Friday, June 3, 2011
The Republican plan to end Medicare
Posted by Max Brantley on Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 1:19 PM
The Ryan budget plan — endorsed repeatedly by every Republican in Congress from Arkansas — would end Medicare. It would replace the single-payer, government-run insurance plan with something much different. It would cost people more for much, much less. It would become a voucher system from which private insurance companies would profit. You could still call it Medicare. Or you could call it a ham sandwich. But it wouldn't be either as either term has ALWAYS been understood.
How sensitive to this are Republicans? They want to make it impossible to say "Republicans want to end Medicare" in TV ads.
Free speech? That's for corporations and Republicans.
UPDATE: Here's a handy district-by-district map of how the Republicans would devastate Medicare and Medicaid.
Speaking of Medicare, Republicans
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Comments (35)
Showing 1-35 of 35
My congressman, Tim Griffin, voted to kill Medicare while also voting to give billions of taxpayer dollars to Big Oil.
It is bad enough to vote to kill Grandma. But to also vote to give Exxon the money that she paid for health care...
Anyone who voted for him should hang their head in shame. The Arkansas GOP is nothing less than a pack of criminals.
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The companies that administer the vouchers will become the real death panels that we were so scared of, but because they're not 'big govt', the idiots will approve.
Medicare overhead is purportedly 1.5% to 0.5% depending on who is doing the guesstimating. Private health insurers generally skim 15% of all premiums for overhead and profit.
Ryan wants to cut total dollars spent on Medicare. Run it through a middleman who will take at least 10X more dollars as a percentage of spending for overhead and profit.
So total dollars available to reimburse doctors and hospitals has to fall. My duly elected Senator in the Victory Bldg told KARK that Medicare is failing because the current system provides insufficient reimbursement.
How does reducing the dollars for reimbursement reverse that trend?
Am I the only one that recalls how well privatizing Social Security worked for Republicans in 2006?
There wasn't a big uproar about it either, just lots and lots of losses.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for ObamaCare. Things were bad before, but going from $10 trillion of national debt when Obama was elected to $28 trillion by the end of the decade is a catastrophe.
Well, your numbers are off a little but the actual numbers make it worse! The Medicare overhead is 3-4% and the private company receipts not paid out in benefits is ~30%. So take 30% of the Medicare money that grandma put in and give it to the insurance companies off the top.
And if you think the Republicans will stop there if they win the Senate and the presidency, you need to buy that bridge. They will cut CURRENT receipents Medicare and Social Security while further enhancing their benefits.
No cuts and no cuts in any other area until the House cuts its own budget from that measley 5% to at least 60% so some of them feel the pain up front plus they buy theri health insurance on the private market including Griffin who refused his because he is already under Tricare. Veterans don't think they will screw them also? Think again. It wasn't the House member's asses (including JAG Griffin and the JAG senator from SC) on the line although they all wrap themselves in the flag.
When am I going to hear a proposal by the Democrats to solve the problem of SS and Medicare and medicaid that is going broke. WHEN?
You ignorant liberal worshiping demagogues who have no plan to "FIX" these programs need to STFU.
We would not have a problem if the politicians had not "opened" the lock box that contained the SS benefits to let them spend the money in general revenue.
When was Social Security money first used as general revenue?
Answer:
Congress passed temporary legislation following WW II that was in effect from 1947-1951 to pay benefits to WW II veterans who became disabled in the years immediately following the war and were ineligible for VA benefits. A total of $16 million was transferred into special trust funds during this period.
In 1972, The State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act was established using money borrowed from the Social Security funds to provide financial assistance to State and local governments' general revenue sharing program.
INFO FROM WIKIANSWERS
Hey Democrats --take some time from working on that budget and work on solving the SS, Medicaid, medicare insolvency problem that is looming.
No budget? Oh my!
AND ALL THE REST OF YOU...... UNTIL YOUR PARTY HAS SOME SOLUTIONS ON THE TABLE TO SOLVE THIS ISSUE-------S------T-----F------U------!!!!!
