Romney-Ryan: Selling the Medicare Lie ~ Emerald Quill

Aug 20, 2012

Romney-Ryan: Selling the Medicare Lie

8/20/2012 Celestine Green No comments

Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan took the stage in The Villages with his mother Betty Ryan Douglas, 78. The Wisconsin congressman said he saw Medicare's benefits firsthand as a child when his grandmother, with Alzheimer's, moved in with his family. "My mom and I were her two primary caregivers," Ryan said before shifting to his mother and the promise of Medicare for her.

"She planned her retirement around this promise," Ryan said. "That's a promise we have to keep."

"It's not just a program," he added. "It's what my mom relies on."

Ryan's stop Saturday at the strongly Republican leaning gated retirement cluster known as The Villages was familiar ground for presidential candidates. Florida has the highest concentration of voters over 65 in the country. Some 17 percent of Floridians fall into that group. Betty Ryan Douglas spends part of her year in Broward County's Lauderdale-by-the-Sea community and has been registered to vote in Florida since 1997.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan accuse President Obama of undermining Medicare by cutting billions from the program to devote to expanded coverage under his health care law. Ryan's plan would encourage future retirees to consider private coverage that the government would help pay for in a voucher-like system.

Here's the simple truth. President Obama has not cut a single cent from Medicare benefits. Under the Affordable Care Act, $716 billion dollars is used to provide current medicare recipients with additional health care screening, prescriptions benefits and other improvements to the current system. Any reductions affect insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, waste in the system and program management costs. In stark contrast, Ryan's plan changes Medicare from a fee for service program as we know it today, turns it into a voucher program which would leave seniors at the mercy of insurance companies. Ryan's plan ultimately caps Medicare benefits. Seniors would only be covered up to a certain amount, and would have to pay out of pocket for any additional expenses.

FactCheck.org outlines Ryan's new revised plan, released this year, is more generous in terms of what it would provide for subsidies, and it keeps traditional Medicare as an option for all beneficiaries, both current and future.

Here’s a quick rundown of the latest Ryan plan:

For seniors who are now in Medicare, nothing changes. They can stay with the traditional program as it is.
Beginning in 2023, 65-year-olds would have their choice of insurance plans — private and traditional — on a new Medicare exchange. A premium-support payment, like a subsidy, would be sent to the plan of their choice.
If the chosen plan costs more than the premium-support, the senior would pay the difference.
The Medicare eligibility age would be slowly raised to 67 by 2034.
All plans on the Medicare exchange would offer a base level of benefits, and they would be regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The premium-support payments would be tied to the second-cheapest plan, which can’t grow more than gross domestic product plus 0.5 percentage points. If the cost does grow faster, Congress would be required to step in and take some action to keep costs down.

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) didn’t conduct an analysis that shows what seniors might have to spend out of pocket under the latest plan. But it said that “beneficiaries might face higher costs,” adding that there was uncertainty in making such predictions. CBO said that both the Ryan plan and current law could lead to the same consequences — “reduced access to health care; diminished quality of care; increased efficiency of health care delivery; less investment in new, high-cost technologies; or some combination of those outcomes. In addition, beneficiaries might face higher costs, which could in turn reinforce some of the other effects.” And some of the effects would be greater under the Ryan plan because government spending is lower.

Here's my bottom line understanding in spite of the little lies and big lies designed to sway voters: President Obama Affordable Care Act does not take $716 billion dollars away from current Medicare seniors, but are rather reinvested in the program as benefits to Medicare recipients. Paul Ryan's plan provides a "premium-support" voucher system, which is a subsidy where seniors will pay the difference of costs between actual costs and the fixed amount the government will provide.

You do the math --as health care cost rise, Medicare will pay less and less of the costs for future seniors in the program. once again the middle class will suffer increased cost what ever that number might be. So, I'll be voting against the Romney-Ryan ticket.