Because he’s a true believer of Ayn Rand. He honestly thinks that privatization is the best way and the only reason it fails is because Washington gets in the way of capitalism. He really is that ignorant of how Randian policies have caused nothing but problems.
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Yes indeed, Paul Ryan is simply lying about the effects of Obamacare on Medicare. Why not just say so in so many words?
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Only among the tiny minority of people like us. For the MSM and most of the population, his lies are proof that he’s a Very Serious Person Offering Very Serious Plans to Solve Very Real and Serious Problems.
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Look, re the Carrier/United Technologies exit reversal, Drumpf just sold ice to the Eskimos in the middle of winter. The rust-belt rubes will eat ploys like this the daylong with wooden spoons. The same tactics will be used to erode SS & Medicare while Pelosi and Hoyer fumble, fundraise and stutter their ways in defense. Get ready for a nation-wide Wisconsin Death Trip II.
Been nice knowing you, America.
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So what Ryan really wants is a form of ObamaCare and its exchanges for us seniors. He should learn from the experience. There are wide geographic differences in options and prices available when left to the private sector. Those of us in huge population centers probably have options. Our relatives back in the farming (or mining, ranching, etc.) communities where we came from likely have fewer good ones. Then there’s the logistics. We know how hard it is to get younger families enrolled in the exchanges. How much harder it is to reach seniors, especially older and more debilitated ones, to make annual elections, either in person or online. Many don’t have capable family members or other support systems to help with thee decisions.It’s challenging enough to choose for oneself the most optimal supplemental Medicare insurance plan; helping older relatives in different markets is even harder.
The of course there are the philosophical differences between a robust national health system for seniors and a “free” economy approach that’s more chaotic without promise of better outcomes.
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Here’s maybe the worst-kept secret of the 20th Century. Our mental hospitals were snake pits, and a coalition of patient’s rights advocates and compassionate conservatives banded together to reform mental health care. It was believed that psychotropics and community care would better care for the mentally ill, and be cheaper. A win-win, situation, right?
So, we got extensive rules governing involuntary commitments and most of the state-run mental hospitals were closed. What didn’t happen was funding for community care, funding for mental health care – in essence, none of the infrastructure needed to replace the mental hospitals was put in place.
The mentally ill were dumped on the street. Where do they go now? They go to jail – they commit petty crimes for all sorts of reasons. In jail, they might get some medical attention and be placed back on their medication. Eventually, they are spit back out onto the street and work their way around the cycle again.
That is what awaits the elderly.
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I have to wonder if anyone finds it a bit ironic that Ryan seems hell-bent on making health care a signature issue for himself and GOP after so many years of doing nothing but pounding the Democrats over it. Granted their plan seems to be devoted to gutting it but nevertheless it still seems an odd choice of issues to, as you say, “have a hard on” for. Maybe it is helpful to have another lightning rod to distract from immigration reform, which we know they are going to end up squirming over.
He got something more than minimal benefits. His family banked his Survivor’s Insurance payments and used them (and probably some other funding, too) to pay for his four years at Miami University in Ohio. He was an out-of-state student, so the cost was comparable to a private college.
It’s a fucking shame he didn’t learn anything about compassion while he was at MU.
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“Premium Support” = Vouchers = Snake Oil
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Simple answer, so that his Wall Street “friends” can get their hands on the weekly deductions each and every one who draws a paycheck put into the system. Payments/vouchers on the other hand will be paid via the general fund, which will just happen to make it much much much easier to decrease funding.
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We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of …everybody, sing along. Hey !! We’re goin’ to Kansas !!!
The Republicans will run the table with their wish list after tagging their actions with snazzy titles like "A Better Way’ or “The Wonderful for Everybody Bill”. The faithful and cable news will extol their virtues with panels of chosen Republicans. The Democrats will crawl under their desks or hide in their closets and prepare for the next game of “Switch” (*).
We haven’t yet seen them work their magic but you can bet there will be a puff of smoke and ta-da we’re screwed. Reality will set in a few months after inauguration when the R controlled government gets up a head of steam. The economy will spring to life for the 1% and that’s what it is always about with the R’s. The rest of us will watch our lives change daily. Hope for the best but …?
(*) Switch is an unofficial political game always controlled by the R’s because the D"s assume they will lose anyway so it’s not worth fighting over. The game consists of all the D’s playing hiding somewhere with one thumb in their mouth and one thumb up their butt waiting for any R to yell SWITCH ! The game always has the same ending because not many D’s have spines.
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Of course not, and he never will. He knows he’s set for life without either, so fuck those sick old people. He does what his donors want.
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Well, it’s true that dead people don’t buy drugs, but sick people near death buy the most profitable drugs with the highest markup. So maybe there’s some complicated calculation going on there.
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Once the media invents a meme, they feel very smart and are reluctant to let go of it. It just embeds itself like a bad habit. I wish they’d blast this phony “serious Ryan” falsehood wide open and expose the fucker for the fake he is.
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Thank you for this article. It is a very informative and helpful summary.
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“newly eligible participants would be funneled to an exchange where private insurers competed and individuals could choose private plans. This was Ryan’s phaseout plan.”
There’s a name for a plan like this: Obamacare.
Why are the Republicans decrying the ACA as socialist tyranny while simultaneously insisting that such a plan is the only path forward for Medicare?
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I’m all for Ryans’ plan - whatever it is - as long as every member of Congress and Herr Trump have to take the same coverage without any personal contributions, as if they were a Senior living on SS. Let’s see if they go for their program then.
You just gave the For-Profit Prison Industry, its Lobbyists, and its Clowngressional thralls a massive, throbbing hard-on.
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I didn’t think Medicare paid for nursing homes? $9500 a year does not go a long way for medication, wellness checks and surgery needs. Senate Repugs are already panicking about Ryan’s plan. Like Chuck Schumer says, “Make my day”.
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The complexity issue deserves its own discussion. American corporations have discovered complexity as a way to bamboozle consumers: too many choices often lead to bad decisions, as we know (has anyone tried figuring out their telephone plans, lately?)
My 86-year old mother gets Medicare, and the complexity that already involves is daunting. A fat book arrives every year with hundreds of pages of program descriptions for Medicare Advantage plans and Prescription plans. Online calculators – hardly obvious for the elderly – are offered, and plan operators deluge her with glossy advertising and the offer of “seminars” to “learn” about their choices. (Am I the only one to suspect that such seminars are about as educational as your average time-share sales pitch?)
So adding a much larger role for private operators promises to make the complexity even more overwhelming. We can also assume that any Ryan-designed regulations would allow plans to constantly change their offerings (the way formularies for prescription plans are currently mere words subject to change at any time), so that plans would rapidly evolve away from whatever they were at original offering, as well.
Additionally, the whole mendacious premise of “choice” assumes that elderly and sick individuals will go through this flabbergasting effort every year, choosing to switch plans if it might save them money (and changing all their doctors and providers) – which is a completely unrealistic assumption.
Short macro-economic version: what Ryan and his lying ilk seek to do is not to create more opportunities for “market forces”, it is to create more opportunities for “rent extraction” from the public. This needs to be said often and loudly, and reminding us all just how much we HATE the “choices” that companies and Medicare already wave in our faces might be a useful strategy.
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