Video of Ryan Advocating Breakup of Medicare in 2011

SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 2012

Ryan Revealed He Wanted to "Break Up" Medicare in 2011

At an April 2011 town hall in Lake Geneva, WI, Paul Ryan answered an audience member's question about his support for the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit bill.

One of the reasons he said supported the bill? That it would give the country "new ideas about how to break up the Medicare monopoly"(0:35):

"What I liked about  [Medicare Part D] versus the alternative that would have made it into law: … it gave us new ideas about how to break up the Medicare monopoly, so we can get choice and competition in the program."

This was not a gaffe -- the description of Medicare as an ineffectual monopoly that needed to be broken up has been a standard line in Ryan's rhetoric going back years. Matt Yglesias wrote of another Ryan appearance in May 2011 where he voiced his support for breaking up "the Medicare monopoly."

And in 2009, Ryan said this at an event at the National Press Club:

Government-monopolized health service contradicts everything America stands for. It conflicts with our people’s character…it conflicts with moral principles…it conflicts with market freedom…it conflicts with democracy…and it conflicts with American health care excellence that still draws patients from socialist utopias for medical treatments in this country.

Let's substitute "Medicare" for his term of "government-monopolized health service." Because that -- along with the public option -- was what Ryan was talking about collectively in his speech:

[Medicare] contradicts everything America stands for. It conflicts with our people’s character…it conflicts with moral principles…it conflicts with market freedom…it conflicts with democracy…and it conflicts with American health care excellence that still draws patients from socialist utopias for medical treatments in this country.

There's no shortage of similar statements Ryan has made over the years about wanting to end Medicare -- fire up YouTube or C-SPAN video search or Google News or Lexis Nexis and they'll be found. Going back and looking at them might help give the media a better sense of the truly radical nature of Ryan's ideology -- and why even Republicans were and still are running away from it in droves.