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You're going to hear a lot from President Obama and yes, from Joe Biden, you're hearing a little bit about Medicare these days. What they will not tell you is they turned Medicare into a piggybank to fund 'Obamacare.' They took $716 billion dollars to pay for the 'Obamacare' program.

Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn't even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we're going to stop it.

The Medicare Part D prescription drug bill, which might be the most corrupt piece of legislation in history, was a huge giveaway of taxpayer funds to the big pharmaceutical companies.

For all their scare tactics, President Obama and Democrats have no plan whatsoever to preserve Medicare for future generations - or protect it for today's seniors and those nearing retirement. They did, however, cut Medicare by $700 billion to bankroll Obamacare.

At least Obama was half-way honest about how much he was going to spend on health care. He had it at $600 billion. And the real number... is $1.2 trillion.

Government did get into the health care business in a big way in 1965 with Medicare, and later with Medicaid, and government already distorts the marketplace.

President Obama has already ended Medicare as we know it.

I'd never have guessed that, six years after Medicare introduced a drug benefit, it would still be forbidden to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. Health reform might fix that, but it probably won't.

Medicare is a monopoly: a central-planning bureaucracy grafted onto American health care. It exercises a stranglehold on the health care of all Americans over 65, and on the medical practices of almost all physicians. Medicare decides what is legitimate and what is not: which prices may be charged and which services may be rendered.

Fraudulent and improper payments have long bedeviled Medicare, a $466 billion program. In particular, payments for durable medical equipment, like power wheelchairs and diabetic test kits, are ripe for fraud.