On Medicare’s 59th birthday, FL-Dems again hit Rick Scott on the issue

The Florida Democratic Party held a zoom conference call on Tuesday to slam GOP Sen. Rick Scott’s 2022 declaration that he intended to “sunset” all federal programs every five years, including Medicare — even though the Florida Republican reversed that stance more than a year ago.

Marking the 59th anniversary of the day President Lyndon Johnson signed into law legislation establishing the Medicare and Medicaid programs, Democrats hoping to defeat Scott in November referenced his “Rescue America” agenda, introduced in 2022.

It originally called for ending all federal programs after five years unless Congress voted to reauthorize them, including Social Security and Medicare. But after enduring mounting criticism from Democrats and fellow Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Scott revised his plan in February 2023, excluding those two popular entitlement programs.

“I believe that all federal legislation should sunset in five years, with specific exceptions for Social Security, Medicare, national security, veterans’ benefits, and other essential services,” Scott wrote in an Op-Ed published online by the Washington Examiner. “If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again,” he said.

Despite that announcement, Florida Democrats warned that seniors shouldn’t trust anything Scott says about the issue.

“Maya Angelou said it best: When people show you who they are, you should believe them the first time,” said South Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. “He has engaged in a never-ending ceaseless attack on Medicare, and you only have to look at Project 2025, which is the blueprint for another Trump term, to know exactly where the Republicans are headed on this.”

Project 2025 is a 922-page policy plan written by members of the conservative Heritage Foundation. The plan calls for making Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option for older adults. That’s a version of the program offered through private insurers that has been criticized for restricting access to small networks of providers and high rates of denying claims.

Project 2025 also calls for a “competitive bidding model” and says that the existing risk-adjustment model would be reconfigured. It would ban Medicare from negotiating drug prices, removing that ability passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. That would undo the now $35 co-pay limit for Medicare beneficiaries.

“If that law is repealed, Medicare insulin price would surge again,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Disavowal

Donald Trump says he disavows Project 2025.  The Phoenix reached out to the Scott campaign to get his thoughts on Project 2025.

“Democrats believe if you say ‘Project 2025’ three times then, like Tinkerbell, all the BS they claim is in the plan will magically appear,” said spokesperson Will Hampson. “The reality is only President Donald Trump will be setting the policy agenda when he becomes the 47th president, and Sen. Scott looks forward to supporting that agenda in the Senate.”

Hampson rejected any suggestion that Scott would do anything to hurt Medicare.

“Both President Trump and Sen. Scott have been 100% clear that any cuts to Medicare or Social Security are unacceptable and are completely off the table,” he said in an email. “Biden and Harris are the ones who cut Medicare Advantage this year. Desperate Democrats like Kamala Harris and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell should find another lie to spread.”

The Biden administration did announce in April plans to cut next year’s base payments to Medicare Advantage plans by an average 0.16%, according to Axios.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried also referenced Scott’s comments on a podcast during the Republican National Convention that he’d like the federal budget to be reduced “to be half its size,” which some economists noted would inevitably undermine Medicare and Social Security.

“Last week alone, Rick Scott put out a new proposal to slash the federal budget, and every economist across the entire country has said that there is no way to do that without touching Medicare and Social Security. That is an impossibility,” Fried said.

“So now they’re just kind of packaging it in a different way, because they know that actually saying the quiet parts out loud has been unpopular. So now, they’re putting in a new package and a new bow on it.”

Florida seniors

With Florida’s large senior population, it certainly makes political sense for Democrats to attempt to hit Scott regarding Medicare, despite the fact that he has disavowed the concept of reviewing Medicare and Social Security every five years.

But such pivoting is done by members of both political parties.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, has already backed off from her previous stance opposing fracking, and campaign officials told The New York Times last week that she now backs the Biden administration’s budget requests for increased funding for border enforcement; she no longer supports a single-payer health insurance system; and although she still supports banning assault weapons, she does not believe that the federal government should buy those guns — all reversals of stances she took while running for president in 2019.

A University of North Florida poll released Tuesday shows Scott with a 47%-43% lead over Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the likely Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. Another 10% were undecided.

This story was originally published by the Florida Phoenix