



CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday forgot to include the disclaimer that there would be no fact checking. Just witness this exchange between Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint and former DNC Chair Howard Dean:

Let us focus on this particular segment of what Jim DeMint said:

It’s tens of trillions of dollars in debt because it’s been mismanaged, it’s going to leave huge debts onto our children, and more and more doctors won’t even see a Medicare-insured patient. So, it is not going to work for the future.

It appears that the former South Carolina Senator has been drinking his own kool aid here, citing his group’s own study, a study which uses at best questionable numbers, at worst absolute lies, to work. Checking the Heritage Foundations sources, one finds studies by other right-wing echo-chamber groups, which in turn cite Heritage Foundation studies. In other words, his claim boils down to “because I said so.” All of the Heritage Foundation’s studies are fed from the same source: the Heritage Foundation. However, despite this rather blatant use of his own figures to make his own argument, nobody on CNN stepped up to correct him.

The reality is, Medicare is far more efficient than private insurance. Even right-ring financial magazine Forbes admitted that the number of doctors accepting Medicare is growing, not shrinking as claimed by DeMint. Medicare is not tens of trillions in debt, that claim comes from his study, which used future claims against a dead economy (no growth) over decades. If the economy completely collapses, whether Medicare will be solvent in 40 years is the least of our concerns. Of course, CNN did nothing to correct any of this, either.

However, let us take Jim DeMint at face value here. He claims that these programs have been, in his words, “mismanaged” by the federal government. Who has been effectively running that government, by controlling Congress, for the past 20 years with only a single 4-year gap? Yes, the Republicans! So, taking him at face value, the Republicans are to blame for the federal governments inefficiencies.

So, let us all be in agreement with Jim DeMint on this point, the Republicans have mismanaged Medicare.