It was entirely predictable that the Democrats would demagogue House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s bold and fiscally sound budgetary proposal — but it takes remarkable political brazenness for them to attack it for something it doesn’t do, as they already have.
Thus, incoming party chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz complains of Ryan’s treatment of Medicare: “This plan would literally be a death trap for seniors.”
Funny: “Death trap for seniors” applies a whole lot more to the ObamaCare law that Democrats muscled through last year — which uses Medicare as a piggybank to fund their new entitlement program.
Ryan’s plan is an attempt to reform — and thus save — Medicare, while the president’s pet law not only failed to reform Medicare but loots from it. If it isn’t repealed, ObamaCare will be financed through a roughly even split of tax hikes and Medicare cuts.
Let’s compare Ryan’s proposal, which would repeal ObamaCare, to the course that President Obama has put us on:
It’s Obama who cut Medicare: The Congressional Budget Office reports that, from 2012 to 2021, the Democrats’ health-care overhaul will take a colossal $797 billion out of Medicare and related federal health programs to spend on ObamaCare.
In contrast, Ryan’s budget keeps Medicare savings in Medicare, using them to extend the program’s life.
Ryan increases seniors’ choices: Under his proposal, anyone now 55 or older would get to choose whether to stay in traditional Medicare or switch into the newly reformed Medicare program once it’s up and running in 2022. Neither ObamaCare nor President Obama’s budget — nor his new budget “framework” — offers such a choice.
The reformed Medicare Ryan envisions would be the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy. Seniors would have a choice of plans, and therefore a better choice of doctors, including doctors who’ve fled traditional Medicare and its low payment rates.
Seniors would choose the plan that works best for them, and the government (that is, the taxpayer) would subsidize the costs. The size of the subsidy would
vary with age and health status, but on average would equal the funding received by a beneficiary who’s enrolled in traditional Medicare in 2022, and would
rise with inflation from there.
Cost-cutting — rationing vs. competion: Ryan’s proposal would lower health costs by giving everyone involved in Medicare more opportunity and incentive to pursue or provide good value. ObamaCare is raising health costs — and the only way that it can eventually try to lower them is to ration care.
The ObamaCare law empowers the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an unelected body it created, to decide what coverage will or won’t be provided, when and to whom. Ryan’s budget would eliminate the board — Obama yesterday called for strengthening it.
Ryan’s proposal puts it well: “When it comes to controlling health-care costs and saving the nation from bankruptcy, the question is: Who gets the power? One centralized federal government, or 50 million empowered seniors holding providers accountable in a true marketplace? Patient power will always serve the needs of the people far better than bureaucrats managing the decline of a government-run system on the verge of bankruptcy.”
Ryan’s Medicare reforms would begin in 2022; ObamaCare really starts in 2014: The reformed Medicare wouldn’t begin until 2022 — and anyone enrolled in Medicare by then could choose to stay on traditional Medicare or switch to the new program. But no American could choose to opt out of ObamaCare when the law takes effect in earnest in 2014. Every American would be living under ObamaCare, paying for it, or both.
The choice is clear: Obama chose not to reform Medicare, but instead to raid it to help fund a vast new entitlement program. In contrast, Rep. Ryan wants to reform entitlements, repeal ObamaCare, and, in the process, reduce our deficit spending by a whopping 46 percent — or $4.4 trillion — over the next decade in relation to Obama’s budgetary proposal.
In doing so, Ryan’s proposal would put America back on a path to fiscal solvency and economic prosperity.
In answer to Ryan, Obama yesterday gave a speech paying lip service to fiscal responsibility and reform. But his “achievements” to date tell us that he really stands for the reverse — as our $14 trillion-and-rising national debt attests.
Jeffrey H. Anderson was the senior speech writer for Secretary Mike Leavitt at the US De partment of Health and Human Services.