One of President Obama's regular attacks on Paul Ryan's
Medicare reform is that it would force seniors to pay $6,400 a year more for
health care.
* WHICH IS NONSENSE... I DON'T EVEN NEED TO READ THE
ARTICLE TO KNOW THAT!
(*SNORT*)
* BUT... SINCE SOMEONE TOOK THE TIME TO WRITE IT...
The claim is based on a now out-of-date Congressional
Budget Office estimate of the gap between the cost of health care a decade from
now, in 2022, and the size of the House budget's premium-support subsidy for a
typical 65-year-old in 2022.
In other words, the $6,400 has no relevance for any
senior today. None. But it also is unlikely to have any relevance for any
senior ever because CBO concedes that its number is highly uncertain and
"will depend on the evolution of the health care and health insurance
systems over time, which is hard to predict."
That's for sure[!]
The more fundamental problem is that the CBO analysis has
nothing to do with the current Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan plan.
Nada.
Over the last year Mr. Ryan has made major adjustments to
his original proposal as he sought a compromise with Democrats. In its most
up-to-date analysis, CBO admits that it "does not have the capability at
this time to estimate such effects" in the new version. That is, it does
not have the tools to make its $6,400 exaggeration again.
The reason CBO can't model the 2013 House budget and the
Romney-Ryan plan is that they harness markets with competitive bidding.
Congress's budget gnomes can't handle these dynamic forces.
So how would Ryan 2.0 work in practice?
Traditional Medicare and all private insurers in a region
would make bids to cover seniors and compete for their business by offering the
best value and prices. Then the government would give everyone a subsidy equal
to the second-lowest bid.
* WHY NOT A SUBSIDY EQUAL TO THE THIRD-LOWEST BID... OR
FIFTH LOWEST BID... OR SECOND TO LOWEST BID.. OR...
(*SHRUG*)
* SEE, FOLKS; I ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS REGARDLESS OF
WHOSE OX IS GORED.
If seniors chose that No. 2 option, whether it was
Medicare or another plan, they'd break even and pay nothing extra out of
pocket.
* BUT IF THE SYSTEM IS GOING BROKE... (*SCRATCHING MY
HEAD*)... AND WE CAN'T AFFORD PRESENT-DAY EXPENSES WITHOUT DEFICIT SPENDING...
YET NO ONE IS ASKED TO PAY MORE...
(*PURSED LIPS*) (*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
If they picked the cheapest plan, they'd keep whatever
was left over after the government subsidy — that is, they'd get a cash refund.
* SOUNDS LIKE MORE MIDDLE-CLASS WELFARE TO ME...
(*SIGH*)
If they instead picked the third-cheapest option, the
fourth-cheapest, etc., they'd pay the difference above the government subsidy.
* IS ANYONE... ANYONE AT ALL... CONCERNED WITH THE FACT
THAT WHAT'S GOING IN TO SOCIAL SECURITY/MEDICARE ISN'T ENOUGH TO PAY FOR
PRESENT DAY - LET ALONE FUTURE - BENEFITS? (JUST WONDERING...)
That structure ensures that seniors would have at least
two choices (and likely far more) that they are guaranteed to do better than
they do now.
* ENOUGH WITH THE "CHOICES." ENOUGH WITH
SUCKING UP TO SENIORS! HOW IS ALL THIS LARGESS PAID FOR...?!?!
The amount of the premium-support subsidy would also be
tied to underlying health-care costs, so it would not shift costs to
beneficiaries, as Democrats also falsely claim.
* BUT... BUT... BUT... (*HOWLING AT THE MOON*)... WHO
WILL BEAR THE COST SHIFTS THEN...?!?!
* FOLKS... NEED I REMIND YOU... SOCIAL SECURITY IS UPSIDE
DOWN AND HAS BEEN FOR A FEW YEARS NOW. MEDICAID IS IN CRISIS. AS TO THE
"GENERAL" FEDERAL BUDGET... (*GRITTING MY TEETH*)... WE'RE $16
TRILLION IN THE WHOLE (WITHOUT COUNTING UNFUNDED FUTURE LIABILITIES!) AND YET
WE CONTINUE TO BORROW 43-CENTS OUT OF EVERY DOLLAR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
SPENDS...
(*PAUSE*)
* WITH... NO... END... IN... SIGHT...!!!
The very reasonable Romney-Ryan policy bet is that costs
could nonetheless fall over time because seniors would have the incentive to
switch to the most competitively priced Medicare plan.
The latest real-world reason to expect that would happen
comes from a new paper by the Harvard economists Zirui Song, David Cutler and
Michael Chernew. The researchers — Mr. Cutler used to be an Obama health
adviser — looked at Medicare Advantage, the program that currently gives one of
four seniors private alternatives (and that ObamaCare deliberately undermines).
* THAT'S TRUE!
The Advantage insurers make bids today against a
benchmark set by traditional Medicare spending, and the Harvard trio find that
the second lowest bid in 2009 came in 9% below the normal program on average.
Medicare costs $717 per person per month, but the cheapest private plan could
provide the same coverage for 87-cents on the government dollar. The second
cheapest could do it for 91-cents.
* BUT... BUT... BUT... WHAT ABOUT CREDITS AND
DEBITS...?!?! WHERE - WHEN - HOW - DOES "INCOME" MATCH
"OUTFLOW?"
* LET'S PUT IT THIS WAY... IF THE AVERAGE SENIOR OVER HIS
OR HER LIFETIME "CONTRIBUTES" SAY $250,000 TO SOCIAL SECURITY AND
MEDICARE COMBINED YET RECEIVES $500,000 IN RETIREMENT CHECKS AND MEDICARE
SERVICES...
(*SHRUG*)
* FOLKS... THE NUMBERS ARE INDEED SOMETHING LIKE THAT...
I REMEMBER NEWSBITING THIS INFO AWHILE BACK...
Messrs. Song, Cutler and Chernew are alarmed because they
say their results imply — broadly speaking — that seniors in traditional
Medicare would have to pay $64 a month more if they kept that coverage. (Note:
That totals $768 a year, not $6,400.) But a better way of reading the data is
that seniors would migrate to more cost-effective options, saving both
themselves and taxpayers a bundle.
None of these facts are likely to deter Democrats from
their distorted claims. But the truth is that the Ryan-Romney reform isn't
anywhere close to Mr. Obama's cartoon version.
* FOLKS... YOU SHOULD BE TERRIFIED AND DISGUSTED. THE
DEMOCRATS REFUSE TO CONSIDER ANY REFORMS WHILE THE REPUBLICAN REFORMS SEEM...
(*PAUSE*)... LESS THAN TRULY REFORMIST!
* AT A CERTAIN POINT ALL PONZI SCHEMES HAVE TO COLLAPSE!
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