No, sorry, the point of Ryan's plan is to eliminate Medicare completely. It is doing nothing to save it. It's a privatization scheme. Give seniors vouchers that won't even cover 40% of what they get now. As it is seniors are burdened with huge prescription payments, and now Ryan comes along and says seniors will have to pay more than double what they already pay now, all the while with a straight face not only cutting taxes on capital gains (how can you say this doesn't disproportionately help the rich, who makes most of their money off of investments?), but cutting income taxes for the richest. The Republicans and the entitlement doomsayers won't even entertain the thought of raising the income threshold for payroll taxes. But supposedly this is about saving entitlements. Nonsense.
I don't follow the argument that because we supposedly don't have enough revenues to *save* entitlements, that means we can continue to cut revenues by huge margins. How does that make sense in any way whatsoever? If this is about sharing the pain, how come the rich never have to share any pain? How come they continue to get richer yet pay less and less taxes? Anytime anyone even brings up the point that maybe, just maybe, the taxes on the superrich shouldn't be cut even more, the right yells about "bleeding the rich dry". The rich aren't bleeding at all. It's the poor and middle class who are being bled dry. Somehow the Republicans don't seem to care about this. Nor do they care that we excessively overspend on defense, but yet defense isn't touched by the Ryan plan. The defense contractors who rip us off aren't sharing the pain by any stretch.
If you point is that all of these goodies for the superrich are just bargaining chips, that's repulsive. Oh so we have to cut benefits for the most vulnerable by a massive margin in order to avoid the worst case scenario of more goodies for people who don't need them? Fantastic.
Other points that the Ryanites don't bring up is how the elderly are going to manage to navigate the maze that is private insurance, and what in Ryan's plan would even guarantee that the elderly can get insurance with their voucher? On the latter point, the answer is - absolutely nothing. With all the ailments plaguing the average elderly person, why would private insurers want to insure them? Whatever insurance they do manage to miraculously get, will be outrageously expensive.
This is almost humorous because what was the first thing the right said during their manufactured healthcare reform outrage in 2009? That healthcare reform would cut benefits to Medicare. But yet they turn around and propose to privatize it completely. Brilliant.
As for Social Security, the GOP is just plain lying. SS will have a 4.3 trillion surplus by 2023. SS outlays are expected to level off, not increase exponentially like healthcare costs.
http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/social_security_is_sustainable/
So there is no Social Security crisis. Not even close.
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Canadian federal election, 2011
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