Why the fuss over Paul Ryan's Medicare plan?

Uwe Reinhardt, a health care economist at Princeton University, said there's no evidence the growth of health care spending will correspond with the rate of economic growth. Health care spending has slowed recently, but some expect it to jump back to higher levels when the economy improves.

"The supply side of the health system is simply not yet under control," Reinhardt said. "I believe the insurance industry is too fragmented to have the market power to control prices."

(Watch Mitt Romney in St. Augustine, Fla., on Monday vow to protect Medicare)

Instead of spurring insurers to control their costs, Reinhardt said the Ryan plan would leave seniors out to drift. "You're essentially shoving these guys out on a boat, saying, 'We'll give you a push, but if the waves are rough, you're on your own," he said. "It would really worry me if I were a middle-class American."

Antos said that seniors will end up paying more out of pocket under any Medicare reform plan out there -- "the world is not getting better in that regard."

Still, he said, "In a premium support world, they're going to make up their minds" about the health care they use.

Critics of the Ryan plan also charge it could deteriorate the traditional Medicare plan by turning it into a dumping ground for less healthy seniors. Through the mechanism of "risk adjustment," the government should theoretically offer bigger vouchers for sicker consumers, but Reinhardt said risk adjustment has been the "Achilles' heel" of any competitive scheme.

Antos countered that the size of the vouchers will be overseen by the government. "The fact is that premium support health care is a government program," he said. "Ryan's plan has never said we're going to abolish the oversight... This is not going to be some kind of wild west rodeo."

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[Evan73]

Obama cut $700 BILLION from Medicare. You liberal nutjobs need to get your heads out of the sand.

[ge556]

Evan73,
That's a misleading Republican talking point.

[CBSCNETPaul]

Here's the key quote from "conservative" thinking in this article:
---
The rationale for this dramatic change to Medicare is that it would compel seniors to spend less on health care, said Joseph Antos of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and thus compel health care providers to offer more competitive prices.

"It's widely acknowledged we have overuse" in the health care sector, Antos told CBSNews.com. "If we change to a system that says the health sector has a fixed amount of money this year...
---
Translation: Old people are too expensive. Republicans want to give them only a fixed amount for their health and then they can just drop dead. IOW, Alan Grayson was 100% correct. Got that, Florida?

[RollotheNorman]

Well, that's a good strategy for thinning the herd. Those old, decrepit f***ers just cost a lot of resources to keep alive. If they're not smart enough to provide for their own medical bills when the can't work any longer, just let 'em die. In the streets if their house has been seized. Yahhhh, that the RepubliCON way.

[Rich_Sitko]

I am over sixty, but not yet sixty-five. My job was outsourced to India. My private, non-group health insurance costs over one thousand dollars a month. Between the deductibles and co-pays, the insurer, Aetna, pays nothing in claims. I need to have a major medical calamity before my insurance pays anything. This is the current state for seniors not on Medicare. This is the reality Congressman Ryan wants to pass onto the senior public. I have yet to hear him speak of insurance industry reform to go along with the voucher plan. To sum up the Ryan plan in realistic terms;
Health care is too big an issue for the government;
Let the private sector, who has failed as miserably as the government to handle it take over;
As for Mr. Ryan, he has the Federal Employees Health Care Plan for life. I am sure the Congress, regardless of party, will ever change this.

[democracy8]

Anyone with at least half a brain should be able to see that it's sheer insanity (and very possibly suicide) to go for Ryan's plan.

[EmpireGeorge______--]

I know, cause balancing the budget and cutting spending is a nightmare to a taxicrat.

[mikesfilms]

Parallel lives: Paul Martin, Minister of National Health and Welfare from 1946 to 1957, played a central early role in the adoption of hospital insurance and is also remembered as the father of Medicare. National hero in Canada. Paul Ryan, the killer of US Medicare.

[marychgo]

The only "entitlement" we REALLY need to eliminate is the sense of entitlement the GOP's Spoiled Fratboy ticket of Willard Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan inexplicably share!

(I knew some fratboys (some spoiled, some not so much) back in the day...and most of them grew up and became fairly decent human beings. Romney/Ryan: it's possible, but I'm not holding my breath!)

[GOP-R--Con-Men]

Who is Paul Ryan?

A catholic who rejects the teachings of Jesus Christ for the philosophy of atheist Ayn Rand. Nice pick Mitt

[redskid2]

"I give out Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents." (Paul Ryan in an interview with the Weekly Standard, 2003)
"I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are." (Paul Ryan in a speech to the Atlas Society in 2005.)

Paul Ryan was for Ayn Rand before he was against her.

[audemus]

Perhaps if you were to do just a minimum of research Joe, you'd realize that GOP-R-Con-Men is absolutely 100 % correct in his assertions....why do you find TRUTH stupid ?

