Detailed downloadable paper on the Ryan-Rivlin attack on Medicare

[eridani]

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3429&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cbpp%2FfYJq+%28Center+on+Budget+and+Policy+Priorities%29&utm_content=Twitter

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chair of the House Budget Committee, and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget, issued a proposal in November that would make deep reductions in Medicare and Medicaid benefits and fundamentally alter the nature of those programs.<1> The proposal differs in some respects but is similar in others both to Rep. Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future and the health care recommendations of the Rivlin-Domenici Bipartisan Policy Center Task Force. <2>

Under the Ryan-Rivlin proposal, Medicare beneficiaries would no longer have access to a guaranteed set of health benefits but would instead receive a voucher to be used to purchase private health insurance. Similarly, the federal government would no longer pay a specified share of states’ Medicaid costs but would pay each state only a fixed amount, or block grant. The amount of the Medicare voucher and the Medicaid block grant would grow less rapidly than costs and hence would become increasingly inadequate over time. The proposal would also repeal the Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) Act — a new, voluntary long-term care insurance program that fills an important gap in the social safety net. These changes would profoundly impair health care coverage for the elderly, people with disabilities, and people with low incomes.


--Eliminating Traditional Medicare for People Now Age 55 or Under
--Eliminating Traditional Fee-for-Service Medicare
--Increasing Medicare’s Eligibility Age
The Ryan-Rivlin proposal would raise the age of eligibility for the vouchers that would replace Medicare for everyone now age 55 and under. Starting in 2021, the age of eligibility would increase by two months a year from its current level of 65 until it reached 67 in 2032.
--Increasing Cost-Sharing in Traditional Medicare
--Converting Medicaid Into a Block Grant
--Shifting Costs to States, Low-Income Beneficiaries, and Providers
--Undermining Health Reform


Conclusion: The Importance of Slowing Cost Growth System-Wide
Rising health care costs, along with the aging of the population, account for much of the projected long-term federal budget deficits. But it would not be prudent to count on massive additional savings from imposing much tighter limits on the growth in Medicare and Medicaid unless the growth in private health spending can also be slowed. Growth in federal health care costs is not driven by factors that are unique to public programs. To the contrary, for 30 years, per-beneficiary spending in Medicare and Medicaid has grown at rates nearly identical to those for the overall health care system. And during the past decade, Medicaid costs per beneficiary grew much more slowly than costs for employer-sponsored insurance and costs across the health care system as a whole.<21>

My comment: PSSST! SINGLE PAYER!!

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[kickysnana]

2. But all those people lying in dying in the street might be a problem.

:sarcasm:

I was reading an article in discover about people with severe brain injury. They now know that at least 25% of those in a vegetative state can come back but it is unclear who that is. (We have one in our building).

People with no kidneys, transplants, diabetics, MS, birth defects. Insurance companies wrote them off and will not rewrite them, for sure if they did nobody could afford the insurance.

[indepat]

3. Pssst! Ryan-Rivlin, why don't you m'fin' sonuvabitches just present your plan for

state euthanization of those deemed a burden on society? :mad: :patriot:

[eridani]

4. sunday informational kick n/t