| During the campaign, Gibson benefitted from some six-figures worth of Medicare scare ads paid for by the 60 Plus Association, a Republican astroturf outfit that supports privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
Back in September, Maury Thompson of the Glens Falls Post-Star asked Gibson a question about 60 Plus that resonates today:
Thompson: What about Medicare vouchers?
Gibson: No - not at all. I don't support that.
Pants on fire.
Gibson strongly supported the Ryan budget, with its Medicare voucher plan, as soon as it was announced, appearing several times on local conservative talk radio to sing Ryan's praises.
And, when called out on that, Gibson lied about it some more on his Facebook page last week:
The plan proposed by House Republicans is based on a proposal developed by the Obama Deficit Commission. It is NOT a voucher program.
Two lies in two sentences, par for the course with Gibson -- of course, it is a voucher program, and it's based on a proposal developed NOT by the Obama Deficit Commission, but by one of its wingnut members, Paul Ryan.
Later in that comment thread, Gibson says that the Ryan Medicare proposal is "premium support," not vouchers.
Yet another lie, according to Henry Aaron, a think tanker who developed a premium support model for Medicare.
Ezra Klein got Aaron on the record, under the headline "Creator of premium support says Ryan has 'vouchers, not premium support'".
Aaron's take on the Ryan plan that Gibson mendaciously supports and voted for:
Ryan is associated with at least three different plans. There was Rivlin-Ryan, plain old Ryan, and now there's the Path to Prosperity. They're all different. In some ways, the Path to Prosperity plan improves on previous version, because the role of exchanges and risk adjustment is nearer to what we had in mind. But it is hands down the worst because it links premiums to consumer prices, which is the slowest growing index.
snip
We're looking at linking to an index that grows less rapidly than health-care costs by three to four percentage points a year. Piled up over 10 years, and that's a huge erosion of coverage. It's vouchers, not premium support.
snip
There's one provision of the Ryan bill that stands out as being hands-down the worst, and that is giving the seniors who are poor enough to also be on Medicaid a medical savings account. Does he know who these people are? They're very sick, they're very poor and many of them have cognitive as well as physical problems. They would be asked to cope with the inevitable headaches of dealing with private insurance and managing a personal checking account to pay periodic bills. This is not a sensible proposal.
The other five NY Republican freshmen -- Michael Grimm, NY-13; Nan Hayworth, NY-19; Richard Hanna, NY-24; Ann Marie Buerkle, NY-25; and Tom Reed, NY-29 -- also voted to end Medicare as we know it and substitute an impoverishing voucher program.
They presumably have lied about it too, but it would be hard for any of them to match Gibson's record of mendacity on this issue.
AFAIK, Gibson is in a class of his own, at least among that motley crew, as a shameless serial liar about Medicare. |
