LAS VEGAS – Sorry, I just couldn't pass this one up.
Did you know that this week marks the 45th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid?
Maybe that played a part in the National Council on Aging's new poll that quizzed a bunch of 65-year-olds about health care reform, including, they say, "its impact on their own Medicare coverage, the growth of Medicare and the budget deficit."
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The council laid out a dozen health care reform facts. The laid them out in front of the surveyed seniors and discovered that "only 17 percent of seniors knew the correct answers to more than half the factual questions posed about these key aspects of new law, and only 9 percent knew the correct answers to at least two-thirds of the questions. None of [them]… knew the correct answers to all 12 of the factual questions."
The Council's full release can be found here: www.ncoa.org/press-room/press-release/most-seniors-misinformed.html.
That certainly makes for a pretty compelling story, except the Council case for confused seniors is muddied when you look at how confused the Council is, too.
In fact, according to National Center for Policy Analysis President John Goodman, "Seniors know more than the people conducting the poll. The answers seniors are giving are more correct than the answer the pollsters claim are right."
See, the problem is that the Council's "facts" on the health care law are simply regurgitated from the Congressional Budget Office.
"The two worst claims by the National Council on Aging are that there will be no cuts in Medicare benefits or in doctor's fees," Goodman said.
So, if you ask me, those seniors aren't confused at all. They're suspicious. And I, for one, can't blame them.
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