicare to pay for their Obamacare program.” On the other hand, he added, Republicans are “being candid with our current seniors” and “saying stop the raid on Medicare.”
Unfortunately for Medicare there isn’t $700 billion in any kind of “piggy bank” to “raid.” The trust fund doesn’t have anywhere near that much money — the Part A trust fund only contained $244.2 billion at the end of 2011. And the president can’t actually take money out of the trust fund. Medicare holds those Treasury bonds, and, as we said, it can cash them in anytime it needs the money.
The problem for Medicare is that the trust fund isn’t going up — it’s declining year after year. Some voters may get the mistaken impression that money they paid in to Medicare will pay their benefits once they retire. But as a practical matter the program functions as a pay-as-you-go system. And current income isn’t enough to pay all current benefits.
Without the spending cuts in the Affordable Care Act, the Part A trust fund was expected to be exhausted in 2016. With the ACA cuts, that date was pushed back to 2024.
That makes the RNC’s bankruptcy clock a bit curious. If the federal health care law hadn’t included those cuts to spending, there would be even less time left on that countdown."
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/08/medicares-piggy-bank/
So yeah, like I said, anyone who said Obama cut medicare or wants to "kill" Medicare is lying.
The only true solution to our medicare issues is a universe, non-profit system. Whether it's privately or government run I don't really care, but it's a fact that insurance agencies with larger pools of people are able to sell their insurance for a much lower rate, because they have a much larger pool of people paying in. That's why the US spends the most on health insurance yet has some of the worst care. That's why other countries have used us as a model of what NOT to do. That's why Republicans like to either lie or greatly exagerate the issues that Canada and other countries have with their health insurance, rather then argue on our own systems merits (of which there are very few, particularly for low income people).
If we had one, universal healthcare system, from a non-profit provider that only needs to cover administrative costs and not try to make profits to please investors, our healthcare system WOULD be cheaper. It's just common sense in that regard. A larger pool + no need for profit = cheaper prices. Hopefully, one day America will see that. That's the way to save medicare. Not private insurance, government insurance reserved for the poor or the old. One, big universal pool.
I don't think the Republican's solutions (well, the current Republican solutions. The ACA is based on what WAS the Republican solution just a decade ago) are the answer. Regardless of whether you consider the Ryan plan "a voucher program" it would pass on more and more of the cost of healthcare onto seniors. Or the other, more recent Ryan plan, that makes medicare optional and allows people to also seek out private insurance instead of it, which would allow private healthcare companies to take on healthier patients, leaving medicare with a much less healthy pool of people, forcing it to pay out more and more while taking in less, weakening the program. I do not think passing the cost onto to the elderly and allowing private insurance to reap more profit are the answers.
