AARP Supports Democrat Move

In a vote of 58-42 the United States Senate today rejected an amendment by Senator John McCain (R. Ariz.) to protect Medicare from nearly $500 billion in cuts under Harry Reid’s health care reform legislation.

According to CNN, “The health-care bill currently contains hundreds of billions of dollars in reductions to Medicare payments to privately run Medicare plans and some health- care providers, as well as through an independent commission that would be empowered to reduce Medicare spending. McCain's amendment would have sent the bill back to committee with instructions to remove the cuts.”

John McCain said, “These are not attainable cuts without eventually rationing health care in America and rationing health care for our senior citizens who have earned these benefits.”

McCain was noticeably angry that AARP opposed his amendment. He spoke directly to seniors from the Senate floor, "Take your AARP card, cut it in half and send it back. They've betrayed you."

Obstetrician-turned-Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma was even more blunt regarding the seniors , "I have a message for you: You're going to die sooner."

Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said, “What Senator McCain is basically saying with his amendment is, don’t cut Grandma’s Medicare to pay for someone else’s insurance.”

“If you find savings by cutting waste, fraud and abuse in Grandma’s Medicare, spend those savings on Grandma. Medicare’s trustees have said to us that there are $38 trillion in unfunded liabilities for the Medicare program, and that the program will start going bankrupt between 2015 and 2017. According to the Medicare trustees, ‘We need timely and effective action to address Medicare’s challenges.’ I don’t think the Medicare trustees were thinking that the timely and effective action we could take to keep Medicare from going broke was to take $465 billion out of it and spend it on some new program,” Alexander concluded.

The next challenge in the voting process will come on a proposal to restrict abortion funding in the health care reform legislation. The proposal was written by Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Earlier in the day, the Senate voted 61-39 on a provision by Democrat Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and pseudo-Republican Olympia Snowe of Main which would safeguard coverage of mammograms and preventative screenings for various types of cancer.

Controversy arose recently when a U.S. government advisory panel recommended that routine mammograms are no longer necessary for women in their 40s. The recommendation was seen by many as the first proof of government rationing of health care.

Mikulski’s amendment will give the health and human services secretary authority to require health plans to cover additional preventive services for women. Republicans argued that Mikulski's amendment gave too much discretion to the HHS secretary and did not compel the secretary to require the coverage.

A competing amendment by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R. Alaska) would have prevented the government from using the recommendations of outside advisers to deny coverage of preventive services, including mammograms. That amendment was defeated by a vote of 41-59.

The Mulaski amendment nearly failed when two Democrats; Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Nebraska’s Nelson failed to support it with their votes. The Democrats were only able to get the needed 60 votes due to a defection of sorts by Republican’s Snowe, David Vitter of Louisiana, and Susan Collins of Maine.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the amendment alone will cost taxpayers $940 million over a decade.