John McCain Whines About Old People For Several Minutes

DON'T SELL OUT THE SENIORS! Oh man there aren't many things better than John McCain whining and snarling for several minutes about how he must save the Olds from this black's health care death program. "Hospice... OF ALL THE THINGS, HOSPICE! Uhh.. some... eight billion dollars!... All of these are cuts in the obligations that we have... assumed... and are a rightful... rightful..." He's introduced an amendment, is the thing!

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) went on quite a tear on the Senate floor. McCain is the author of the first proposed Republican amendment to the Senate health care bill, which, if passed, would send the legislation back to the Finance Committee and have it stripped of hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare savings. In all likelihood, that would kill the bill. But assuming it didn't, most of those savings come from ending over-payments to private insurers under Medicare advantage--something McCain himself proposed many times in the past, in addition to other, drastic cuts to Medicare.

Indeed, McCain's 2008 campaign, which never cared much for gay-fairy "specifics," somehow declared that it would pay for its own health care plan by cutting $1.3 trillion in Medicare and Medicaid over the next decade by "fixing them," vaguely. One of the central ideas was -- and this isclassicMcCain 2008, we're getting nostalgic! -- to "eliminate Medicare fraud." Which is a huge problem to be sure, but also very hard to simply "eliminate." How would you eliminate this John McCain? Eh we'll just eliminate it goddamnit, the fraud, there's a trillion smackeroos overnight, HEHNGNN?

(Remember also when he said he would close the entire multi-trillion dollar federal deficit by eliminating earmarks, which total like $15 to $20 billion a year and come from streams of existing appropriated funds anyway? God he would lie so much.)

Anyway.

 Reid Spokesman: McCain Amendment A 'Big Fat Wet Kiss' To The Insurance Industry [TPM]