Farewell, Medicare Advantage : Democrats strike up the funeral parade for private insurance options.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The White House is launching its latest Willy Loman campaign to resell ObamaCare, helped by $125 million that unions and other interest groups say they'll spend to make Americans love their new entitlement. Seniors in particular should curb their enthusiasm.

"First and foremost," President Obama told seniors on Tuesday in Wheaton, Maryland, "what you need to know is that the guaranteed Medicare benefits that you've earned will not change, regardless of whether you receive them through Medicare or Medicare Advantage." First and foremost, nothing about that sentence is true.

Advantage gives almost one of four seniors private insurance options, and Democrats are about to cut its funding by some $136 billion over the next decade even as health costs rise. The Congressional Budget Office says these cuts will cause enrollment to drop by 35%, the Administration's own Medicare actuaries predict 50%, and both outfits take for granted that benefits will also decline.

The President knows this, so he and his fellow Democrats are gearing up to blame these cuts on . . . insurers, rather than on their own policies. In a letter last week, Democratic Congressional leaders Henry Waxman, Pete Stark, Max Baucus and Jay Rockefeller demanded that the Health and Human Services Department reject "any effort" by insurers to "reduce benefits next year."

Secretary Kathleen Sebelius followed up by warning insurers to "focus on price and quality rather than asking seniors who need health care the most to pay more for it." The Medicare regulator, CMS, is also reshuffling staff so Advantage is run by actively hostile bureaucrats.