The [$716 billion] Phantom Menace

$716 billion "cut" from Medicare?

Currently, one of the most popular campaign-trail topics is a scary $716 billion cut from the Medicare budget that will go to help fund Obamacare.  As a New York resident nowhere near the retirement age, I can only imagine the creepy, black-and-white attack ads being run in Florida on this issue.  I can also only hope [in vain, I suspect] that those ads explain the claim better than the candidates are doing in their debates.

Fortunately, Politifact has come to our rescue with some answers on where this $716 billion figure comes from:

1. Obamacare includes cost-saving measures designed to lower the cost of Medicare.  Some of the savings comes from reducing payments to hospitals with high re-admission rates, while some savings comes from cuts in the Medicare Advantage program (supplemental, private insurance).
2. The CBO's analysis of Obamacare found that those measures should lower future costs to Medicare by about $716 billion over the next ten years.

Thus, Medicare's future budget requirements should be lower due to these cost-savings measures.  

Further confusion comes from the fact that these cost-saving measures were included in the Obamacare law. This was done so that the cost of Obamacare would seem lower when the CBO scored the law prior to passage.  In effect, this makes the Medicare cost-savings measures serve as a funding mechanism for the Obamacare programs, which in turn fuels claims that Obama is robbing Medicare to pay for Obamacare.