Andrew, the quote you posted from Debbie Wasserman-Shultz on
Face the Nation this morning makes for particularly appalling reading and viewing because, as you noted, her shamelessly demagogic answer was to a question that wasn’t even about the Ryan budget but rather about whether the Democrats had a plan of their own. But it’s worth a word about what she actually said, because it’s something a lot of Democrats (including the president and HHS secretary Sebelius) have been spouting about the Ryan budget. She said:
Like I said, the Republicans have a plan to end Medicare as we know it. What they would do is they would take the people who are younger than 55 years old today and tell them You know what? You’re on your own. Go and find private health insurance in the healthcare insurance market, we’re going to throw you to the wolves and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions. We’re going to give you X amount of dollars and you figure it out.
None of this is true, and it’s especially important to understand that the latter parts are not true. The Ryan plan would not leave future seniors to find insurance on their own in the private market, and it wouldn’t allow insurance companies to deny coverage or drop people for pre-existing conditions. It would continue the very reasonable practice of treating senior citizens differently than younger Americans when it comes to health care—giving them guaranteed coverage subsidized by the government at a level that would make it affordable for them. Seniors would be given a menu of approved options to choose from, all of which would be required to accept all Medicare recipients, to offer a plan with at least the level of coverage required by the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan, and to charge all seniors of the same age the same rates. The premium support benefit that seniors get would be adjusted based on their age, their health, and their wealth (and the lowest-income seniors would get an additional pre-funded Medical Savings Account to cover remaining out-of-pocket costs).
So rather than having a board of 15 experts decide what treatments would be covered and what price controls would be imposed and leaving seniors with no options while still failing to prevent Medicare’s looming insolvency—which is roughly the Democratic plan—the Republican approach would let seniors decide on their insurance plan from a range of guaranteed options and provide them with a subsidy to help fund that plan, with those most in need getting the most help.
They would be buying
insurance with the premium-support payment, not paying directly for coverage, so the idea that if you got sick you would “run out of the government voucher and then you run out of your own money, you’re left to scrape together charity care, go without care, die sooner” (as Secretary Sebelius put it a few weeks ago) is patent nonsense. Seniors would choose a plan—a plan with limits on out-of-pocket expenses and with no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, etc.—and if they got sick they would be insured. And insurers would have the freedom to design these plans (and work with providers to design new approaches to delivering medical services) in ways that would make the plans most attractive to consumers—i.e. in ways that would better provide what seniors want at lower costs. And (unlike today’s Medicare Advantage, for instance) they would not have to do this under the shadow of the existing fee-for-service Medicare system, with its enormous incentives for inefficiency and waste. This approach would therefore, as the actuary of the Medicare program in Obama’s own HHS
put it earlier this year, have a better chance than the Democrats’ approach of reducing health-care costs while sustaining quality, affordable coverage, which is the name of the game.
These are facts that bear repeating, and that should be repeated often enough that they occur even to CBS reporters confronted with Debbie Wasserman-Shultz on a Sunday morning.
Medicare should never have been instituted in the first place, and there is nothing at all reasonable about government treating seniors differently than young people, because it should not be the government's concern in the first place, but especially not the federal government. What really galls me is that conservatives are in over-drive trying to save Medicare, and the left is treating us all like the chumps we are. Let them fix the problem they caused! We ought to be focused on reducing so-called discretionary spending, the stuff that EVERYBODY hates, like foreign aid, food stamps, subsidies of every kind. The huge deficit balloons of the past number of years are not caused by social security and medicare but by additional spending on the part of the Congress for the pet projects for the constituencies. Everybody can understand that. Yet the GOP is trying to act heroic by solving the Medicare crisis. Politically crazy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo some insurance company that presently won't sell me, a healthy 47 year old, a policy without a benefits cap* is going to start doing that when I'm 65? What sense does that make?
*If you know of any company in America that offers such a policy, please tell me.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Utopia Health Insurance company does ...
your search for perfection will always lead to disappointment ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMartin, I am a healthy 49 year old (knock on wood) and just bought what I consider a reasonable price policy from State Farm a couple months ago.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAll well and good, but apart from Ryan, there is a screaming absence of leadership on this issue from the GOP.
This is a process. There is a complete disconnect between the so-called leadership of the GOP in the House of Cards and the Senate of Nihilists who brazenly wander around spouting plans which vaporize in the next news cycle.
Unfortunately, we are left with the likes of Cryin' John Boehner, Eric Cantdo, and Mitch the Twitch McConnell. Where's the plan? So far, 38 Billion in non existent cuts, but we promise to do more!
Wow, what a team.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn other words, they would be given a program that is basically indistinguishable from Obamacare. A program that every respectable conservative and libertarian knows is flatly unconstitutional. It is astonishing that so called "conservatives" are championing Obamacare for seniors while in the very next breath condemning Obamacare for everyone else as a fundamental infringement of our liberty and our constitution. You can't have it both ways; Obamacare is morally wrong and illegal or it's not.
Presumably there's some pragmatic political argument about this, that says "look medicare is bankrupting us, we have to do something." And apparently Chairman Ryan's plan is something so that's what we have to do.
Except just because something is politically expedient or addresses some problem does not make it constitutional or right. Ryan's plan gives the game away to the liberals. His plan is conceding that if you want to provide health insurance to a high risk pool of people (in this case old people who get sick with very expensive chronic conditions and then die), then you need to establish Obama's regulate, subsidize, mandate model for health insurance.
