When it comes to its Medicare scheme, the Republican (aka "Ryan") Budget is a total fraud, as will be explained in a more comprehensive article shortly.
But, it is also instructive to consider the Republican Medicare scheme's macro-effects beyond just the provision of health care for senior citizens alone.
It would devastate entrepreneurship (i.e., risk-taking) and, since new businesses are the primary source of new jobs, would kill job growth. If one believes Republicans' rhetoric and not their policies, these are the activities they claim to champion.
It is no accident that the era of entrepreneurship began soon after Medicare was passed. One of the primary drivers to passing Medicare in the first place was the potentially devastating financial impact on children (and thus on grandchildren) when a parent became ill. And that was in 1965 when the costs of health care were much lower because there was far less that medicine could do to manage illness, maintain wellness and reduce suffering. There were, for example, no MRI machines to search for potential causes of disease symptoms; there were no stents to keep clogged heart arteries open, and no bypass surgery to relieve angina (pain from inadequate oxygen to the heart). There were only a few drugs to treat cancer; bone marrow transplantation had not been invented.
That is, if the financial impact on his children of an elderly parent becoming ill were considered potentially devastating in 1965, imagine what it would be in 2011 when modern, but costly, technology is available to improve well-being and detect and treat diseases. Before the Bush Recession, had there been no Medicare, people might have considered a second mortgage on their homes as a hedge, but that second mortgage was already being used to fund college education, and buy 'big-ticket' items like an additional room, new appliances, new cars and so forth. Today, and probably for a very long time, one's home is at best a place to live, not a source of major cash.
The Ryan Medicare scheme would, after 2022, throw seniors out from a government guarantee and into the private health insurance system with vouchers to help pay premiums. The vouchers percentage of the premiums decline over time. What would premium costs be for a person previously covered under a spouse's employer's medical plan who has lung and heart problems? For a man who has prostate cancer, or a woman who has breast cancer? Could they even get insurance?
Since Ryan also wants to repeal President Obama's Affordable Health Care Act, there would be no prohibition against insurance companies denying insurance for pre-existing conditions or throwing a person off of coverage when they became ill, or re-impose annual or lifetime caps on coverage? Indeed, what would the impact be on insurance premiums in general if people over 65 were included in the coverage pool?
If the Ryan Medicare scheme became law, what would young families do, planning both for major financial obligations when their children were ready for college and their parents becoming ill? Risk-taking in one's career (working, say, for a start-up) or even pooling resources to do a start-up would not be high on the list. And, how would grandma feel about her illness costing her grandchildren their college educations?
Although a rise in the savings rate is usually good, it can also be overdone, and since the saved money is pre-ordained for future medical expenses, it is not "liquid", and thus not really available for investment or purchase of big-ticket items.
Although the Ryan Medicare Scheme is not the only place his budget raises society's insecurity and thus diminishes risk-taking, entrepreneurship and job growth, it is probably the single most threatening.
If healthcare were not provided by other countries you know Republicans would shout it from the rood tops. If it comes up all Republicans can say it how those are socialist countries as if that is a bad thing.
Even corporations would gain from effective healthcare systems in the US. The world is full of succesfull governments that use taxes to lift the standartd of living for their citizens. Now convince me that a high standard of living is bad for business!
For businesses to sell things they need populations that can pay through higher standards of living. One For All and All For ONE should be our motto even if it is originally French. Why are Republicans determined to take us to the most primitive levels of government where war and security seem to have the highest priority?
I'd say, maybe, but the thing is it seems like medical technology plateaued 20 or even 30 years ago.
I mean back in the 60s it seemed like heart transplants would become an outpatient service and we would have of course licked cancer.
But that hasn't happened. Meanwhile, the costs of expensive measurement technology have come down largely through efficiencies in the general computing and software industries...not through any specific "medical" advances.