Empire of Dirt, Grandma if she is a typical American does NOT want the medical coverage she paid for. While I ridiculed the Ryan proposal in my prior comment, remember that most Americans receive $3 in Medicare benefit for every dollar paid in. If Grandma gets what she paid for, she ends up even worse off than if the Ryan plan is adopted.
Currently an employed person pays 1.45% of earnings and the employer pays a matching 1.45% as well. To be solvent the rate has to be more like 4.35% on the employee and 4.35% on the employer.
Right now, I'd settle for a stop-gap. Move employer rate to 1.5% as modest as a modest tax increase can be and push the employee rate to 2% or even 2.5% to buy time to find better cost controls.
In much of Europe (you know where single-payer or single provider tend to rule) the common thinking tends to be high taxes for those who are living breathing people and low rates for fictional people (ie. corporations) so that they have profits to spin out in the form of wages and investment income.
I am a "high roller" in that I have just snuck into the top quintile of national income. My medical costs including Medicare taxes(not including out-of-pocket not reimbursed by insurance or my HSA) are 6% of my wages. My employer pays the equivalent of 7% of my earnings. So 15% of earnings/potential earnings go to insurance, deductibles, premiums, and medicare tax.
The root problem remains that Americans fail to do the math to understand what is their own best interest. That best interest is "choice" but not as defined by the GOP.
You can choose plan A, where you get 100% coverage of everything except medicine. You get a primary care provider you stick with (advance notice required to change, one change per year). You don't get specialists, tests, surgery or hospital admission (except in emergency) without the coordination of your primary care provider sending you to the public hospital or hospital that has signed a contract. You get a subsidy for your medicines but generally, you don't get the new still under patent prescription drugs until the patent free generic has been shown to not provide sufficent benefit or has been shown to have too many side-effects.
You can choose plan B. Go to any doctor you want. Go to a specialist without a referal. If you want that freedom it comes with a cost. You have to pay at the time of service and the national health plan will reimburse based on their contract rate, you pick up the difference or you or your employer can buy a gap coverage insurance plan.
Yes taxes would have to go up, but even those who choose to have option B will likely come out ahead even buying gap coverage. Employers will have the burden of higher taxes unless you do the math and realize worker's comp coverage costs will be slashed as it stops being a health care system/lost wages insurance/death benefit plan and is simply about replacing lost wages and providing a death benefit with little medical benefits involved at all. Many employers will no longer have the cost of offering health insurance because unless it is a highly competitive sector, most will have no need to offer insurance beyond the national plan.
You want a plan?
Here's my plan: Steal Canada's plan.
5% or 6% of wages go to the government, who acts as the health insurer. That is actually less than I pay now.
From that, everybody gets a decent standard of health care. One that is better than ours, by all quantitative measures.
And the overhead consumed by administration goes from 30% to less than 10%.
We would have this plan right now except for the Republicans, so in turn I ask you to STFU, since it is your party that has opposed ANY and ALL attempts to do ANYTHING to reform our health care system.
Why does Tim Griffin want to make Medicare overhead ten times more expensive? That is a very good question.
Conservatives, please explain how moving from 1.5% overhead to 15% or 30% overhead is reform for a financially strapped system.
I will be waiting.
Well Cain the issue was about Medicare not SS. But, I agree that Congress has been borrowing from SS and Medicare for decades and not putting the money back.
All along my answer has been to shore up SS and Medicare by replacing the money borrowed plus interest to make them the solvent systems they once were. Overhaul Medicare to eliminate wasteful spending. The government should hire more auditors to review claims. That would provide more jobs.
Suggestions that this blog has not provided answers of its own would be comical if it wasn't so false. Long before the latest round of trolls graced us with their presence there have been plenty of suggestions now stored in the Blog archives.
