Congressman Paul Ryan is the new darling of both the Republican Party and the major media outlets. He has put forward bold plans for dismantling Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Congressman Ryan is prepared to tell tens of millions of workers that they can no longer count on a secure retirement and decent health care in their old age. In Washington policy circles, this passes for courage.
Outside of Washington, people have a different conception of bravery. After all, over the last three decades the policies crafted in Washington have led to the most massive upward redistribution in the history of the world. The richest 1 percent of the population has seen is share of national income increase by close to 10 percentage points. This comes to $1.5 trillion a year, or as Representative Ryan might say, $90 trillion over the next 75 years. That's almost $300,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
This upward redistribution creates the real possibility that many of our children will be poorer than we are. If Representative Ryan and his followers really cared about future generations, then we might expect him to push for policies that reverse some of this upward redistribution.
For example, we could break up the large banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan) that operate with implicit government protection. This allows them to borrow money at below market interest rates and undercut their smaller competitors. By my calculations, the size of this subsidy to the largest banks is close to $35 billion a year, almost half the size of the long-term Social Security shortfall that concerns Mr. Ryan so much. If Mr. Ryan could man up a little, maybe he would have the courage to tell the big Wall Street banks that they will have to compete in a free market without this subsidy from the government.
It's not only the big banks that make Representative Ryan cower. He's also scared of the pharmaceutical industry. As a result of government-enforced patent monopolies, we spend close to $300 billion a year on drugs that would cost us around $30 billion a year. The potential savings of $270 billion a year is about three times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall.
Representative Ryan is a big fan of Medicare vouchers, however his voucher system does nothing to address our broken health care system while virtually guaranteeing that most seniors will not be able to afford decent health care. How about a voucher system that gives Medicare beneficiaries the option to buy into the more efficient health care systems in Europe and Canada, with the taxpayer and beneficiary splitting the savings? Well, that one could hurt profits of the insurance industry and major health care providers, so Mr. Ryan is against it.
We also could have freer trade in physicians' services. If we paid the same wages to our doctors as countries in Europe and Canada, it would save us close to $90 billion a year. While our trade pacts ensure that our manufacturing workers have to compete with the lowest paid workers anywhere in the world, our doctors are still largely protected. If autoworkers enjoyed the same protection as doctors, they would all make $150,000 a year and we would still be buying all our cars from GM, Ford and Chrysler. But the doctors' lobbies are powerful, so Mr. Ryan is not interested in this one.
How about reining in the excess pay of top executives at U.S. corporations? Our top executives not only get paid far more than ordinary workers, they also get paid far more than top executives at large successful corporations in Europe and Japan. The government sets the rules for corporate governance just like it sets the rules for union governance. While Mr. Ryan's friends have been anxious to use the heavy hand of government to weaken the power of unions to push on behalf of workers, they become timid when it comes to preventing corporate abuses. Suppose that the compensation of top executives had to be approved at regular intervals by shareholders, where only shares directly voted counted. (This means that mutual fund managers could not support big pay packages for their CEO friends in the name of the people for whom they are investing.)
How about reducing military spending to the same share of GDP as it was in 2000? The savings of 1.6 percent of GDP (at $240 billion a year) is more than two and a half the size of the projected long-term Social Security shortfall. But this would hurt the defense industry, so again Mr. Ryan is not interested.
The basic economic reality is very simple and everyone in Washington knows it. There is no way that future generations of workers will be poorer than the current one due to benefits like Social Security and Medicare. They could end up poorer if we continue to see the benefits of growth shifted to the top. The latter is the result of the corruption of politics in Washington. And at the moment, Mr. Ryan is the poster boy for that corruption. If he gets his way, your children and grandchildren can count on a very bleak future.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12964360
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977094084
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977094084
Where do these people come from?
Wasteful spending is a result of BOTH parties. And as more and more people get angrier and angrier, I can tell you that until corporations and CEO's are taxed fairly, ANY legislation coming from our politician's had better fix the injustice. If it does not I truly believe we will be looking at people taking to the streets.
How many times are the middle class going to be left holding the bag for criminal behavior of corrupt corporations and their CEO's before politicians figures out we are done? The only trickle down economic policies we see are the rich d@fecating on the people who are the backbone of this country. But politicians keep trying to throw it at us like we haven't figured out yet that crap really, really stinks!
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02192010.html
Paul Craig Roberts: Looting Social Security
"By Paul Craig Roberts
Hank Paulson, the Gold Sachs bankster/U.S. Treasury Secretary, who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new U.S. debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives.
