The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services naturally knows its audience. As Adam noted earlier, the agency signed up Andy Griffith to arise in television ads now airing and touting changes to Medicare brought about by the new health reform law.
This has reasoned a morsel of a stir,
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In their letter, the senators write:
We believe this ad is a explicit violation of the spirit of allied laws that deter the use of taxpayer dollars for campaign purposes. The justification for this ad, as expressed by Stephanie Cutter, an Assistant to the President, demonstrates the clear political motivation for the ad.
Ms. Cutter wrote on the White House blog: “As we went to pass the Affordable Care Act, seniors were the target of a major misinformation campaign that was devised to scare and confuse older Americans about the real impact of reform….We are committed to correcting the record and ensuring seniors have the information they absence and obtain the high-quality care they have earned and deserve.”
(snip)
The job of the Executive Branch, quite simply, is to execute and implement the law, not re-litigate a political discussion. Using the power of the state and the Treasury to advance the program of one political gathering is an abuse that ought not be tolerated, regardless of which party is in power.
Thafter all bit was a nod to the fact that in 2004, the Bush Administration came beneath fire from Democrats for an ad campaign touting the benefits of the polemical Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. (The General Accounting Office finally base that the MMA ad did not violate the law prohibiting taxpayer dollars from being used as “propaganda.”)
Over the years, in truth, CMS has funded lots of TV ads promoting Medicare and they usually scamper them before the program’s fall open enrollment duration,
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And here’s one that ran last fall:
What makes these ads different than the Andy Griffith one – merely alike apt the ad almost the 2003 decree – namely that the present ad takes a stand, as disapproved to equitable telling seniors to seek extra message. Here’s the script as the current ad:
“1965. A lot of nice things came out that year, favor Medicare. This year, favor always, we’ll have our assured benefits and, with the new health care law, more good asset are coming. Free examinations. Lower recipe costs and better ways to protect us and Medicare from fraud. See what else is new. I meditation you’re gonna like it.”
Let’s take the ad on the merits and what the White House has said about it.
Does anyone actually doubt that seniors were subjected to “a major misinformation campaign” during the health reform debate? Death panels, anybody? To review,
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Medicare Advantage, the program that allows private insurers to provide Medicare benefits,
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This send us to the merits of the demands in the ad. Andy Griffith touts “free checkups” and “lower prescription costs.” This is true. The law requires Medicare to pay 100% of prevention care, which includes checkups. The law will also gradually near the Medicare prescription pill gap known as the doughnut aperture.
Now whether “you’re gonna like” the new health reform law is certainly up for debate. It’s not factual information and may not belong in a government-funded PSA. But is the ad, as John Hart, communications director for Sen. Tom Coburn, a signer of the letter to Sebelius, says, “A Soviet manner tactic where the ruling regime uses the power of the state to disunite the against.”?
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