How can anyone with at least half their brain fall for this "Medicare has low overhead" myth. There is lots of information out there to blow up that assertion, but here is just one item:
http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/resource…
When has the federal government efficiently administered any program? It's simply not possible in a bureaucracy. There is no incentive or effort to save money. Moreover, none of the morons who claim Medicare is better-run than any private insurance wants to acknowledge the Democrats' hidden welfare system that adds billions to the cost of any of these entitlement programs. That hidden system is simply the fraud that, by policy, is allowed to take place in government programs. If the government can find a doctor who is padding expenses submitted for government reimbursement or a slumlord who is getting HUD loans they never intend to pay back, they might prosecute if they can't get the party to settle up. But there are thousands of people who are discovered to be fraudulently milking the system in a myriad of ways, but because they are "poor" or a minority, they are given a pass. It happens every day in U.S. Attorney's Offices all around the country, but you will never hear about it. Liberal administrations permit this by design. They also know these insurance companies who might administer a government medical assistance program would actually stop a good portion of this fraud by holding participants accountable, which is another reason Dems are so against the idea of a private-run plan. Gee, imagine actually trying to insure taxpayer money is properly used.
From the link I read, insurance companies under RyanCare would be required to provide insurance for seniors. That does not mean the insurance has to be affordable as it is now. Making medicare more sustainable by moving more of the annually increasing costs to me once on a fixed income is not the system I paid into for 30+ years.
An individual that misses the "no changes to medicare" window by one day must be afforded the same system ( same costs, same benefits ) as the person that falls within the same window by one day.
Empire, how about if we open up Medicare to all ages? I'm sure my daughter would be happy to join. She's very strong and healthy now that she has had a PAO on both hips at great out of pocket cost even though she has insurance. If we allow healthy younger people like her and her brother to buy in, it saves the system. The answers are so simple. Eureka is right about the fact that ALMOST to a man (or woman) our elected reps are in somebodies pocket. Many of the high risk patients are already in the system through disability or Medicaid. All we are excluding from government funded medical care are the healthy young adults.
>>Empire of Dirt, Grandma if she is a typical American does NOT want the medical coverage she paid for. While I ridiculed the Ryan proposal in my prior comment, remember that most Americans receive $3 in Medicare benefit for every dollar paid in. If Grandma gets what she paid for, she ends up even worse off than if the Ryan plan is adopted.<<
Let's unpack that truckload of hooey. Grandpa eLwood paid into Medicare since 1966 to 2008. Currently I pay 96 bucks a month.
You add up what grandpa eLwood paid in for 42 years then get back to me and millions of other 60 something and 50 something voters who did the very same thing.
Get ready for that GIANT SUCKING SOUND as American voters reject this bullshit and make a huge left turn.
Even 70% of the T'baggers are against the scheme to pay for billionaire tax cuts by depriving Medicare beneficiaries of what they have been paying for during the last
40-50 years.
Run Ryan, Run!
The government like private insurance companies administer payment of medical services rendered under their own rules. Having said that neither in my opinion have policies in place that favor me. Both systems interfere and influence care decisions which should only be between my doctor and me.
However, medicare as it is now ensures my medical care costs remain fixed like my income when I retire. A for profit organization does not.
Therefore all things being equal I will still stick with the plan administered by the government which assures my continued coverage. ACA will do the same come 2014 for all health insurance policies thank goodness.
.
>>going from $10 trillion of national debt when Obama was elected to $28 trillion by the end of the decade is a catastrophe.<<
IF the BILLIONAIRE's tax cuts are left in place.
http://www.cbpp.org/images/5-12-11bud2.jpg
Drackman-nice piece of garbage. Under your plan, why don't we sell TVA so all those rednecks get to see their electrical rates go up significantly. There are certain things that the government can do far better than the private sector regardless of right-wing thinking. Just like the "fraud and waste" that the Repuublicans always use as a reason to go after a budget item, most of the crooks are Republicans just taking after their political leaders.
And if you cut the agency staffs, don't complain about them not going after the bad guys. I guess it would be best to totally analyze every bill and then take all those billing and EOB out of private hands since I get Medicare statements from 3 different private contractors, usually one form to an envelope.
Unless you are in Medicare, you have no idea what you are talking about. Part of that Medicare fraud which they go after is that they pay the doctor (mostly Republicans)up front first and then investigate. I think Congress also specified this to save hospitals. Go and read up on those charts on impact and look at what happens to Arkansas. I would expect hospital closing through out the 1st and 4th Districts except in the major cities which, without a trauma system, people injured in plants and on farms may die before they can get help.
