Paul Ryan released another infographic video explaining his plan to save Medicare. He did a pretty good job of explaining how the current system is not sustainable, and how sticking our heads in the sand will be disastrous. A lot of people like trashing his plan, but right now he’s the only one who’s got a plan and he’s not giving up.
“This video lays out the clear choice our nation faces on Medicare: Will Medicare become a program in which a board of bureaucrats manages its bankruptcy by denying care to seniors? Or will leaders work together to save and strengthen Medicare by empowering seniors to choose health care plans that work best for them, with less support for the wealthy and more help for the poor and the sick? House Republicans have advanced solutions to save Medicare. Instead of working with us, the leaders of the Democratic Party have opted to play politics with the health security of America’s seniors.”
(Via Red State)
In related news, the Senate voted down Ryan’s budget with a 40-57 vote. Chuck Schumer didn’t vote, all other Democrats voted against it, along with Republicans Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski. (Note, Paul voted against it because he doesn’t think it goes far enough in cutting the budget.) President Obama’s big bloated budget was unanimously defeated 0-97.
Update: Memeorandum started a thread and linked. Also, Heritage weighed in:
Much of the left’s criticism focuses on Ryan’s proposal to provide premium support to Medicare enrollees, assisting them to purchase a health care plan of their choice. As Heritage’s Robert Moffit and Kathryn Nix write, it’s modeled after the plan that federal workers and employees enjoy, and it would introduce intense competition in a consumer-driven market, which has historically slowed the growth of health care costs and increased patient satisfaction.
Be sure to follow the links.
Update: The Sundries Shack linked – thanks!
“A lot of people like trashing his plan, but right now he’s the only one who’s got a plan and he’s not giving up. ”
Maybe but a bad plan is still a bad choice. Privatizing medicare is a horrible plan. Coupling that to tax cuts for the wealthy is not just bad, it’s incoherent from a plan that’s supposed to be so concerned about the deficit.
To really tackle medicare will require a bipartisan approach but Ryan’s plan was designed to offend democrats and make sure they’d never vote for it. He loaded it up with goodies for the right and basically told the left to go ^%$# themselves. It was a risk based on the mistaken belief that the popular fear of the debt would overcome popular fear of eviscerating medicare. He gambled and lost.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Here again we see the partisanship that is ruining this country and the inability of politicians to work together. We see the President appoint a bi-partisan panel and they present a plan to reduce the debt, the far left and the far right don’t like it, so they appoint 6 senators to work on a plan and they can not agree on anything. And there are are others working to find ways to save entitlement programs and when they propose a solution, the far left and far right will once again argee to disagree, leaving our country in the current mess it is in.
As for Medicare, you can fix me now, or you can pay the price later. What you will find is DHHS continueing to cut reimbursements to doctors, resulting in physicians refusing to treat Medicare patients. Just like current Medicaid patients ending up in the ER due to doctors refusing to accept low reimbursements, so to will the Medicare patients end up in the ER with complications to minor problems, leading to hospitalizations and sometimes death.
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Medicare is like a car heading for a cliff.
Some advocate a right turn to avoid the cliff by giving individuals freedom of choice for health care.
Some advocate a left turn to avoid the cliff by giving the government the choice to determine what health care we should have.
But many are saying don’t change directions at all – which is impossible, because if we hold the steering wheel where it is now, soon the direction will be changing to straight downward.
A decision to do nothing is still a decision, and I expect it is a poor one.
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[...] hands of every GOP strategist this weekend and there’d be a test on Monday.Why, I wonder, is Paul Ryan the only prominent Republican vigorously defending his Medicare plan? It is not at all perfect, but then again, no plan is. It is, however, many orders of magnitude [...]
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