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Tony Ondrusek is founder and publisher of Insurance & Financial Advisor and IFAwebnews.com.

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As reported by the New York Times, it’s no accident that President Obama will star in a dog-and-pony show this week to announce that Medicare will send $250 to seniors to help them pay for prescriptions. Somehow, he thinks that if he throws a few bucks at the old-timers, they will be so grateful for his benevolence that all the damage created by his health care reform law will somehow be stricken from their minds.

The nationally televised public relations ploy is timed to happen the day after health insurers are required to submit their Medicare Advantage bids to Health and Human Services (HHS). According to reports, the health plans will likely seek to increase premiums because the new health reform law is going to cut payments to Medicare Advantage by more than $130 billion over 10 years.

The president and Congress have ordered payments cut, yet the fed wants the health insurers to suck it up and take a loss to be “nice guys.”

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to health insurers asking them to “focus on price and quality rather than asking seniors who need health care the most to pay more for it.”

Huh?

Where, exactly, is the money supposed to come from? The fed is taking money away from the insurers, and in the same breath asking them to not charge clients more but provide the same – if not better – services.

I just can’t see how that can happen.

“Washington can’t slash…Medicare Advantage and then try to shift the blame to the health plans that administer the program when those cuts inevitably result in higher premiums and benefit reductions for seniors,” wrote AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach in response to the push to tighten the noose around health insurers.

Meanwhile, the AMA is saying that the 21% cut in payments to doctors will force them to take fewer Medicare patients, meaning seniors will find it increasingly difficult to find physicians who will accept the payment. One cannot blame the doctors; they have to pay the bills in order to keep their doors open, and the fed is making it increasingly difficult for them to do that.

But Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, thinks that the fed should not allow insurance companies to raise rates just because the funding for Medicare Advantage is being slashed. He said in a letter to Sebelius that she should force insurers to provide good and valid reasons for the rate increases.

Excuse me? What about having enough money to keep the program running?

Oh, I forgot…this is a government bureaucrat talking. He does not understand business or basic economics. In his eyes, and the eyes of the fed in general, if he wants something that will cost money, he simply takes that money from someone else or goes into debt to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. No problem there, right?

But the president, Congressional Democrats and their supporters will pull no punches to try to convince Americans that this is the moral and responsible thing to do.

In fact, two big Obama supporters and operatives, are orchestrating a campaign that will bring together unions, foundations and Democratic donors to create a $25 million, Washington-based organization whose sole purpose over the next three years will be to communicate to the American people the wonderful things that the new health reform law will do for them.

And just like the $600 individual taxpayer rebate that President Bush authorized in 2008 to prevent a recession, President Obama will unveil his $250 rebate to help seniors offset rising costs for prescriptions. It is nothing more than a public relations/feel good/do nothing public relations ploy that is destined to fail.