Romney Goes Severely Conservative on Medicare

Now that the Republican candidates have agreed on setting back women's health care to the 1950s, Mitt Romney is breaking out of the pack by announcing he'd raise the eligibility age for Medicare. All the Republican candidates want to eliminate Medicare as we know it and replace it with vouchers for inadequate private insurance. But now Romney, in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, kicked it up a notch: He wants people to wait a few more years before they can get GOP's lousy coverage.

The GOP plan eliminates the Medicare guarantee of affordable coverage and shifts thousands of dollars in medical costs to seniors. In the first year alone, seniors would be responsible for $6,400 in added out-of-pocket costs.

Romney wants to raise Medicare eligibility age by one month per year and eventually tie the age to life expectancy. It's just plain wrong to make people wait. It will cause people to go without care and cost businesses more money. This is just another way of weakening Medicare and making seniors pay more so the super-rich can continue to get big tax breaks.

This was yet another Romney flip-flop. He has repeatedly said he would never, ever cut Medicare. But that's exactly what he plans to do. Romney is even going farther than the extremist Ryan-Wyden plan, which also decimates Medicare.

Romney wants to increase the eligibility age and force a whole new population of seniors to work longer and longer before getting back what they paid in to the Medicare system from their wages. I guess this is what it means to be severely conservative.