08-19-2012, 01:43 AM
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PW Enlightenment
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Republican Medicare plan would be a gamble
Quote:
While Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan are campaigning on a promise to "preserve and protect" Medicare, their proposal to revamp the popular government health insurance program would be the plan's biggest gamble since it was created nearly half a century ago.
The members of the Republican presidential ticket argue that giving seniors vouchers to shop for a private insurance plan would spark competition among health insurers, holding down costs and ensuring the long-term viability of Medicare.
But several previous experiments with privatizing Medicare insurance coverage have ended up raising costs to taxpayers. And on the other side, there is little evidence that moving millions of elderly and disabled patients into commercial health plans will protect their coverage or tame the nation's skyrocketing healthcare tab.
"Doubling down on private insurers is a risky proposition," said University of North Carolina health policy professor Jonathan Oberlander, a leading Medicare historian. "Medicare has lost money on private plans for a long time."
In recent days, the campaign debate has focused on one element of the Medicare puzzle: President Obama's effort to reduce Medicare spending by about $716 billion over the next decade as part of his healthcare overhaul. Romney, accusing Obama of "raiding" the program, says he would restore that money. Ryan, who once proposed the same cuts, now says he agrees with his running mate.
By restoring the spending that was cut, Romney and Ryan would open a large deficit in Medicare, pushing the program's main trust fund into the red in just four years, rather than 12 under Obama's plan. The former Massachusetts governor hasn't said how he would address that.
The sniping over those cuts, however, obscures bigger questions about what Medicare will look like for the roughly 50 million elderly and disabled Americans who rely on it.
In the face of unsustainable costs, Obama is pursuing a Medicare strategy, enacted in his 2010 healthcare law, that relies heavily on federal administration of the insurance program to force doctors and hospitals to improve their quality and efficiency. That is designed to preserve the program largely in its current form.
Romney, Ryan and other Republicans say that approach won't work.
"The future of Medicare should be marked by competition, choice, and by innovation, rather than bureaucracy, stagnation and bankruptcy," Romney said last fall when he unveiled his Medicare plan. "Tomorrow's seniors should have the freedom to choose what their health coverage looks like."
If Romney and Ryan are wrong, however, seniors would end up paying much more for their medical coverage. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency, estimates that Ryan's latest plan — which closely parallels Romney's — would increase the average cost for a senior entering the program in 2030 by as much as $2,200 a year.
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Republican Medicare plan would be a gamble - latimes.com
More at site.
Will voters take the chance?
Time will tell.
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218 Days till Christmas 
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Courtesy of Swissman
That's another myth being perpetrated. Don't believe me look it up. 
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