Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The GOP's self-proclaimed boy genius, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), rolled out a new video after his GOP Budget was defeated in the Senate on Wednesday, trying to better explain to you ignorant Americans just how his GOP Budget is genius — genius, I tell ya! — if only you ignorant people would accept his genius. It was just a messaging problem. Yeah that was it, that's the ticket!
The GOP strategy is what the GOP always does — wedge issue politics to divide voters, this time along the line of age. The GOP's boy genius wants you to believe that if you are 55 years of age or older, nothing is going to change for you with Medicare. You're golden.
For those of you 54 years of age and younger, boy genius has a new "option" for you. He wants to end Medicare as a government guarantee and convert it to a privatized health-care insurance system in which you will receive vouchers (boy genius really hates that word) to subsidize part of your cost of purchasing private health-care insurance.
The GOP strategy essentially is the bumper sticker you often see on $200,000 RV's — "I'm retired, and I'm spending my kids' inheritance." The GOP is counting on the elderly to be as narcissistically self-centered as GOP economic policy.
Joan McCarter at Daily Kos exposes the lie of the GOP plan. Daily Kos: Orszag: Republican Medicare plan 'raises costs on the backs of seniors':
Former White House budget director Peter Orszag writes an op-ed for Bloomberg, detailing the cost-shifts to Medicare enrollees in the Republican budget. But his words really can't compare to this picture:
By 2030, both the CBO and CBPP estimate, the Republican voucher proposal would cost nearly $9,000 more per beneficiary than Medicare. The great bulk of that—over $8,000—would be shifted to the beneficiary. In other words, all of us who are disabled or retired as of 2030. Those costs would increase because the Republican plan does nothing to contain costs, so as they rise the proposed voucher won't keep up, and an increasing burden is placed on enrollees. Which, by the way, is exactly what Rep. Paul Ryan wants.
Orszag writes:
[T]he plan would not live up to its billing in cutting health costs for America. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it would do the opposite. That’s right: The CBO found that the Ryan Medicare proposal would substantially increase total health-care spending….
On the critical metric of whether the Ryan plan would reduce total health-care costs, though, the CBO conclusion is shocking: The plan would not only fail to decrease health-care costs per beneficiary, it would increase them –- by an astonishingly large amount that grows over time. By 2030, health spending on the typical beneficiary would be more than 40 percent higher under the Ryan plan than under existing Medicare, according to the CBO report.
Health-care costs would not be reduced on the backs of seniors; they would be raised on the backs of seniors.
How could this possibly be, when the point of reform is to reduce costs? The CBO points to two factors: Private plans have higher administrative costs than the federal Medicare program, and less negotiating leverage with providers.
No wonder it's such an unpopular plan. Ryan and his colleagues like to say that these facts and figures are just Democratic "Mediscare" tactics, but the CBO isn't a Democratic organization. It's awfully hard to argue with the ugly truth.
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Scoop, go over to Ezra Klein’s blog at the Washington Post and read the exchange between policy wonk Ezra Klein and Rep. Paul Ryan. Very informative. Even Ryan himself says:”We agree that Medicare should grow….” This is because the tyranny of the numbers cannot be ignored; it’s demographics. More old people are retiring, more people need medical care. It’s a population bubble. The fact that we will be spending more is undeniable, cannot be wished away, cannot be ignored.
Given the context, your STOP SPENDING statement just seems weird and bizarre.
So the question is, how do we slow down what the government spends, and how do we reign in medical cost inflation, which grows faster than regular inflation every year.
Klein posted 8 questions for Ryan (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/some-questions-for-paul-ryan/2011/05/19/AGucUIBH_blog.html), and (give him credit) Ryan did respond (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/paul-ryan-responds/2011/05/19/AGALwkCH_blog.html#pagebreak).
It’s a very long exchange, well worth the read. What you’ll notice is Ryan does not answer Klein’s questions, and the only substantive reason he gives for his non-answers is factually wrong. Ryan just got exposed as an emperor with no clothes. Klein’s response to Ryan’s answers is even more enlightening: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/responding-to-ryan/2011/05/19/AGZVStCH_blog.html#pagebreak
Ryan’s plan is going to shift huge costs over to the people, and it hopes that the lucky charms of the competitive market in health care will inevitably lower costs, so seniors will not have to bear a too-heavy burden, and the federal government will not be saddled with huge expenses. Problem is, all his assumptions that he uses to build his “plan” upon are wrong, and we all know it. Klein does an outstanding job of showing this clearly.
Ryan keeps referring to “experience and economics” to assert that the private market will excel at holding down health care costs. But that doesn’t work, and we all know it. Have costs for an education at a university gone down because of the ever-increasing competitive market? No. I like markets – they have supported my pleasurable lifestyle, but they have never held down costs for health care, anymore than they have ever held down costs for a university education or held down salaries for a professional athlete.
And the fact that Ryan wants to get away from the 5% overhead costs Medicare enjoys and replace that with 15-25% overhead costs private insurance companies support, and still claim we’ll be saving money under his “plan” is patently ridiculous.
Now, lucky for us all, smart people came up with some good ideas written into the Affordable Care Act, ideas that will drive down inflationary costs. The dirty little secret many on the Right don’t want people to know is that Ryan and Republicans just voted to keep the cost-control ideas Dems put into ACA for the next ten years. That was part of the House Republican budget they all just voted on. So don’t check back here for explanations. Go read Ryan and Klein discuss particulars, then go read the House Republican budget and get yourself informed about the cost-saving particulars.