GOP’s platform gets specific on privatizing Medicare
I guess Ryan is calling the shots after all.
In a leaked party platform circulating on the eve of their convention, Republicans reveal in candid detail how they intend to upend Medicare.
The platform, snagged by Politico on Friday night after the Republican National Committee accidentally posted it to its website before taking it down, is scheduled to be approved at the convention early this week.
The text details the privatization policy that GOP lawmakers have supported for years, and that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are selling as necessary to “save” Medicare. But in an unusual twist, it addresses the specific aspect of the proposal that makes it a departure from what Americans know as “Medicare.”
“The first step is to move the two programs [Medicare and Medicaid] away from their current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model to a fiscally sound defined-contribution model,” the draft platform reads. “While retaining the option of traditional Medicare in competition with private plans, we call for a transition to a premium-support model for Medicare, with an income-adjusted contribution toward a health plan of the enrollee’s choice. This model will include private health insurance plans that provide catastrophic protection, to ensure the continuation of doctor-patient relationships.”
The esoteric language gets to the heart of the change that ends the basic structure of Medicare. Since its inception in 1965, Medicare has been a government-run insurance program that directly pays medical bills for the elderly per their needs (i.e. “defined benefit”). Republicans want to turn it into a partially privatized system that pays seniors a fixed amount to buy their own health insurance (i.e. “defined contribution”).
We all knew that this was their plan, but I’m surprised by how proud they are of this box office poison.
It’s Obamacare for seniors!
I don’t get it. Republicans love wining elections far more than they love governing. (They don’t even pretend to like governing.) This new strategy of telling the truth about what they want to do is a big departure for them.
puck on 27 August 2012 at 1:56 pm: “It’s Obamacare for seniors!”
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Hardly. More like private-profit-driven-health-care-insurance and pharmaceutical-company federal subsidies. Medicare Advantage on steroids.
Any senior still compos mentis who sees any words synonymous with “fixed amount” (such as “defined contribution”) knows said program is not devised to benefit them.
““The first step is to move the two programs [Medicare and Medicaid] away from their current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model…” This is utter hores shit that too many Democrats buy into.
Here is the Jason330 plan for making the program financially stable into the forseeable future.
“Currently Federal social insurance taxes are imposed equally on employers and employees,consisting of a tax of 6.2% of wages up to an annual wage maximum ($110,100 in 2012) for Social Security and a tax of 1.45% of all wages for Medicare.” -wikipedia
New formula:
Federal social insurance taxes are imposed equally on employers and employees,consisting of a tax of 4% of ALL income (no cap) for Social Security and a tax of 2% of all wages for Medicare.
Everybody benefits so everybody pays. Most middle class people get a tax cut and the 1% gets a barely perceptible tax increase.
DONE.
There you go again, Jason. Soaking the rich.
You want them to pay Social Security taxes on all income — even their dividends and capital gains? And you want them to pay more for Medicare?
Wait until they tell you how many thousands of jobs your plan would uncreate.
You’ll be taxing all of us into a depression.
tax the rich, damn it. Let’s get our country back…