[snip]
Wall Street has got away with its raid on the public treasury. Now, pockets full, it wants to pay for the heist by curtailing Social Security and Medicare. Having deprived the working population of homes, jobs, and health care, Wall Street is now after the elderly’s old age security.
Social Security, formerly an untouchable "third rail of politics," is now "unsustainable," while the real unsustainables—a pre-1929 unregulated financial system and open-ended multi-trillion dollar Global War Against Terror—are the new untouchables.
This transformation signals the complete capture of American democracy by an oligarchy of special interests.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury..."
Unless you believe Alice Rivlin, Pres. Clinton's budget director, is a right-wingnut, you can't fault the new proposal. It is the one proposed by Rivlin and Ryan in the report of Pre. Obama's deficit reduction committee. It is not a voucher program, but a premium support program exactly like that enjoyed by members of Congress and most federal workers.
Far from unfairly enriching the wealthy, it expects them to now pay their fair share for medical services during their retirement. The greatest premium supports will go the the poorest and sickest, period.
No changes are proposed at all to health care for those turning 65 before January 1, 2021 which gives everyone time to re-tool their retirement plans.
First, it lumps Medicare and Medicaid, while the 2 programs and Ryan's meat ax changes to them are quite different. (Ryan's Medicaid proposal basically allows state to cut benefits deeply, resulting in more sick poor people and more emergency room visits paid for by all of us.)
Next, it confuses separate proposals from Ryan and Rivlin with the unadopted work coming out of the deficit commission.
Then, it ignores the way Ryan's Medicare proposal ends up cutting medical care for the elderly by removing the current commitment and replacing it with capped funds that will not keep up with rising costs.
The reference to all of this not "enriching the wealthy" ignores the overall context for Ryan's ideas, where not only is the long-term redistribution of wealth to the rich continued (including making the Bush tax cuts permanent), it is made worse by further cuts in taxes for wealthy individuals and corporations. And the really hurtful budget cuts fall on the elderly and poor, as GOP assaults on programs for nutrition, child health, education, etc continue while the safety net is turned into a "good luck with the insurance companies" bazaar.
Yeah, Ryan gives people time to "re-tool their retirement plans," i.e., for most of us, time to prepare to work longer with less help and more insecurity, while for the rich, time (and funds) to enjoy that extra sports car!
Whatever else you can say about Wall Street--and it is volumes--all unprintable--if they redeem themselvs via my retirement plan I will incrementally forgive them.
When my home regains its 2007 value I might exonerate them completely.
We paid to bail out the banks. We paid to bail out the corporations. We're still paying with high gas and food prices.
Those of you that don't think you will be affected by these insane policies better think again. You may think that your job or business is safe and that these people are working in DC on your behalf, but the real truth will come out if Wall Street fails again and/or prices get so high that more small businesses go under.
Quite the opposite. Congressman Ryan intends to insure tens of millions of workers that those benefits WILL still be around for them. Without reform tens of millions of workers must worry whether those benefits they paid for all those years will even exist.
On banks, Mr. Baker sounds like a tea partier.
If the government doesn't honor the same patent laws the rest of us do there will be $270 billion less invested into research and development by the pharmaceuticals. Don't come crying to me when the chemo isn't curing your cancer.
There are 3 problems with forcing doctors to accept the same pay as those in Canada. First, health care providers already take a loss on Medicare/aid patients and have to make up for it by charging the rest of us more. Second there is a huge shortage of doctors in Canada. There is a 2 year wait to get a general practitioner and if you don't have one of those you can't get in to see a specialist. This punches a whole in his voucher for Canada idea. And third doctors in Canada don't have to pay out half of their salaries in malpractice insurance. If you want to drive costs down the first thing you need is tort reform.
http://www.darkdaily.com/newfoundland-premier-danny-williams-heart-surgery-in-the-u-s-triggers-debate-on-healthcare-in-canada-224
So, what will they do when they get sick? Why, go to the ER of course, just like the rest of the un/under-insured. Since those costs can't be absorbed by the hospitals (which run in the red all the time as it is), they'll just pass it on to the insurance companies in the form of larger bills. And, of course, the insurance companies will pass that on to us in the form of higher premiums (after they skim off ~10% for op costs and another 3.4% for profits vs ~3% op costs for medicare and 0% for medicare's profits).
I haven't studied Ryan's plan in detail, but if he plans to save money by privatizing medicare, he drops two letter grades before leaving the starting gate... one for not saving on healthcare costs and another for adding to it.