Medicare is not just any program. It's a program that saves lives and helps older Americans stay healthy. Since 1965, the Medicare system has successfully and efficiently provided millions of seniors in Nevada and across the country with the quality health services that they have paid for all their working lives. In addition to Social Security, the Medicare program is one of the most important social safety nets this country has ever known.
Unfortunately, 47 years after Medicare's creation, the program is under assault by Washington politicians who don't understand just how much Nevada's senior citizens depend on these guaranteed healthcare benefits.
My opponent in the campaign for the United States Senate is one of those politicians.
On April 15, 2011, then Congressman Dean Heller voted for a budget proposal put forward by Wisconsin Republican Congressman and now vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan that would essentially end Medicare.
Then, on May 25, 2011, following his appointment to the U.S. Senate after the resignation of Senator John Ensign, Heller had the opportunity to vote for the proposal once again. Not only did he take that opportunity, he relished it. He said he was "proud" to be the only member of Congress that voted for the Ryan plan twice.
Why is that significant? Because according to the conservative, pro-business Wall Street Journal, the Ryan budget proposal would "essentially end Medicare" and turn the program over to the private insurance industry.
Heller's proposal would end guaranteed benefits for seniors by providing a voucher to buy insurance on the private market. This would make the system less efficient and more expensive for older Americans compared to traditional Medicare. In fact, while health care costs would increase for all those who receive vouchers, the vouchers would not increase in value to keep up with the costs.
Independent analysts such as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have shown that this plan would dramatically increase the average premium for Medicare beneficiaries in Nevada and across the country. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the increase would be approximately $6,000 a year for the same coverage they currently receive under Medicare! The average senior on Social Security receives nearly $15,000 a year in benefits, $6,000 is almost half the income many seniors live on. If the Ryan-Heller budget became law, where would our seniors find the additional $6,000 to pay for their health care? To add insult to injury, if Ryan and Heller had it their way, seniors in Nevada would also have to pay $15 million more for prescription drugs starting this year.
Some politicians and so-called fact checkers claim the proposal I just described doesn't technically "end" Medicare. They are wrong. The seniors' healthcare system that Senator Dean Heller proudly voted twice to implement is unrecognizable to the Medicare program that Nevada seniors depend on today.
Instead of relying on guaranteed benefits to take care of their healthcare needs, seniors would be at the mercy of private insurance company bureaucrats who for the first time would be allowed to come between patients and their doctors.
Seniors would be forced to pay thousands of dollars more a year for the coverage they are already receiving. And if the voucher doesn't cover the service and you can't pay? Tough luck. You're on your own.
You can call that Medicare if you want -- but that's not the program created 47 years ago.
The reality is that Senator Heller's plan terminates the Medicare program and creates a whole new system where private insurance companies are in charge.
That is not Medicare.
Just because some people claim that Atlantic City is like Las Vegas, that doesn't make that town in New Jersey anything close to the Entertainment Capital of the World.
I oppose Senator Heller's plan, but I also recognize that we need to take actions to address the long term solvency of the current Medicare system.
We must make improvements to strengthen the program like reducing waste, fraud and abuse in the program; saving billions of dollars in administrative spending by adopting forward thinking measures like electronic records; allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices just like the VA does, allowing the re-importation of prescription drugs, and actively promote accountable care organizations that integrates coordinate health care services.
Republicans and Democrats must work together to implement common sense solutions to save the program.
However, what we must not do is dismantle the system altogether, while keeping the same name and pretend that's Medicare. Ending Medicare is not something to be proud of.
5. The candidate says:
"Seniors would be forced to pay thousands of dollars more a year for the coverage they are already receiving." Actually a bunch of left wing Harvard professors just ran the numbers and found that Traditdional Medicare would have cost $400 less in 2009 than it actually cost if the Ryan plan had existed in 2009. The "thousands of dollars more" lie is just part of nationwide Democratic party trick to fool senior citizens and I am one senior citizen who is sick of the depraved indifference to us by Democrats
Wrapping up, and I can't call this a lie, but it is pretty scary. The candidate's solution is to put all senior citizens in HMOs (the candidate calls them accountable care organizations) Why don't put us in camps in the desert too? And the candidate says Ryan wants to end Medicare as we know it???
3. The candidate says the Ryan "proposal would (provide) a voucher to buy insurance on the private market."
That is so false as to mean the candidate is willfully lying to people the candidate wants votes from. The Ryan proposal is a premium support program not a voucher program. Alice Rivlin, the Clinton budget director, explained the difference in detail in late April in Congress. But put simply, food stamps are vouchers. The Ryan Plan does not provide a voucher.
And it does not let the beneficiaries who are not under 55 who would use it beginning 10 years from now buy on the private market. They would buy on the Medicare exchange just the way we seniors buy C and D today. And the way most people not on Medicare buy insurance today at their place of work.
4, Another lie from the candidate:
"the vouchers would not increase in value to keep up with the costs."
Of course as explained above there are no vouchers but under the Ryan budget the premium support would be allowed to increase at the same rate as President Obama allows Medicare to increase under PPACA, What hypocrisy
1. The candidate says:
"Since 1965, the Medicare system has ... provided millions of seniors... health services that they have paid for all their working lives." Only Medicare beneficiaries retiring now paid in "their whole working lives." If you are an average-age Medicre beneficiary (75-80, not counting the disabled) you only paid in about half your working life
2. The candidate also says
"Washington politicians... don't understand just how much... senior citizens depend on these guaranteed healthcare benefits." Can't speak for Nevada's statiistics but nationwide Medicare is so bad that only 8% of us seniors "depend on" it. The rest of us scramble and scrape enought money together to afford our employment-retiree insurance or Medigap or Parts C and D that George Bush gave us.
That's because the "guranteed healthcare benefits" in Medicare don't include catastrophic coverage, can cost a senior $6000 a year in hospital co-pays if admitted inpatient, thousands more if in a hospital but only observed, 20% co-pays (hundreds of dollars) for almost every procedure -- preventive or otherwise -- given outpatient or by an MD, no drug/annual-physical/aural/vision/dental coverage, and severe geographic restrictions on all of this live along the Canadian or Mexican border (or any of us seniors who might visit there).
Let me read all the candidate's article and see what else the candidate doesn't know about Medicare.
What is really unfortunate is when a politician running for high office can't see that Medicare is dying from a deep structural flaw. With 10,000 seniors retiring every day Medicare must be rebuilt from the ground up. I'm no Romney fan but at least his running mate Paul Ryan has a brain and has the courage to offer a solution instead of passing the buck or worse; blaming the OTHER party.
Why can't we stop with the Democrat talking points, and start with an HONEST discussion on the future of ALL entitlements and our oncoming debt crisis--hopefully before it HITS?
I'm trying to figure out how that's not "socialism" or "Welfare" according to Republican's. Isn't that still the Government handing out tax payer $? Seriously.
Where are all the people who complain that THEY don't want to pay for other people's health Care with THEIR tax dollars?
What makes this even more baffling to me is those people who now get SS and Medicare benefits, actually paid for those benefits THEMSELVES out of every pay check they earned their entire working lives. No one is GIVING them anything. They PAID for SS and Medicare.
But now some how...the Government just GIVING Voucher$ to people, tax payer $ vouchers...is okay ?
What am I missing?
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/313825/obamacare-changed-everything-yuval-levin#close
Rasing Taxes simply nets less Revenue to Government.
Either get Economy growing much faster or face the facts !
DEMS keep talking about Roads and Bridges ? That won't accomplish much.
Private Sector Investment is only way to make America work again.
(5,000,000) less jobs today than when Obama took Office.