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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Paul Ryan is determined to gut Medicare. This time he might succeed
Los Angeles Times - 17 hours ago
Paul Ryan is back to his idea of killing Medicare as we know it.
Ryan Plans to Phase Out Medicare in 2017
TPM - 2 days ago
Paul Ryan not sure on Obamacare replacement specifics, but guarantees that Medicare is toast
Daily Kos - 18 hours ago
Paul Ryan Plans to Phase Out Medicare in 2017 - Talking Points Memo
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/ryan-plans-to-phase-out-medicare-in-2017
2 days ago - It's about what's coming just after President-Elect Trump's inauguration. Paul Ryan has been pushing to phase out Medicare and replace it with ...
Jun 22, 2016 - House Speaker Paul Ryan's proposed blueprint for health reform ... age: Ryan would gradually increase the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 ...
Hey, Trump voters! Paul Ryan is already coming for your Medicare.
theweek.com/articles/661571/hey-trump-voters-paul-ryan-already-coming-medicare
1 day ago - But Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is a hardcore true believer in movement conservatism, which has been champing at the bit to slash these ...
Medicare | Paul Ryan
https://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9969
Last edited by untanglingwebs on Tue Nov 15, 2016 6:01 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Tue Nov 15, 2016 5:52 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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| Or if you have a parent who depends on Medicare, how can you help with their medical bills? Or are they just on their own? Ryan's death watch? |
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Tue Nov 15, 2016 5:54 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Published Since 2000
TPM EDBLOGOpinions, Context & Ideas From The TPM Editors
Ryan Plans to Phase Out Medicare in 2017
ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedNOVEMBER 13, 2016, 5:52 PM EDT
With all the other things we've discussed so far today, I wanted to return to one critical one. It's not about mights or maybes or fears of what's to come. It's about what's coming just after President-Elect Trump's inauguration. Paul Ryan has been pushing to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance for several years. But now it's real with unified Republican government. He just said he will try to rush it through early next year while repealing Obamacare.
Below is a transcript of what Ryan said on Fox's Special Report, along with a flat out false statement suggesting that Obamacare has weakened Medicare's finances.
BRET BAIER: Let's tick down these things. You have a debt ceiling coming up. How is that going to work?
PAUL RYAN: Thankfully, we're doing it with a republican president and congress. We can tackle our fiscal issues. We can tackle the oppressive taxes that are stifling job creation and business and making America uncompetitive. Having a debt limit, which occurs -- March is around the time this occurs. With president-elect trump -- with president trump and a congressional republican and congressional senate democrats in the minority and senate republicans in the majority makes a world of difference better. We can use this as an opportunity to get good things done.
BRET BAIER: Your solution has always been to put things together including entitlement reform. That is Paul Ryan's plan. That's not Donald Trump's plan.
PAUL RYAN: Well, you have to remember, when Obamacare became Obamacare, Obamacare rewrote medicare, rewrote medicaid. If you are going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well. What a lot of folks don't realize is this 21-person board called the ipap is about to kick in with price controls on Medicare. What people don't realize is because of Obamacare, medicare is going broke, medicare is going to have price controls because of Obamacare, medicaid is in fiscal straits. You have to deal with those issues if you are going to repeal and replace obamacare. Medicare has serious problems [because of] Obamacare. Those are part of our plan.
There are a couple key points to note here.
First, Ryan claims that Obamacare has put Medicare under deeper financial stress. Precisely the opposite is true. And it's so straightforward Ryan unquestionably knows this. The Affordable Care Act actually extended Medicare's solvency by more than a decade. Ryan's claim is flat out false.
Second, I've heard a few people say that it's not 100% clear here that Ryan is calling for Medicare Phase Out. It is 100% clear. Ryan has a standard, openly enunciated position in favor of Medicare Phase Out. It's on his website. It's explained explicitly right there.
Ryan says current beneficiaries will be allowed to keep their Medicare. Says. But after the cord is cut between current and future beneficiaries, everything is fair game. For those entering the system, Ryan proposes phasing out Medicare and replacing it private insurance with subsidies to help seniors afford the private insurance. That is unquestionably what it means because that is what Ryan says. So if you're nearing retirement and looking forward to going on Medicare, good luck. You're going to get private insurance but you'll get some subsidies from the government to pay the bill.
Through all the gobbledygook and bamboozlement, you'll find this line on Ryan's page: "For younger workers, when they become eligible, Medicare will provide a premium-support payment and a list of guaranteed coverage options – including a traditional fee-for-service option – from which recipients can choose a plan that best suits their needs."
