No program faces bigger changes under Mr. Ryan’s budget than Medicare, the program providing health coverage for the elderly, and his plan to overhaul the program forms the basis in many respects for Mr. Romney’s plan — and Mr. Biden just took it on head on.
Mr. Ryan’s plan calls for reshaping the current, government-sponsored defined benefit fee for service insurance system. Under his plan, which would begin a decade from now, each beneficiary would receive a fixed amount of money — Democrats call it a voucher — to purchase private insurance or buy into the existing government program. Under the most recent Ryan plan, the money, known as premium support, would rise each year by the growth of the economy, plus 0.5 percentage points, considerably slower than health care’s current rate of inflation. (Alan: The difference between "plus 0.5%" - and the higher rate of inflation is the ever-increasing difference seniors will pay out of pocket. Furthermore, the difference between "plus 0.5%" and each year's higher rate of inflation will compound over time, until Medicare, in the not distant future, withers into unrecognizability. The Romney-Ryan plan is not just mistaken; it is deliberately destructive of government's role in providing medical care for seniors.)
Mr. Ryan believes competition will drive down the cost of health care, keeping the voucher’s value up to date. The Congressional Budget Office projected that over time, the value of the voucher would erode, shifting the extra costs to the elderly.
Critics also warn that under Mr. Ryan’s plan, private insurers would try to sign up the healthiest seniors, leaving the sickest, most-expensive-to-cover elderly to enroll in the government program. That would boost the government’s costs and steeply erode the value of those recipients’ vouchers.
Mr. Biden noted that Mr. Romney’s original Medicare plan would have cost future beneficiaries $6,400 in higher costs and questioned what his current plan would cost. But it is difficult to assess what Mr. Romney’s plan would cost, because he has not released key details. (Alan: Ryan's "original Medicare plan" is a red herring, possibly a decoy to provide the GOP with a diversionary excuse that the original, obviously flawed plan has been discarded. As decoy, the "original GOP Medicare plan" would "draw fire" from irate liberals, thus diffusing their energy and confounding their effort, while simultaneously, the GOP dismissed the kerfuffle: "Oh! You're talking about our original plan. That has nothing to do with our new-and-improved plan." When Joe Biden looked straight at the camera telling viewers that Romney-Ryan were leading them over a cliff, he was speaking plain truth.)
Unlike Mr. Ryan, who proposed capping the growth of premium support to the growth of the economy, plus 0.5 percentage points, Mr. Romney has not specified how much money he would give to future beneficiaries to buy coverage, or how fast it would grow — making the effects of his proposal difficult to assess. (Alan: In contemporary slang, to "cap" means to kill - usually with a firearm. Beware of Ryan's "capped" Medicare program. It is deadly.)
The Romney campaign’s policy director, Lanhee Chen, wrote that while higher-income seniors might be asked to pay more under Mr. Romney’s plan, “all seniors will be guaranteed sufficient support because the support is actually set based on what plans will cost.”
But the campaign has not said how its plan would work. (Alan: The Romney-Ryan campaign never answers any question that would pin down "nuts and bolts." Instead, Romney-Ryan conduct a "faith-based campaign" aimed at citizens who believe "principles" are all-important, and that the practical enactment of those principles is a tawdry distraction from the "moral high ground" of Absolute Purity.) A question and answer section of the campaign’s Web site puts it this way: “How high will the premium support be? How quickly will it grow? Mitt continues to work on refining the details of his plan, and he is exploring different options for ensuring that future seniors receive the premium support they need while also ensuring that competitive pressures encourage providers to improve quality and control cost.”
Mr. Romney has suggested keeping the growth of the subsidies below the rate of medical inflation in the past. He told the Washington Examiner last December that allowing the subsidies to grow at the rate of medical inflation “would have no particular impact on reining in the excessive cost of our entitlement program.” (Alan: Romney-Ryan are planning "The Ultimate Death Panel," a plan that will say Medicare's vitality until it dies the death of a thousand cuts. I do not know if Romney and Ryan are consciously nefarious, or unconsciously misguided. Either way, their Medicare plan signals the destruction of government-sponsored healthcare for seniors.)
If his campaign’s theory that increased competition among private plans will slow the growth of health care costs proves wrong, future beneficiaries could well face higher costs.
Mr. Romney’s pledge to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law would also cost them more, because part of the law helps Medicare beneficiaries pay for prescription drugs by filing the so-called doughnut hole.) But without knowing the size of the subsidies or how fast they would grow, it is impossible to assign a dollar value to the cost, as the Obama campaign has tried to do.
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"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with
which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more
idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are
at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient
times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound
up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only
unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is
theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer
any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes
evil.” Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas
Merton - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton
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