MELBOURNE — President Obama renewed his attacks on Republican plans for Medicare during a campaign stop today, saying the GOP would “bankrupt” the senior health insurance program while he would strengthen it.

“I want you to know, Florida, I will never turn Medicare into a voucher,” Obama told a crowd of about 3,000 at the Florida Institute of Technology on the second day of a weekend bus tour through Florida.

The tour includes a stop in West Palm Beach later this afternoon.

“I’ve already strengthened Medicare. We’ve already added years to the life of Medicare,” Obama said, referring to the federal health care law’s $716 billion slowdown in projected future Medicare increases that Republicans have attacked as cuts.

With the changes, Medicare trustees say the program will remain solvent through 2024 instead of 2016.

Obama said the $716 billion won’t affect beneficiaries. And he said Mitt Romney‘s pledge to restore the spending wouldn’t help seniors, but would “give money back to the insurance companies.”

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Paul Ryan‘s recent Florida campaign appearance with his mother proves that the Republican plan to overhaul Medicare is a bad deal for future retirees, U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, told a seniors group this morning.

Deutch, who faces two no-party opponents in November, picked up the endorsement of the labor-backed Florida Alliance of Retired Americans and spoke to about 70 of the group’s members in West Delray.

Ryan made his first Florida campaign appearance as Mitt Romney‘s running mate on Saturday and brought along his 78-year-old mother, Broward County resident Betty Ryan Douglas, to assure a throng of seniors in The Villages that the GOP will protect Medicare.

Ryan’s plan, embraced by Romney, would leave Medicare as is for current recipients and those 55 and older. Those 54 and younger would have the option of traditional Medicare or a government subsidy to purchase private insurance.

“When Paul Ryan stands with his mother and says ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, this plan is not going to affect you,’ I know what I heard when he said that was ‘I know, Mom, that you would never even vote for your son if we made the kind of cuts in my plan to you that we’re going to make to people under the age of 55,’ ” Deutch said.

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Mitt Romney campaigns in Florida today with public events in St. Augustine and Miami.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be part of three anti-Romney events, including one at 11:30 a.m. in Boca Raton.

After drawing big crowds Saturday and Sunday with newly named running mate Paul Ryan, Romney will be appearing solo in the Sunshine State while Ryan heads to Iowa.

Ryan is scheduled to make his first Florida visit as a member of the GOP ticket on Saturday or Sunday in central Florida. There, the Romney campaign says, Ryan “will highlight President Obama’s record of slashing Medicare for current Florida seniors to fund Obamacare. He will also note that the Romney-Ryan ticket is the only one with a bipartisan plan to strengthen Medicare for today and tomorrow’s seniors.” (more…)

Gov. Rick Scott kept his distance Tuesday from allegations that his former hospital chain is being investigated by federal officials over billing for unnecessary medical treatments, mostly at its Florida hospitals.

Scott’s role as chief executive of Columbia/HCA  Corp., haunted his race for governor, with the Republican repeatedly forced to defend his leadership that ended in 1997, three years before the chain paid $1.7 billion to settled federal claims of overbilling Medicare and Medicaid.

Scott was never charged and has said he left the company before it engaged in the practices that led to the federal penalties.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami is looking into an internal HCA review prompted by whistleblower charges that doctors at its Florida hospitals had performed unnecessary cardiocatheter work on patients at hospitals in Fort Pierce, Miami and in the Tampa Bay-area between 2002 and 2010.

The U.S. Justice Department is looking into practices at 10 hospitals, mostly in Florida, according to HCA.

“I’m sure that the federal agencies are going to look into anything like that,” Scott said Tuesday. “But you know I haven’t been involved in that company in 15 years.”

HCA owns 160 hospitals — including JFK Medical Center in Atlantis and Palms West Medical Center near Wellington — and 110 surgery centers.

COCONUT CREEK — Seeking to win over a voting bloc that fled Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, Vice President Joe Biden told a crowd of seniors here that Republicans want to dismantle Medicare and the “dignity” of older Americans in order to give tax cuts to the rich.

Biden spoke to a crowd of more than 400 at the Wynmoor retirement community.

Shedding his jacket before his remarks, Biden blasted the latest plan by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, which calls for changing Medicare for those now 54 and younger from a fee-for-service program to one in which the government would provide subsidies to purchase insurance.

“We believe in strengthening Medicare. They don’t,” Biden said.

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Ratcheting up the rhetoric on the eve of Vice President Joe Biden‘s visit to a South Florida senior community, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz today likened Republican Medicare proposals to “a tornado through America’s nursing homes.”

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee, which has been running ads blaming President Obama for higher health care costs, called Wasserman Schultz’s imagery “irresponsible rhetoric.”

Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman from Broward County, and U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, criticized House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan‘s latest budget proposal, which Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney hailed as a “bold step toward putting our nation back on the track to fiscal sanity and robust economic growth.”

Said Wasserman Schultz: “The Romney-Ryan budget would be devastating to seniors and older Americans. It is a Republican path to poverty that would pass like a tornado through America’s nursing homes where millions of America’s seniors receive long-term and end-of-life care.”

