GOP presidential candidate took a stab at explaining his Medicare plan yesterday. It was short on details, and somewhat confusing. A lot of the confusion comes from conflating the Romney plan with the Ryan plans (there are at least two of them for Medicare). In the end, the campaign is left with providing the seven key points they have had listed on their site for a while now. Ginger Gibson sums them up for us. She also notes some of the problems.
• Nothing would change for current Medicare recipients or those about to retire.
• The program would switch to a voucher program that allows recipients to buy their own health insurance.
• Romney would require all insurance companies to offer coverage comparable to current Medicare coverage.
• Any senior who buys a more expensive plan would have to do so out-of-pocket. And anyone who buys a cheaper plan could use the rest of the voucher for other medical expenses.
• The government will continue to offer Medicare as an option for purchase, like other private insurance coverage. If the government-run program costs more, seniors will have to pay the difference.
• Low-income seniors will get larger vouchers and wealthy seniors will receive smaller vouchers.
The final point, that competition will drive down the cost, is less a plan element and more of an argument in favor of the voucher structure.
What Romney’s outline doesn’t include is a total-savings estimate, cost estimates for changing the plan, an age cutoff for when it would be implemented, how the vouchers would be administered, how the government-controlled plan would be administered or what effect his proposals would have on the deficit or current budget.
The questions posed by Gibson are good ones, but she misses a couple of the most important ones. Medicare Advantage, the privately run arm of Medicare, was formed with the idea that the private sector would be more efficient and reduce costs. Instead, Medicare Advantage programs cost, on average, 14% more than does standard Medicare. Of course the numbers are actually even worse, since the sickest patients remain in standard Medicare. So, if we adopt the Romney plan, what happens if history is repeated? With Medicare as the public option (the irony), will everyone end up in standard Medicare anyway? Do we pay the higher costs for the private options and see Medicare costs rise faster?
The Ryan plan, at least one of them, sets a cap on Medicare spending at GDP plus 0.5%. If Romney adopts this from the Ryan plan, how is it implemented? Are all vouchers reduced in value? More means testing? Reduced payments to providers?
Mitt Romney has been running for president since 2008. He has a reputation for competence and business acumen. Medicare is the single largest cause of our future debt, an issue the GOP claims is important. I expect better answers on this important topic.
the Ryan plans (there are at least two of them for Medicare).
My good Steve,
Once again reveal yourself to be a pathological liar. There are not two Ryan plans currently being offered. There is a previous Ryan plan which he has replaced with a subsequent, updated plan. Ryan is offering only his one, current plan, not, as you falsely claim, his previous plan and his current plan.
Steve, please stop lying. We all empathize with the burdens you yourself have revealed you continue to carry from being the son of a psychotic, schizophrenic mother who tried to kill you twice. This does not, however, give you the license to flood Alexandria with the pretense that you are the objective, scientific anesthesiologist while behind that charade deceive your audience with bald-faced lies; it only makes you look so desperately low in self-esteem that you are driven to lies you know full well are lies and thus makes you embarrassingly pathetic.
If you cannot stop lying, and I do understand pathological liars have great difficulty doing so, please leave Alexandria. I would prefer Alexandria be populated with the broadest variety of ordinary, honest individuals than to be dominated by one lying neurotic.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
” There are not two Ryan plans currently being offered.”
Please cite where I said currently being offered. There are two plans. Ryan is not the potential president, that would be Romney. I dont know which one, perhaps neither, he will draw upon to help make his own plan. You appear to have inside information on this. Could you provide a source.
Steve
My good Steve,
My good Steve: “are” indicates currency among readers of English, which was your deceitful intention.
The truthful way to speak to other people reading you is to say that there was an original Ryan plan which now exists only in memory which Ryan has since supplanted in present time with his one single current plan which has replaced it; but thank you for amplifying and clarifying the nature of your intended deceit: that for some reason Romney, having chosen Ryan as his VP, will now campaign on Medicare as he has been doing but actually has a likelihood of choosing the Ryan plan which Ryan has repudiated in favor of the Ryan plan which Ryan has since supplanted it with.
As long as everyone who reads you understands the nature of your pathology, that in itself becomes a value to Alexandria readers: the pathologically lying physician.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Both plans still exist. I have provided links to them. They are in existence. Some conservatives have expressed a preference for the first plan. Presidents have initially campaigned claiming they would not put some things in their health care plans, like a mandate, then put them in later. I try not to make assumptions about what people will do, other than suspect that they will do mostly what they have done in the past.
Steve
I really admire your restraint. No way I could respond so temperately to Our Glorious Leader’s insults. Hang in there.
No problem. It is all just part of the internet. I dont really get upset unless someone is dying or people who dont speak my language point big guns at me, although if MIB is correct, I should worry about the little guns also.
Steve
My good Steve,
FactCheck.org thinks this about your mendacious constructions concerning Ryan’s Medicare plans:
[shrug] Very well, keep up the good work, then. Now, where other outlets might grade various claims made by awarding them “Pinocchios”, Alexandria will be able to weigh its posts and comments on the basis of how many “Steves” they might warrant.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Until Romney posts his plan, we dont know what he will choose from Ryan’s plans. I suspect this will come after the election. We know that Ryan only abandoned his first plan when he had to compromise. If they have a sweep, and win by a sizable margin, I would expect the first plan, the more ideologically pure one, to be back on the table. When push has come to shove, the GOP has backed out when a plan has Wyden’s name on it.
Steve