The Republican plan-just die and help save the system!
For a window into what happens to a system divested of government control and handed over to the whims of free enterprise, I present to you the state of today's airline industry. Now, well over 30 years into its deregulation from more strict government control.
www.cahi.org is a PRE-APPROVED site.
A research and advocacy association of insurers active in the individual, small group, medical savings account, and senior markets.
www.healthinsurancebook.org/cahi.org/ - Cached
Drackman Your source is absolute bull shit!
couldn't be better
I hope all the Republican doctors require ur voting record before the provide medical service for idiots like you.
That could be the dumbest comment i have ever read in AT blog.
Congrats
FYI The government used to farm out the processing of medicare and medicaid claims to whoever paid them the most lobbyist money. When Ross Perot started competing with companies like BC-BS for the business of processing the claims, EDP (his company) did it much cheaper and more efficiently..... and guess what??? His company EDP made billions and made Ross a billionaire. So this is the efficient government program you are talking about? Anything the govt touches is wrought with fraud and mismanagement.
R'n'C--anyone claims everyone is doing it has to provide a list of what everyone has been doing. No list, no claim.
"What is making Republicans walk off a Medicare cliff in 2011? The story starts more than a decade ago."
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_roo…
I'm thankful for Medicare, for it has enabled me to live long enough to present the "Gas Pump Imitator Award(dicks in ears), to two very deserving trolls. Drack and Rais'n, you're the grand prize winners. Your brains in a gnat's ass would rattle like BB's in a boxcar. Next time y'all show up at the gunfight, don't bring rubber knives.
Good point, outlier. Opening up Medicare to all ages would be great progress.
For the trolls, if you would term the present privatized health insurance system efficient, then you have low standards indeed. Rather than anecdotes about Ross Perot, I suggest you scrutinize the global cost/benefit data readily available.
In God we trust. All others must provide data. And the data says that single-payer is the gold standard.
It always strikes me as strange that these so-called patriotic conservatives oppose the US being the best at something. If you don't want the best health care system in the world, please do us the favor of leaving so that you don't impede our nation further.
Cain's story about past Government outsourcing of medicare claims processing to lobbyists goes against proper government contract bidding process. If there is one thing the government does well its extending the time to get something done via the contractor bidding process.
Cain's account of Ross Perot's entry into the process either means Ross is a Lobbyist and/or the government got their money's - read our money's worth through his efficiency.
Which proves how the government works. They manage the rules of the system, and they contract out the work to the experts. Government work that requires exacting skill sets I believe is done for the most part by paid contractors - not government employees really - civilians. Getting our money's worth.
The element though of government control in an industry that affects people's welfare directly needs to be regulated.
Because, the private industry's profit motivation has no useful purpose when it comes to things like the airline industry or peoples health care for example.
In past years Congress has yet again had to gradually become involved with the airline industry when people were stranded on grounded jets for hours with no food or services. I am sure profit and the dollar was at the source. As such traveling by plane today is something that requires you to relinguish all control and decisions for that period of your life.
This is not something I want extended to my health care experience.
The bugaboo. folks, is the world "socialism." After years of constant propaganda bombardment, Americans just figure it is evil. They don't even consider that their friends, the British and Canadians, have had this for years, and their health has improved consistently. But, for some reason, this word scares people. Notice that no one here has used the term. I guess it goes back to the Cold War when Communism was the ultimate evil, and anything that even resembled Communism was evil. I remember, back in the 1950s when this debate first began, the great comedian Mort Sahl, described socialized medicine as a "dangerous trend toward good health." Fifty years later, we have come no farther to providing good health care for all Americans, one of the very few industrialized and civilized nations which does not. Let it be clear. Blame the Republicans. Harry Truman proposed national health insurance in 1948. It was defeated by the Greedy Old Pricks, and they continue to oppose it today. The sad thing is that they have convinced the poor, ignorant bastards who would benefit from it the most that it is a terrible thing. Go figure!
