GOP: Medicare tinkering anew

16 February 2010 |permalink | email article

Last summer at a town hall meeting of angry conservatives an older man was seen on national television railing against the Obama administration’s health care reform policy while shouting “don’t take away my Medicare.” He was apparently unaware that Ronald Reagan once warned that Medicare would destroy America’s freedom. 

As the Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman noted last week in his New York Times column, the party opposite while posing as staunch defenders of Medicare, hates the concept and over time seeks to dismantle the whole program.

The Republican process of dismantling would begin with spending cuts of about $650 billion over the next decade. That’s more, Krugman believes, than the roughly $400 billion (not $500 billion) in Medicare savings projected in Democratic health bills.

At the heart of the Republican budget plan is the “Roadmap for America’s Future,” released by Rep. Paul Ryan of Illinois which is generally seen as the path the GOP would take if it regains power, and a Social Security plan almost identical with the Bush administration proposals five years ago.

Under the Ryan proposal, nobody currently under 55 would be covered by Medicare as it now exists. Those folks would receive vouchers and told to buy their own insurance. By the time Americans in their 20s, or 30s, reached the age of eligibility, the Medicare program would virtually be toast.

Those covered by Medicare now, or will enter the program in the next decade, are safe according to the roadmap. Except that is, for the fact that the plan “strengthens the current program such as income-relating drug benefit premiums to ensure long-term sustainability.”

Krugman warns that unless Democrats don’t get their act together and push their almost-completed health care reform across the goal line soon, the “Republican breathtaking act of staggering hypocrisy will succeed.” The buck stops at Obama’s desk.

 

148