"98% of Republicans in Congress Voted For Ryan's Medicare Rationing Scheme"

[applegrove]

98% of Republicans in Congress Voted For Ryan's Medicare Rationing Scheme

By Jon Perr at Crooks & Liars

http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/98-percent-republicans-congress-voted-ryans-medicare

"SNIP.......................................

Even as Mitt Romney was introducing Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, his campaign was preparing a defense of the House Budget Chairman's draconian Medicare proposals. With good reason. After all, in April 2011 the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast that Ryan's scheme to convert today's guaranteed Medicare insurance program into an underfunded voucher system would dramatically shift the health care costs onto America's seniors. And in February 2010, Ryan acknowledged his privatization plan for millions of future elderly constituted rationing.

But it's not just Team Romney that should be concerned about being caught red-handed with the proverbial gun pointed at the wildly popular program. Last year, 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators--98 percent of all Republicans in Congress--voted for Paul Ryan's budget and its blueprint to rationing Medicare.

To be sure, the Ryan budget blessed by Republicans on Capitol Hill means de facto rationing for the system that today serves 46 million American seniors. As the CBO documented last year, Ryan's plan to replace public insurance provided by the government with vouchers for the elderly to buy their own coverage in the private market means getting less care for more money. The CBO analysis concluded that "a typical beneficiary would spend more for health care under the proposal." Make that, as Director Douglas Elmendorf explained, a lot more.

Under the proposal, most elderly people who would be entitled to premium support payments would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system. For a typical 65-year-old with average health spending enrolled in a plan with benefits similar to those currently provided by Medicare, CBO estimated the beneficiary's spending on premiums and out-of-pocket expenditures as a share of a benchmark amount: what total health care spending would be if a private insurer covered the beneficiary. By 2030, the beneficiary's share would be 68 percent of that benchmark under the proposal, 25 percent under the extended-baseline scenario, and 30 percent under the alternative fiscal scenario.
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[applegrove]

1. I hope Obama can hang Ryan and his plans around the neck of all Republicans.

Republicans in Congress are not popular. Ryan is not popular. Let Obama tie them into one big 'bow' together.

[freshwest]

2. +1. If only the media would give us a break here. All Koch GOP shills

[HooptieWagon]

3. Agreed. The DCCC and DSCC need to tie this noose around all GOP incumbents.

The Ryan pick brings his (and the GOPs) voted plans for Medicare to national attention. This election is the time to turn their votes into nooses and show the public how extremist the GOP has become.