This means, if you haven't gone on Medicare yet, when you do, you won't get Medicare. You'll get a "premium-support payment" - i.e., a check that will allow you to buy insurance from private insurers. The "support" in the phrase means it won't cover the whole amount. And in any case, rather than Medicare you'll have insurance from an insurance company, which everybody should love because haven't you heard from your parents and grandparents how bummed they were when they had to give up their private insurance for Medicare?
You'll hear lots of people calling this "reform" and other catchwords. But Medicare is a single payer, universal health care system. Replacing it with private insurance means getting rid of it. Even calling it "privatization" masks what is really afoot.
Every Democrat should be focused and talking about it volubly both as a matter of policy and politics. There isn't much time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josh Marshall
Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com. |
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Tue Nov 15, 2016 5:57 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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washingtonpost.com
Fact Checker
Paul Ryan’s false claim that ‘because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke’
By Glenn Kessler November 14 at 3:00 AM
(Zach Gibson/Getty Images)
“What people don’t realize is, because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke.”
— House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), interview with Fox News Channel, Nov. 10
Our eyebrows went up when we saw this quote from Ryan. It has been a bipartisan fallacy to claim that the old-age health program Medicare is going “broke,” which is incorrect for the reasons outlined below. But what was notable was he specifically blamed the Affordable Care Act for making Medicare go broke.
That’s doubly wrong. Let’s explain.
The Facts
“Broke” is an informal way of saying “bankrupt.” Or, as the dictionary says, “penniless.” President Obama and Vice President Biden in the past have also used this word to the describe Medicare’s finances, so Ryan is certainly not alone in using this misleading phrasing.
First of all, there are four parts to Medicare, which covers 55 million people: Part A (hospital insurance), Part B (medical insurance), Part C (Medicare Advantage — private plans for parts A and B), and Part D (prescription drug plans). Total Medicare expenditures were $648 billion in 2015, according to the latest Medicare trustees report.
But when politicians say “broke,” they are not talking about all of Medicare — just Part A, which covers hospital visits, hospice care, nursing facilities and the like.
Part B, which involves seeing a doctor, is paid out of general funds and premiums, as is Part D. Thus, if costs rise, premiums can be adjusted. But Part A is financed mainly through payroll taxes of 1.45 percent on earnings paid both by workers and employers; self-employed people pay 2.9 percent. The money raised is then credited to a pay-as-you-go trust fund, which uses the revenue raised to pay the benefits of Medicare beneficiaries.
With the baby-boom generation retiring at a rate of 10,000 people per day, that puts pressure on the long-term financing of the program because fewer workers will be supporting more retirees. Under current estimates, the trust fund will be depleted by 2028.
Although the Part A trust fund would be “depleted,” it would not be “penniless” or “broke.” That is because the government could still cover 87 percent of estimated expenses in 2028 — and 79 percent in 2040. So, yes, there would be a shortfall, but it doesn’t mean Medicare would be bankrupt.
There is no provision to use general revenue to make up the deficit, but there are various ways that Congress could deal with this problem, as it has in the past. In fact, from its inception, the Part A fund has been on the brink of going “broke.” Page 4 of a useful report by the Congressional Research Service, titled “Medicare: History of Insolvency Projections,” shows that in 1970, it was due to go “broke” in 1972.
So it’s bad enough to claim that Medicare is going broke. Now let’s turn to Ryan’s claim that Medicare is going broke because of Obamacare. It’s just a very strange comment.
The Affordable Care Act actually strengthened the near-term outlook of the Part A trust fund. The law includes a 0.9 percent payroll tax that hits the wages and self-employment income of wealthier Americans — above $250,000 per couple or $200,000 for a single taxpayer. That was estimated to raise an additional $63 billion for the Part A trust fund between 2010 and 2019. The law also was estimated to cut expenses, including $162 billion in productivity adjustments to provider payments and $86 billion in reduced payments to Medicare Advantage plans.
The net result was that the “insolvency” date was extended by 12 years . Before the law was passed, the trustees said in 2009, the fund was going to be depleted in 2017. “The short-range financial outlook for the HI [hospital insurance] trust fund is substantially more favorable than projected in last year’s annual report, primarily as a result of the Affordable Care Act,” the Medicare trustees said in their 2010 report, saying the fund would last until 2029.
In the 2016 trustees report, the fund was estimated to be depleted in 2028, two years earlier than the 2015 report, primarily because the consumer price index, representing inflation, did not rise as much as anticipated, reducing income projections. (In the long run, however, lower inflation will also reduce Medicare expenditures.) But that’s unrelated to the Affordable Care Act.
