Fact Check: Obama Ad Questions Romney's Medicaid Commitment - 8 News NOW

Claim: An advertisement endorsed by President Barack Obama that is airing on KLAS-TV Channel 8 takes an excerpt from Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in which he says: "President Obama and I both care about poor and middle class families." A narrator then states: "But this is what the budget plan Mitt Romney supports actually does. More huge tax breaks skewed to the wealthy, while cutting nearly $800 billion from Medicaid, even though middle class families rely on Medicaid to help loved ones cover nursing home care, and it helps parents support children with disabilities. If Mitt Romney really cares, wouldn't we see it in his priorities?"

Verdict: Partly true and partly misleading. One source for the ad is an Aug. 15 Associated Press story on a plan by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan to reduce federal spending on Medicaid by roughly $800 billion over 10 years. As the story noted, Medicaid serves 60 million people, including seniors in nursing homes, other severely disabled individuals, low-income children and their mothers. It was also reported that the Ryan plan is in sync with what Romney would do.

But the ad is misleading because viewers can be left with the impression that under Romney current Medicaid recipients would simply fall through the cracks. To the contrary, he proposes handing control of Medicaid to the states through block grants. Romney's campaign website says that with his plan "states will have both the incentive and the flexibility to experiment, learn from one another, and craft the approaches best suited to their own citizens." It is also premature to speculate whether Romney's approach would be better than what is now in place because each state could produce a different outcome.