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After last week’s Rick Perry-Mitt Romney Social Security dustup, Republican presidential candidates are set to debate again in Tampa tonight. The Democratic National Committee is welcoming them to senior-heavy Florida with a video blasting Perry and Romney and the rest of the GOP field on Social Security and Medicare.

“Now they’re coming to Florida – where millions of seniors rely on Social Security and Medicare to survive,” the narrator says. “The Republican field: a gamble seniors can’t afford.”

Here’s another Social Security and Medicare scare piece that takes longer than 30 seconds to digest: the annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report saying long-term costs for both programs are “not sustainable under currently scheduled financing.”

The report projects Medicare will only be able to provide 90 percent of promised benefits beginning in 2024 and Social Security will only be able to deliver 75 percent of promised benefits beginning in 2036 unless fixes are made for both programs.

U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, fired off an e-mail calling U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, “the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the U.S. House of Representatives” after she criticized West without naming him on the House floor late this afternoon.

The exchange between South Florida’s two most prominent congressional talking heads came during the House debate on a Republican “Cut, Cap and Balance” bill to slash the size of government in exchange for increasing the federal debt ceiling.

Wasserman Schultz, who’s also chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, blasted the GOP legislation and, clearly refering to West, called his support for the measure “unbelievable for a member from South Florida” because she says it will “end Medicare as we know it.”

West wasn’t present for Wasserman Schultz’s remarks, but quickly got wind of them and sent an e-mail to her a few minutes later, sending copies to House leaders from both parties.

“You are the most vile, unprofessional ,and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up…You have proven repeatedly that you are not a Lady, therefore, shall not be afforded due respect from me!”

Read Wasserman Schultz’s remarks, West’s e-mail and other reactions after the jump…..

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South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson broke with many in the tea party movement by slamming House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan‘s Medicare overhaul plan as a “public policy nightmare” that could lead to “huge Democratic wins in 2012.”

Read about it in this week’s Politics column.

Wilkinson said today he chatted with some high-profile foes of the Ryan plan — Donald Trump, Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone, and political strategist and Fox News analyst Dick Morris – as well as well-placed supporters of it before forming an opinion and weighing in against the Ryan plan.

Trump courted tea party support while weighing a GOP presidential bid and headlined an April 16 South Florida Tea Party rally in Boca Raton. The city and Wilkinson are still at odds over an outstanding bill of more than $6,000 for barriers and police officers deployed for the event.

Trump recently predicted the Ryan plan will lead to a “Republican disaster” in the 2012 elections. Morris has panned the Ryan plan as well.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and four other Democratic Senators who are up for reelection next year have sent a letter to Vice President Joe Biden urging that the House GOP’s plan for overhauling Medicare not be included in any budget deal hammered out by Biden and congressional leaders.

Nelson was part of a 57-40 Senate vote rejecting House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan‘s spending plan, which includes a provision changing Medicare for those now 54 and younger from a defined-benefit program to one in which the government subsidizes the purchase of private insurance plans on a regulated exchange.

So while the Ryan plan can’t pass the Democrat-controlled Senate on its own, Nelson and his co-signers (Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana) say it should not be reincarnated as part of any “larger deal,” as some Republicans have suggested.

The Ryan plan’s backers say the change will prevent Medicare from insolvency beginning in 2024. Nelson and his colleagues say they “share the goal of ensuring the long-term health of Medicare. We hope to identify delivery system reforms and other sources of savings that can extend the life of Medicare in its current form. But we will never allow any effort to dismantle the program and force benefit cuts upon seniors under the guise of deficit reduction.”

Look for the shouters to return this week when U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, holds his monthly town hall meetings in Davie and Boca Raton.

At a Palm Beach County Democratic Executive Committee meeting last week, Craig Borkon of the liberal group Organize Now coached partisans to show up at West’s meetings and get loud. When an audience member mentioned getting tossed out, Borkon said: “Let them throw you out. Finally maybe the media will put something in the paper saying he’s throwing everybody out that disagrees with him.”

Also at last week’s strategy session, county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel said that liberal radio talker Nicole Sandler, who got arrested at a West town hall in April, “was trying to help us make news that day by getting herself arrested. And she did.”

Read about it in this week’s Politics column.

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U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Cape Coral, told MSNBC today he doesn’t think much of state Senate President Mike Haridopolos‘ opposition to Paul Ryan‘s budget plan and its controversial Medicare component.

“I think it’s important that Republicans join together and support Ryan’s plan,” said Mack, who passed up a 2012 U.S. Senate bid and hasn’t endorsed a candidate in the GOP primary between Haridopolos, Adam Hasner and George LeMieux. “I’ll tell you why: if we fail to act, then the program goes bankrupt. So those who are choosing not to support either this plan or another plan are choosing to let Medicare go bankrupt.”

Asked by MSNBC’s Chuck Todd if he thinks it was a “mistake” for Haridopolos to oppose the plan in a GOP primary, Mack said “I do.”

Haridopolos avoided taking a position on the Ryan budget and got smacked down for it by a conservative talk radio host, then released a statement late Wednesday applauding Ryan but saying his plan “must be amended to provided greater protections for seniors.”

Haridopolos spokesman Tim Baker later clarified that Haridopolos would have voted against the unamended Ryan budget if he had been in the U.S. Senate. Said Baker: “If it’s yes or no to the current language, it’s a No.”