In fact, Republicans have vowed to repeal Obamacare, which would in turn make the trust fund’s situation instantly worse unless lawmakers found a way to make up the payroll tax revenue and program savings embedded in the Affordable Care Act.
CONTENT FROM JAGUAR
This artist is harnessing chaos to create
Polly Wales is at the forefront of a movement against perfection and mass production.
We asked Ryan’s office for specific examples of how Obamacare was making Medicare go broke. AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman, responded with a general statement: “By creating a new entitlement, raiding Medicare, and expanding Medicaid, Obamacare is putting even more fiscal pressure on our current health care programs and threatening seniors’ access to care. It is obvious to anyone, either the program goes broke or the government starts rationing care. Neither is acceptable.”
The Pinocchio Test
Medicare certainly faces financial stress as the baby-boom generation begins to retire in full force, but it’s important to get the facts straight. It’s bad enough that Ryan, like many politicians, uses imprecise rhetoric such as “broke”; that’s a Two-Pinocchio violation. But the House speaker really went off the rails when he said on national television that Obamacare is making the program go broke. That’s the exact opposite of what happened.
Four Pinocchios |
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Tue Nov 15, 2016 6:04 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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After GOP wins, Paul Ryan puts Medicare in the crosshairs
11/11/16 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
After the 2004 presidential election, Republicans were right where they wanted to be. A GOP president had narrowly prevailed, and he was eager to work with a House and Senate that were also controlled by his own party. And what was one of the top priorities for this ascendant Republican Party? At the time, it was privatization of Social Security.
This did not go over well. The public was not on board with the plan – many voters said it wasn’t what they had in mind when they voted for Republican candidates – and the privatization push not only failed, it sparked a rather intense backlash.
Twelve years after the last GOP sweep, Republicans are once again poised to take control of entire federal government, party leaders are establishing their new goals, and privatizing a popular social-insurance program is once again a top priority. In fact, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told Fox News’ Bret Baier yesterday that Medicare privatization is high on the party’s to-do list. New York’s Jon Chait explained:
“Your solution has always been to put things together, including entitlement reform,” asks Baier, using Republican code for privatizing Medicare. Ryan replies, “If you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well…. Medicare has got some serious issues because of Obamacare. So those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.”
Ryan tells Baier, “Because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke.”
This is critically important, in part because Ryan is brazenly lying. The budgetary reality, whether Republicans like it or not, is that the Affordable Care Act improved Medicare’s financial stability, extending the system’s solvency by more than a decade. There’s an inside-the-Beltway assumption that when it comes to fiscal arithmetic, Ryan can be trusted to get the numbers right. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.
But in this case, it’s also worth appreciating why Ryan is so shamelessly trying to deceive the public.
Throughout the Obama era, Ryan has pushed a radical budget plan that would effectively eliminate the Medicare system, phasing it out of existence and replacing it with a voucher system. Seniors, under the Speaker’s vision, would stop receiving guaranteed care under a popular and effective government-run program, and would instead receive vouchers that would help pay for coverage through private insurers.
Ryan has been an enthusiastic proponent of such a scheme throughout his career – long before “Obamacare” became the law of the land. Now, however, the Wisconsin congressman seems to think he can use the ACA as an excuse to do what he’s wanted to do anyway for nearly a decade. In other words, Ryan’s message for years has been, “I want to privatize Medicare.” Now, his message has become, “It’s Obamacare’s fault that we have to privatize Medicare.”
But we don’t. The Speaker is plainly and demonstrably wrong. Repealing the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t help Medicare’s finances; it would do the exact opposite, pushing the Medicare system closer to insolvency.
Telling the truth, however, wouldn’t help advance the plan Ryan has long advocated, so he’s using “Obamacare” as a convenient fig leaf.
The broader question remains who, exactly, the House Speaker is trying to convince. Clearly, one of the intended audiences of Ryan’s falsehood is the public, which has little appetite for his Medicare privatization plan. But let’s not forget that the Speaker may also be trying to convince a man by the name of Donald Trump – who’s at least paid lip service to the idea that Medicare needs to remain intact.
Will the incoming president reverse course and endorse his party’s Medicare privatization scheme? It’s hard to say for sure – because no one asked Trump during the campaign for his thoughts on Ryan’s budget blueprint. |
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Tue Nov 15, 2016 6:11 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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| After reviewing the 527 and independent PACs, there is a significant amount of health care providers that give large donations, even on the state level. Could this be what is driving Ryan? |
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Tue Nov 15, 2016 6:14 am |
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