“Kaiser Foundation Report Backs The Critics”: 60% Of Seniors Would Pay More For Medicare Under Romney-Ryan Voucher Plan
A new study out today by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation confirms what many have been saying for a very long time—the Romney-Ryan Medicare plan would result in six out of ten seniors paying substantially more for the same Medicare benefits they receive today.
The premium support approach to Medicare involves the government providing seniors with a set amount of money each year—pegged to the second lowest priced private health care plan available—in an effort to turn over health care for seniors to the private insurance market. While proponents of the approach believe that this will generate more competition in health care, make seniors more responsible for how they spend their health care dollars and result in less spending on seniors by the federal government, critics have argued that the sum of money the government would pay would be insufficient to cover the rising costs of health care, leaving seniors exposed to having to pay an ever growing portion of their health insurance coverage.
The Kaiser report backs up the critics.
According to Kaiser, the premium support approach (often referred to as a voucher plan) to Medicare—the hallmark of the Paul Ryan Medicare plan that has been endorsed and adopted by Governor Romney—would mean higher premium costs for more than half of beneficiaries currently enrolled in traditional Medicare—if such a program were in place today—while raising the costs for nearly all of those who participate in a Medicare Advantage program.
The study further found that the additional costs to seniors would vary from region to region, with areas of high per-capita Medicare spending seeing a cost boost for 80 percent of Medicare recipients.
While the Obama campaign was quick to trumpet the results of the study as further proof that the Romney-Ryan plan would mean dramatically higher costs to seniors when it comes to their healthcare, the Romney campaign fired back, noting that the Kaiser report says that it is not intended to model any specific proposal of either campaign.
The Romney troops are right to a point—but they somehow failed to fully quote what the Kaiser Family Foundation had to say, no doubt an inadvertent error that we shall seek to correct here—
“The analysis does not attempt to model any specific proposal, but is generally based on an approach included in House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s fiscal year 2013 budget plan (emphasis added), the proposal Chairman Ryan co-sponsored with Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and; in the plan put forward by former Senator Pete Domenici and Dr. Alice Rivlin. In the first two proposals, people who are at least 55 years old, including current beneficiaries, would be exempt from the new system. Republican presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney has supported a premium-support system along these lines. (emphasis added.)”
Here are the bullet points of the study results, including how you might be affected based on where you live:
- Nearly six in 10 Medicare beneficiaries nationally could face higher premiums for Medicare benefits, assuming current plan preferences, including more than half of beneficiaries enrolled in traditional Medicare and almost nine in 10 Medicare Advantage enrollees. Even if as many as one-quarter of all beneficiaries moved into a low-cost plan offered in their area, the new system would still result in more than a third of all beneficiaries facing higher premiums.
- Premiums for traditional Medicare would vary widely based on geography under the proposed premium support system, with no increase for beneficiaries living in Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, but an average increase of at least $100 per month in California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Nevada and New York. Such variations would exist even within a state, with traditional Medicare premiums remaining unchanged in California’s San Francisco and Sacramento counties and rising by more than $200 per month in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
- At least nine in 10 Medicare beneficiaries in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts and New Jersey would face higher premiums in their current plan. Many counties in those states have relatively high per-beneficiary Medicare spending, which would make it more costly to enroll in traditional Medicare rather than one of the low-bidding private plans in those counties. In contrast, in areas with relatively low Medicare per-capita spending, it could be more costly to enroll in a private plan.
For those who may not follow health care policy closely, the Kaiser Family Foundation is one of the few independent think tanks that neither side of the political aisle is likely to criticize for being partisan as the organization’s record for impartiality is so well established. This would explain why the Romney campaign has chosen to attempt to distinguish the report from their plan (although there is little to distinguish the Romney-Ryan Medicare plan from the model studied by Kaiser) rather than attack the findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation report.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributor, Forbes, October 15, 2012
“And The Rich Get Richer”: Massive Insurance Industry Profits For Republicans In Ryan Medicare Scheme
Insurance companies that would benefit from a Medicare privatization program supported by GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and nearly every congressional Republican are filling their campaign coffers and raising questions about whom they really work for – constituents or big insurance and Wall Street donors. The privatization scheme, designed by Ryan, would end Medicare as we know it and leave seniors without protection from soaring out-of-pocket medical costs.
The insurance industry and HMOs so far in the 2012 election cycle have given at least $14 million in campaign contributions to U.S. House members who voted for the Ryan plan to privatize Medicare, according to a new report prepared by Public Campaign Action Fund and Health Care for America Now utilizing data downloaded and coded by the Center for Responsive Politics. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, has received $2.7 million from insurance interests this cycle alone. Taking the long view, members of Congress who voted for the Ryan budget collected $49.7 million in campaign contributions from the insurance industry over their careers – far more than those voting against the plan, the report said.
