What You Need to Know About Premium Support — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Now that Romney has embraced physically what he embraced verbally - privatiszation of Medicare and Social Security, abandonment of Medicaid by making it a matter of federal aid to state-designed programs - it;s time to learn what Ryan proposes. - GWC
What You Need to Know About Premium Support — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The budget resolution that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will unveil this week is expected to include a Medicare premium support proposal fashioned by Ryan and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).  Although billed as a kinder, gentler form of premium support, the Ryan-Wyden plan has the same basic features as earlier premium support proposals.[1] The Ryan-Wyden plan would shift substantial costs to Medicare beneficiaries rather than protect them from cost increases, in part because the payment that beneficiaries would receive to help them buy coverage would likely fail to keep pace with health care costs.  The plan also would likely lead to the gradual demise of traditional Medicare by making the pool of Medicare beneficiaries smaller, older, and sicker — and increasingly costly to cover.  Finally, the plan would produce few budgetary savings beyond those that the health reform law calls for, since both plans have the same target growth rate for Medicare costs.  The Ryan-Wyden plan is similar to Newt Gingrich’s 1995 proposal that, according to Gingrich, would have caused traditional Medicare to “wither on the vine.” " 'via Blog this'