Pat Boone: Health care Expert

Watch out Sen. Bill Nelson. Republicans are pulling out the big guns to take your seat. That is right. I am talking about Pat Boone.

Boone made the ad for the 60 Plus Association. The organization was foolish enough to back SOPA. 60 Plus also backed President Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security. 60 Plus may bill itself as an advocacy group for senior citizens. Privatizing Social Security helps Wall Street; not American seniors. The idea that Wall Street can manage the retirement portfolios of seniors after the bailout is a laugh.

Boone attacks Nelson by stating that the Affordable Care Act would make patients lose their doctors. 60 Plus made the same attack against Democratic congressional candidates in 2010. FactCheck.org found the 60 Plus claim to be false.

Although the ads cite an April report from the office of the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as support for this claim, that report actually discusses cuts the law makes in payments to other providers, such as hospitals and nursing homes – not doctors. The required cuts could make it difficult for some such providers to stay in business, the report says, "possibly jeopardizing access to care" from those institutions for seniors.

But that report and another CMS document issued in August also note that Congress has a habit of negating such cuts. In fact, the August report says with respect to the legislated payment cuts to hospitals and other such non-physician providers, "Congress is very likely to legislatively override or otherwise modify the reductions in the future to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries continue to have access to health care services."

60 Plus contradicts itself, in the add, with lamenting that Medicare will be cut by $500 billion. Boone then makes this statement.

BOONE: Medicare will be bankrupt in nine years, but Washington politicians like Bill Nelson are ignoring the problem.

60 Plus can't seem to decide whether Medicare fundings needs to be cut or maintained. The people whom made this ad weren't interested in getting the wonky policy right. 60 Plus just wanted to use buzz words to scare seniors. Democrats have four effective words to do that. Those words are "the Paul Ryan plan."