The contrast of the Ryan proposal to the outline put forward by the President will form the logical basis for what is going to be a very important debate. I think it is clear that there is no possibility that Medicade and Medicare can go forward as is. With healthcare currently 16 to 18% of the GDP and running at an inflation rate of 4 to 7 times the other parts of the economy - healthcare might well become 1/2 of the whole economey in as few as 14 years. This result would be unacceptable and, both parties understand the math.
This debate will continue to shed marginal issues until it boils down to strategies of cost control - likely including: fraud control, co-payments (at some level) to keep the users involved with costs and a larger menu of higher co-paid elective add-ons to a basic level of service available to all.
As a part of this discussion there must be a strategy resulting in the rashening of expensive electives and exotic proceedures.
Interestingly, Ryan's private insurance voucher system might function if it began at birth for everyone. Then it would be a true insurance based on actuarial tables with quantifiable risks and could be competitively priced - leaving only 60 years of real problems to solve.
Your voice would be of great benefit in this discussion.
From:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3308
It would take demented people to beat us out of our retirement after we have all paid in extra since 1983.
The younger workers should get the same as we get without benefit cuts.
To quit subsidizing insurance companies in Medicare would help save money for Medicare.
Right now you can retire at 62 if you take a cut in your benefits. Republican leaders want to raise that early retirement age to 65.
I cannot help but worry about the 'Gang of Six'– Dick Durbin (D), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)
They are working on a fix to our programs and are said to be using a lot of the Bowles/Simpson plan. Conrad has always wanted to cut our programs. Today Dick Durbin said something to the effect he thought the programs had to be cut.
Now how does one go about gaining a Professional Iconoclast designation? I had to look it up, as it wasn't necessarily in my vocabulary, and hadn't ever stopped to learn what it meant, when I heard it in conversation or read it. Surprisingly enough, I have always been one, I just didn't know to describe myself in such a manner.
Once again, thank you.
So under Ryancare, Seniors, if they can manage to get health insurance at all, will get a small fraction of the cost being covered by the federal government. The rest of the cost will be whatever the insurance company wants to charge for as little actual coverage as it wants to give. Also no doubt it will include another favorite insurance priority of the Republicans, allowing your insurance company to relocate to whichever state has the weakest regulations.
But let's be honest, when the date comes and one brother gets Medicare and another gets Ryancare and one family sees their parents get Medicare and another get Ryancare, even though they have paid the same taxes, they will say 'oh well, I was born just a little too late, shucks'. No, they will demand fairness, which the Republicans will respond by making Ryancare cover rates until they almost fully taken care of. In other words no real budget savings but huge payouts to the insurance companies.
This is something entirely different than Medicare, both in philosophy and result.
Canadian-like healthcare and other social nets free individuals from their corporate dependence and allow small businesses to thrive because they no longer have a disadvantage in accessing employees because of their buying power and because it reduces their individual risk.
It matters not at all to me whether I pay the government for healthcare, as with Canada or I pay health insurance - one way or another, I pay. The difference is that with government healthcare I have someone on my side administering healthcare, an elected official (however remote) whereas otherwise I have an employer that will limit healthcare rules to fit their needs - not mine.
No corporation, except mine for me, has my interest in mind - only theirs.
I strenuously object, however to the Affordable Healthcare Act. A healthcare system that leaves healthcare insurance in the middle, taking at least 20%, to administer and profit, from my healthcare - enforced by a government protection racket - is absolutely unacceptable. The worst possible outcome.
As far as Medicare is concerned, yes it is paid for and has been paid for by working individuals ever working day of their lives. There are so many huge disparities in the program that need to be addressed such as fraud & the higher cost of Medicare Advantage plans compared to basic medicare. For those of you unaware, the Advantage plans get approx. 15% more from medicare than the cost of the basic plan, because they handle the claims and pay their own doctors, it is an HMO, and if you don't have any pre-existing conditions, and or need to see a doctor who isn't in their plan, it normally a pretty good deal for the recipient as well. The over riding costs is the issue, and it appears as though the President is prepared to address that disparity, according to his comments in his announced budget deficit agenda today.