For the insurance industry, the political spending is an investment that could reap enormous returns. The market value of Wall Street-run health insurance companies will increase by $12 billion to $25 billion if the Republicans win the Senate and the White House, and by 2030 the industry would post $16 billion to $26 billion in increased annual profits attributable to the Medicare privatization, the report said.
“Americans want quality and guaranteed Medicare, but when we have a Congress on the auction block, they’ll put Medicare on the chopping block,” said David Donnelly, executive director of Public Campaign Action Fund. “This report allows voters to connect the dots for themselves by showing the members of Congress who voted for Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare while scooping up checks from the insurance industry that would benefit.”
“The Republican plan to privatize and voucherize Medicare would increase costs for seniors and turn the most effective and cost-efficient health insurance program over to the insurance industry,” said Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, the nation’s largest grassroots health care advocacy organization. “It’s disturbing, though not surprising, that the GOP is bankrolled by the insurance industry – the special interests that would reap staggering profits from this plan. When the GOP and health insurance companies win, consumers lose.”
New polling shows that seniors are extremely sensitive about the alliance between the health insurance industry and the Republican Party. More than half – 55 percent – of voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supports the budget that includes the privatization scheme, according to Democracy Corps, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Public Campaign Action Fund. But that swelled to 70 percent when voters were asked if they would be less likely to vote for that candidate if he or she also took thousands in campaign donations from insurance executives, lobbyists and political action committees.
“Along with their systematic effort to undermine Medicare, the Republicans are working to repeal the Affordable Care Act and decimate Medicaid,” Rome said. “The GOP’s plan is to put seniors and their families at the mercy of the private health insurance industry without adequate coverage, without their choice of doctor and without protection from huge new out-of-pocket costs.”
“Policy in Washington is too often decided by those who give the most money at the expense of everyday Americans,” said Donnelly. “Insurance interests are pouring money into campaigns because it’s in their narrow interest to privatize Medicare and maximize profits. The problem is, Americans of all political stripes don’t have the same power and influence to shape policy. That’s why we have to hold our members of Congress accountable and it’s why we need fundamental changes to our campaign finance system.”
By: Adam Smith, Health Care For America Now, October 10, 2012
“Paging Private Ryan”: Paul Ryan’s Congressional Opponent Say’s “Debate Me Next”
On the heels of last night’s vice-presidential debate, Paul Ryan’s Democratic opponent for his congressional seat wants a second round—while he sits in Biden’s chair.
Rob Zerban is facing a tough road to unseating Ryan, who won Wisconsin’s 1st district with over 68 percent of the vote in 2010—and the district has since been reapportioned to include even more Republicans.
Yet, the district is still fairly purple—Obama narrowly won it in 2008, and the redistricting only added a couple Republican points. Zerban has far outraised any other Ryan challenger over the years, though he still lags far behind Ryan in that category.
But most importantly, Zerban believes that by exposing Ryan’s radical views on the safety net—Zerban notably supports a Medicare-for-all plan, as opposed to Ryan’s partial privatization—he can win over voters in the district. He believes a debate would be the best chance to do that.
“After Paul Ryan’s performance last night, a lot of questions for me were answered about why he won’t come back to the district and debate,” Zerban told supporters on a conference call Friday afternoon. “We’ve seen that on a national stage that he cannot defend his extremely out-of-touch budget, which calls for killing Medicare and trying to transfer the cost of these programs to the back of senior citizens across this country. We can see that he can’t defend his $5 trillion tax cut for the wealthiest people in this nation, again shifting that cost onto the middle class, hardworking Americans across this country.
“I’m confident that by having Paul Ryan come back to the district and try to defend his positions, which we know are indefensible—the numbers don’t add up—if he were to come back and stand side-by-side with me on a stage, the choice would be so clear we’d have this race in the bag already.”
Every newspaper in the district has called on Ryan to come back and debate Zerban.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has backed Zerban and raised $124,000 for him, and has placed 42,000 calls into the district through it’s Call Out the Vote program. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has also placed Zerban in its red-to-blue fundraising drive.
By: George Zornick, The Nation, October 12, 2012
“Dual Eligible’s”: Cut Medicaid And You Cut Health Care For The Elderly And Disabled
Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan have been adamant that their Medicare proposals won’t affect people over 55. That may be true. But their Medicaid proposals sure will. A lot of health care for the elderly comes from Medicaid. We call those people “dual-eligibles”, because they qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. Some dual-eligible are younger disabled people, but about two-thirds are 65 or older. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports:
Dual eligibles as a share of total Medicaid enrollees ranged from a low of 10 percent in Arizona and Utah to a high of 26 percent in Maine, due to demographic differences and policy preferences across the states. Similarly, spending on dual eligibles as a percentage of total Medicaid spending ranged from a low of 18 percent in Arizona to a high of 59 percent in North Dakota.