So much for consumer driven healthcare!!
If consumer driven healthcare is what conservatives advocate during the great healthcare debates of 08 as a response to Obamacare, then what's stopping conservatives from making the same argument for Medicare? After all, the exact sames reasons why you'd want to provide special protections for the elderly would apply just as well to those with expensive, debilitating pre-existing conditions. If consumer driven healthcare is good enough for someone with multiple sclerosis or early onset alzheimers, then why isn't it also good enough for 68 year old grandpa?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseas you obvious know the Ryan plan is consumer driven and is nothing like ObamaCare ...
but why should facts get in your way ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI cannot see how AFFORDABLE health care can be attained either by the government or the private sector.
Despite the mythical faith in the private capitalist system, it is not a bottomless well with unlimited resources. With a large aging population, and what amounts to price control on premiums, and the never diminished demand that every expensive treatment be undertaken for everybody, the private insurance companies will just as likely to be overwhelmed by the astronomical bills that will be run up the the large aging and ailing baby boomers, and go belly up.
There will be numerous bankrupted insurance companies with massive accrued liabilities lined up seeking government and taxpayers bailout.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"These are facts that bear repeating, and that should be repeated often enough that they occur even to CBS reporters confronted with Debbie Wasserman-Shultz on a Sunday morning."
Well stated, but you people in the pundit world need to do a much better job of pressing Republican leaders to do that. You need to be pounding this home to them, that passivity in the face of this disgraceful demagoguery is not acceptable. You need to be telling Boehner and McConnell that this is their job and their duty, and the future of the republic lies in their doing this. If they lack the verbal dexterity to do it then they need to very quickly find and elevate telegenic and courageous members of their caucus who can. But you must press them to do this job and do it now. Run 3 or 4 front-cover stories of your magazine on this subject if that's what it takes to get their attention. Start pressing them to do this now. Start generating the same passion and alarm over Republican passivity that you were able to feel over Trump and the birthers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseit wouldn’t allow insurance companies to deny coverage or drop people for pre-existing conditions.
That's the policy where the premium is 120% of the coverage, right? We still pay for your liver transplant, but your monthly premium is $30,000.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Go and find private health insurance in the healthcare insurance market, we’re going to throw you to the wolves and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions. We’re going to give you X amount of dollars and you figure it out."
We should wish that were true. Heaven forbid someone with a lifetime of experience should have to deal with something so - gasp - complex as choosing health insurance! What's next? Seniors might have to learn to use online banking!
Heaven forbid insurance companies should have the rightful freedom to refuse to engage in self-sacrificial charity and refuse to lose money by covering someone already ill.
Democrats have no conception of the principles of this society.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Jeff Perren: "Democrats have no conception of the principles of this society." Actually, I think they have a misconception and are running with it.
I absolutely agree that, as usual, the Repubs (except for Paul Ryan) are incredibly inept at presenting congent arguments in plain English. I'm sorry to diss McConnell, but he long ago adopted Beltway-Speak in lieu of common English. Boehner has similar problems, trying to sound like an orator.
FELLAS: SPEAK PLAIN ENGLISH, AND DO IT NOW, OR WE ARE COOKED.
I personally am just shy of 60, and I do NOT want to be left behind with the current Medicare plan and want to opt in to the Ryan plan. (Subtext: Run, Ryan, Run!)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am very thankful for our health insurance, and even more thankful that we found an affordable one through "Penny Health Insurance" online. It has been 6 years that they have not increased my premiums. Having health insurance gives us a peace of mind
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have to say that i think this whole issue is a case of "what goes around comes around".
Palin's "Death Panels" was demagoguery (you don't think private insurance companies review every case to deny coverage if its becomes too expensive, even in life saving cases??), now the Dems "pushing grandmother over a cliff add plus their cry of 'the repubs want to kill medicare!' is also pure demagoguery.
Perhaps the solution is to avoid demagoging on both sides so that we can have intelligent debate? Just a thought....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe unfortunate truth is this: Idiots vote. Paul Ryan has explained it enough already. If the voters are so stupid that they believe Debbie Wasserman Shultz or anything else that comes out of the mouth of a Liberal, there isn't much Conservatives can do about it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDebbie Wasserman Shultz. Apparently no longer a democrat obscenity.
Still missus Roboto though.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYuval, essentially you're saying that Ryancare is exactly like Obamacare, but for old people. What I'm wondering though, is that since the vouchers grow at the rate of inflation, far beneath the growth of health costs, what happens when seniors can no longer afford a plan?? All the demagoguery used by the Democrats it true: Ryancare DOES through those 55 and under to the wolves; the premium support benefit simply won't track healthcare costs, and all senior will be left without healthcare. But at the least the rich will get their tax cuts.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHauser, so since medical inflation currently grow faster than inflation over all, and we just cannot expect the individual to pick up the difference, who will pick up the difference in your plan of leaving it as it is, the taxpayers?
Medicare and Obamacarnon-plan do not cover the cost of care now, who will pay for the democrats non-plan in the future?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor you libs who cant quit lying long enough to investigste......these changes do not start until 2022...you will still get your entitlements if you are currently on medicare with no changes if the ryan plan goes through. Debbie is perfect for her job......superb liar like the rest of her liberal counterparts.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAll Republicans who back Ryan's plan should commit this post to memory. Well done, once again.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse