What we're not being told about Paul Ryan's Medicare plan

[CHIMO]

The film Casablanca features one of greatest moments in movie history. With Humphrey Bogart standing with a smoking pistol over the body of the dead Gestapo major, Claude Rains, in the role of the French colonel, tells his troops: "the major has been shot, round up the usual suspects."

Unfortunately, the Washington policy gang is busy following Claude Rains' instructions. The nation is drowning in endless accounts of how the huge deficit will sink the economy and the country. These accounts invariably feature stories of a Congress addicted to spending and a nation that wants government benefits that it doesn't want to pay for.

This story has nothing to do with reality, as all budget analysts know. The explosion of the budget deficit in the last three years is a response to the plunge in private sector demand following the collapse of the housing bubble. If the budget deficit were smaller, we would simply have less demand and fewer jobs.

Paul Ryan did his best to lay out the long-term story as clearly as possible with his plan to privatise Medicare. The analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that Ryan's plan would hugely increase the cost of healthcare to seniors. Under the Ryan plan, a Medicare-equivalent policy is projected to cost almost half of a median 65-year-old retiree's income by 2030. It would soon exceed the income of most retirees, as healthcare costs outpace income growth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/26/healthcare-congress

[Warpy]

1. The other thing he failed to mention (and probably doesn't know

since he was too busy playing Eddie Munster to keep up) is that the reason we got Medicare in the first place is because insurance companies refused to cover anyone over the age of 65, whether or not they had chronic illness. Add chronic illnesses that most folks 65 and older have and you have a prescription for all people who have had too many birthdays to pay every cent they have left out of pocket to stay alive.

It doesn't matter if those stupid vouchers actually reflect the $15,000/year and up that insurance actually costs. Insurance companies simply won't write the policies.

[Scuba]

2. Yeah, they conveniently forget that part....

How about this alternative to Ryan's plan...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x966230