Dr. Margaret Flowers: Ryan Turns Knife on Medicare, Medicaid

[marmar]

Published on Thursday, April 7, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Ryan Turns Knife on Medicare, Medicaid

by Margaret Flowers


Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee, unveiled two proposals this week which if enacted would constitute a mortal threat to our nation’s health – particularly to the health of our seniors and our most vulnerable populations.

The first proposal, Senate Joint Resolution 10, would amend the Constitution by imposing rigid and arbitrary restraints on federal spending. The second, his fiscal year 2012 federal budget resolution (misleadingly and eerily called “The Path to Prosperity”), would essentially kill the Medicare program and gut Medicaid, among its other nasty effects.

Both proposals should be emphatically rejected.

Ryan clearly has health care on his hit list. He stressed the problem of health care costs during his final testimony to President Obama’s bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform last December. He said then that he would borrow pieces of the commission’s report for the federal budget, but his latest proposals are in fact much more radical. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/07