The Affordable Care Act Added 8 more Years to Medicare, Contradicting Ryan's Claim it Did Nothing. What else is Ryan Lying About?

One more reason we know Republicans don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

Their much touted and completely unpaid for Medicare Advantage program, a gift to providers, turned out to be a major reason Medicare was going bankrupt so soon.

HuffingtonPost: The Medicare trust fund will last eight years longer than it would have without the passage of last year's health care law, the program’s trustees announced Friday in a report. The nonpartisan lead actuary for Medicare, Rick Foster, estimated that without the health care overhaul, the program’s trust fund would have run dry by 2016. With the law in effect, Foster projected, the trust fund will last through 2024. 

The reform law extended Medicare's solvency in large part by targeting a program called Medicare Advantage, which allowed private insurers to provide Medicare-funded policies that ended up costing significantly more than the government insurance program itself.

You might remember:

The cuts to Medicare Advantage were used during the 2010 election to hammer Democrats for taking money from Medicare to pay for other elements of health care reform.

Perhaps Rep. Paul Ryan should update his Medicare talking points. One more thing; despite the easier solution of moving to a single payer system, saving lots of money, Republicans like to keep us busy endlessly going nowhere by keeping the debate alive:

U.S. health care costs per capita also greatly exceed those for other industrialized countries, despite poorer health outcomes.