Lots of Medicaid money goes to the elderly. Cut Medicaid, and you likely cut some of that. Here’s more:
One quarter (25%) of Medicaid spending for dual eligibles went toward Medicare premiums and cost-sharing for Medicare services in 2008. Five percent of spending for duals was for acute care services not covered by Medicare (e.g., dental, vision, and hearing services). Another 1 percent of Medicaid dual eligible spending was for prescription drugs, a percentage that has fallen significantly since coverage for nearly all prescribed drugs for duals was shifted from Medicaid to Medicare Part D in 2006. The remaining 69% of Medicaid spending was for long-term care services, which are generally not covered by Medicare or private insurance.
That Medicaid money is going to Medicare premiums! It’s also going to actual care. Cut Medicaid, and you likely cut some of that.
It’s about time someone pointed that out. The health care proposals of Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan will absolutely impact some elderly people way earlier than a decade. Unless they’ve changed their minds again.
By: Aaron Carroll, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 7, 2012
“Look Into My Lies”: Paul Ryan Uses Fact Checkers As Campaign Surrogates
The old saying goes “There are no referees in politics.” But there are fact checkers — Politifact, FactCheck.org, The Fact Checker. These “independent” seers like to think they’re defending the truth. But Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have figured out how to use them to spread lies.
Many of these fact checkers peer into the words of both major parties and do their best to suggest that both sides are the same – despite the fact, for instance, that the GOP’s nominee Mitt Romney has more “Pants on Fire” rulings than any national politician.
Rarely are fact checkers as unanimous and righteous in their condemnation of a falsehood as they have been of the Romney campaign’s claim that the president took the work requirement out of Welfare. It’s a flat out lie. But it’s also the first ad that has moved the dial for Romney. You may have listened as a Romney pollster, when confronted with that fact that the attack is false, said, “We aren’t going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”
Instead of letting fact checkers edit their campaign, Romney’s team has a better use for fact checkers: campaign surrogates.
The “birther” scandal shows that debunking lies does little to quell the lie and much more to spread it. It’s a tactic Mitt Romney has used effectively for a year now as he’s accused the president of “apologizing for America.” That never happened. But to debunk the lie, you have to repeat it. It’s classic “He’ll look like hell denying it” politics.
Although modern politicians are generally too smart to repeat lies about themselves, the Romney camp knows the fact checkers will. So how do you dictate what the media will be talking about tomorrow? Make purposely deceptive statements about the issues you want to highlight.
What are Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney’s biggest weaknesses? Medicare; the auto bailout; a hugely unpopular Congress and Ryan’s record of voting for Bush-era surplus-blowing policies.
So Ryan systematically made an “attack by assertion rather than accusation” about each of these issues. By making these attacks in deceptive ways that either ignored or left out crucial facts, he forced the media to repeat his assertions.
From the morning Romney announced Ryan as his running mate, the candidates have been making the assertion that the president funneled – or sometimes “robbed” — $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare. This assertion is a classic half-truth in several ways. The money comes from savings that extend the life of the program. Ryan voted to keep the cuts but not to fund ObamaCare.
But you see? We’ve fallen into the precise trap that Ryan set.
While you and I and the fact checkers debunk his half-truth, we’re ignoring the larger issue. Ryan makes huge cuts to current seniors by gutting Medicaid now and then turning Medicare into a voucher program that passes the costs on to seniors. Point: Romney/Ryan.
The best part of this super-sneaky strategy is that it’s fool-proof. Republicans can admit what they’re doing, yet fact checkers and incredulous Democrats still fall into the trap. “Not only was everything Congressman Ryan said factually accurate, but by the Chicago folks highlighting this, they’re advancing our argument,” Sean Spicer, the chief spokesperson for the RNC, said today.
And I have to admit they’re right. Look at the one GM factory in Jannesville that Ryan brought up, deceptively blaming the president for its closure today even though it was scheduled to close during the Bush Administration. We’re doing it again!
Instead of talking about the dozens of GM factories the president helped save or the hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs that the auto rescue protected, we’re talking about one that’s closed. Point: Romney/Ryan.
Instead of talking about how Paul Ryan’s budget increases the deficit, we’re talking about how he voted against Simpson-Bowles. Instead of talking about Paul Ryan’s role in this incredibly unpopular Congress that held the debt limit hostage for a debt deal they won’t even honor, we’re talking about the U.S. credit rating.
These lies are clearly strategically placed, which becomes obvious when you think about what Ryan was really arguing. He wants fewer cuts to government? He wants the government to decide which factories stay open? He wants to protect the poor but cut tens of millions of them from Medicaid?
These aren’t his beliefs, they’re his smokescreen. As long as we’re parsing his words, we’re not talking about how harmful his vision for America actually would be. And that’s obviously what Paul Ryan and the GOP want. The entire convention theme “We Built It!” is based on a deceptive misquote from the president.
It’s nearly impossible to imagine the president lying the way Ryan or Romney do. But if he doesn’t find some way to break through to the truth, the real referees in politics — the voters — may end up being swept up in the tide of lies.
BY: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, August 31, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 