Paul Ryan Wants to Eliminate Medicare

Paul Waldman at TAPPED with the waddup about Paul Ryan's "plan":

If you were paying attention to Republicans over the last couple of days, you'd have heard a lot of repetitions of a particular idea, when the subject of House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan's new budget proposal came up. "Chuck Schumer and others are going to attack them for the proposals they've made, rather than to try to work in a constructive way," said Sen. John Cornyn. "We are giving them a political weapon to go out against us, but they will have to lie and demagogue to make that a political weapon," said Ryan himself.

Here's the thing: if a criticism is true, it's not demagoguery. Yes, in criticizing Ryan's plan, Democrats will be saying "It eliminates Medicare." That will (and should) make many people who hear it afraid. But you know what? Ryan's plan eliminates Medicare! It takes it from being a single-payer insurance program, in which everyone over 65 is covered no matter what, and turns it into a voucher program, in which seniors will get money from the government, with which they can then go buy insurance from one of the friendly private insurance companies. It eliminates Medicare on a ten-year delayed fuse (so if you're over 55 now, you'll still have access to the program that has been working spectacularly well for the last forty years), but after that, you'll just be getting a voucher (there's some dispute over whether "voucher" is the appropriate term given how the payments would be made, but that's essentially what it is). At that point, you can call it whatever you want, but it won't be Medicare anymore.

The Republicans don't want you to know what they really would like to do, otherwise you might...you know...not like it. I can see grandma pleading before the death panels right now.

I am Frank Chow and I approved this message