[winemaster2]

This GOP hog wash party of prosperity is the biggest ever boondoggle and con job bestowed on the people in this nation bu these conservative republicans malignant, narcissists, chronic scapegoating, incorrigible grab bagging evil of these A list hypocrite Sunday Christians and this new pretty boy Congressman with his less then 80,000 so called constituents of the Janesville district in WI, where 95% of the people are white racists bigots and tea party illiterate yahoos. All is all this Paul Ryan would never be elected by all the people of Wisconsin, who know who this hyped up ranting about European Scandinavian being socialist and not his idea about what this beguiled and moribund nation has become since the republican saint Reagan, his voodoo economics, creation of this favorite freedom fighter Bin Laden, and his conservative so called idiotic revolution, destroying the racial, civil rights, human rights, women's rights and other such progress made in the 60s and 70s.
Reagan is responsible for the BIN LADEN creation, after he reneged all the promises and deal he made the Mujahdeen hired to fight the soviets in Afghanistan. As usual the conservative republicans used these people, with coercion, and impunity and the discarded them the usual recklessness. Had it not been their Reagan the two bit snitch actor, who told lies about his fellow innocent actors to that other WIS goon McCarthy. He and his thugs liked about Iran Contra, tripped the Federal Deficit, threw out thousands of poor mentally sick Vietnam Vets byon account of the recession he created and lied to the Nation and the people about US activities in South America & S.E. Asia. Had it not been for Reagan, 9/11 would have never happened and Bush / Cheney war time hog wash presidency , the BS war on terror at home, Afghanistan / Pakistan and the fraud war on Iraq with falsified and manufactured evidence.

His rant about Scandinavia is more lies. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Finland has the best standard of living in the world, best medical care for all their people at a less then 50% of the relative cost we pay and get the least for it. There school are at the top, and we scraping the barrel at the bottom. There the rich pay their share of taxes. The happiness and their govt appreciation factor is 90 % as to over 10%. They are medically 10 years ahead of US. Those 5 nations all together are smaller the Texas. And this bigot has open his mouth and insult our Allies.

Ryan has no realistic economic plan about any thing. His math is worst then a high school kid and 2+2 comes out 6. We do not need to discuss what can be implemented in 2022. Right thanks to 8 years of Bush/ Cheney and idiocy of 5/4 US Supreme Court we are a economic terror besieged, ideologically divided, polarized and hell bend on a fast track of self destruction from within nation.

Unless we have radical reforms of the Legislative, Judicial and the Executive Branches of the Govt, and in that order, plus fix the fundamentally flawed economic system , nothing is going to change. The only way to have jobs back in this nation is for corporate America, its greed creed and profits to bring back manufacturing to to this with all the weight of regulations. It is the shysters like Romney that started the exodus of outsourcing Job overseas and stacking up obscene profits offshore in tax shelters and tax avoidance havens.

Ryan with his BA education from Miami of Ohio with a a major in politics and minor in economics is an intellectual of the George W. verity and just another flimflam self interest, self righteous, corrupt to hilt politician. Put him in a Nazi Uniform , and he becomes Himmler next to Willard the Mitt and his being the New Fuhrer and the Koch brothers Nazi ancestors. And Karl Rove, that chinless GOP Dr. Geobbles the Nazi PR man. That is precisely what these whole White Elephants GOP are with their racism, bigotry, perversity of inequality, rights only of their kind and the snake oil that they are selling.

Far worst like their ancestors the 39 white conservative who signed the compromised Constitution to keep people in CHAINS these hypocrite yahoos have no intend of equal justice for all, assurance of domestic tranquility for all, promotion of general welfare of all or the security of blessings of liberty and prosperity for all.

[Robby33383]

All Mitt Romney has to do is look Barrack Hussein Obama in the eyes during the debates and ask if he took $780 billion dollars out of medicare to fund Obamacare, make him answer the question, debate over!!!!
All Ryan has to do is tell the American people that no one over 55 is affected by this. Our kids will never see Social Security. The left took every penny out to fund entitlements!!!!!

[Lindag20]

Yeah cutting off the subsidies to insurance companies that provide Medicare coverage is "taking money away from Medicare". Nothing but whining on the part of the insurance companies as they're getting LESS money from the taxpayers.

[retmw1]

The left took every penny for entitlements, boy is that a lie. Seems everytime the republicans were in control they never put Social Security back in the lock box, and stole just as much as the democrats.

[realisticfromthemiddle]

Yeah and the oil companies are competing for my business too. Get real this plan sucks. It all boils down to one thing, corporate profits. I am only a way for them to make money and nothing more.

[retmw1]

Isn't it funny how every gas station charges the same price, now that's what the right calls competition.

[Lindag20]

What really gripes me is when I go to the grocery, the price is a certain amount and when I come out it's changed (usually to a higher price). In the small town where I live there is ONE distributor that xupplies ALL the gas stations in town. There is NO comepition so of course they all charge the SAME price.