Jim, wiki has a good synopsis of Thomas Frank's book. I did not know that Frank took the title from an editorial written by Emporia Gazette editor William Allan White in 1896 with the title "What's the Matter with Kansas?" I remember White from my Kansas school girl days as the author of the lyrical and haunting eulogy for his daughter, Mary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_…
Here is the eulogy. A father's love and the character and personality that was Mary shines in every line.
http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/mary-white/…
A few years ago, I was driving with my daughter from Albuquerque to L.A. and we got stuck for 3 hours just east of Gallop waiting for a Hazmat unit to clean up a chemical spill due to an accident on the interstate. There was a young trucker from Emporia in the lane next to us. He could keep his air conditioner running and we could not, so we were pretty miserable. It took Hayden just a few minutes of talking to him, flashing that gorgeous smile to wangle an invitation for us to share his air conditioned truck cab. We started talking about Emporia (My family lived there briefly when I was a baby). What he described was a small city in decay. Tyson closed down their beef packing plant in 2008 which cost the city 1500 jobs which could explain their population loss in the last census. He said many of the old stately homes are boarded up and over grown with weeds. McCain carried Lyon County in 2008 with 52% as opposed to Obama's 46%. Obama fared much worse in other counties; he did, however, increase the Democratic vote statewide by 10% over Kerry's 2004 numbers. No Democrat has won Kansas since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. I don't know if that 10% gain indicates a trend or not---hope does spring eternal.
I wish the Dems were better at messaging. This month's poor job creation number is because the stimulus money is winding down---Krugman was right, we needed MORE. It would be a very hard sell now to do more. We all need to do more as citizens, too, to get the message out. Maybe I should start going to the Ozark Cafe for breakfast every morning and arguing and discussing with all the old codgers who meet there every AM.
On display is the age old Republican wet dream of taking a government function we're all pretty happy with, privatizing it so WE get much less that costs much more, while turning over the entire ponzi scheme to one of their fellow Repubs who dreams of being Walton-Rich.
Who in the hell would be for such a plan except for those thinking they'll get Walton-Rich off our suffering? And when J. Farthington Quakebottom III owns what we used to call Medicare, I guess he'll let his other Republicatfish have their Medicare/clone for free.
No taxes! No paying for medical care when they get old! Plus a few Ted Suel type free private jet rides for "those who matter." Ahhhh the Republicantaloupe wet dream come true. You get to be a Cheney! You get to be a Cheney! You get to be a Cheney!
If there is a God.....surely this kind of selfish, clannish, clique-ish, greedy politics will spell the end of the Repulican'tseeyou Party forever and ever and decent people will once again control the reins of government.
mag told me yesterday she found out I've been insured since April! It's not great insurance, it's a cheapy plan businesses can get with the help of the state of Arkansas. I'm waiting for my packet to see what all it will do, but whatever it does will be a hell of a lot better than I've had it since 1992 when my old friend, Pre-Existing Condition came to live with me.
And cain.....you can bet I won't be letting a FK'ing Republicant doctor inspect my sphincter if it's on fire. I do not do business with Republicriminals. If you want to see an old man lay rubber in his old car....just tip me off that the business I'm about to visit is owned by a FK'ing Republicouldn'tcareless. Life is too short and too dear to spend any money with the bad guys out to kill this country. Screw the lot of them!
Hackett, I also googled Drackman's front group before reading down to your post. At the Council for Affordable Health Insurance website I found the following:
"Who We Are
The Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) is a research and advocacy association of insurance carriers ... "
Drack, here's the link: http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/about/
So your experts are paid insurance company lobbyists. That's your neutral, unbiased source? Drack, we hold you to very low standards based on your past performance, but you have not even met those poor standards here.
Has everyone read Drack's new book, "Gullible's Travels"?
Damn right, DBI.
I don't do business with anyone who votes for Republicans, and I also tell them why.
I know the Ozark Cafe, Outlier, and I imagine Levi Phillips, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Carroll County, holds forth regularly with those old codgers. Whether he ever converts anyone is another matter, maybe, but I bet he sure will argue with them. Interesting wiki article. Thanks for the link.
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