Ryan on Medicare

I just (finally) watched this video of Paul Ryan touting his recipe for "saving" Medicare. Red flags went up all over the place: this guy is lying through his teeth. See if you can catch all the Republican talking points and scare phrases.



If I have time this weekend, I may come back and parse it -- there is a full script available.

Just as a start, this is from one of the commenters at No More Mister Nice Blog, which is where I found the video.

This argument seems to boil down to using taxpayer money to pay for insurance instead of medical care. I think most people would prefer to have a Medicare system that pays for their medical care rather than paying for insurance that may or may not pay for their medical care.

If he thinks there are too many layers between seniors and the cost of their care he really needs to take another look at how much seniors already pay, and then rethink this business of adding more layers.

Seniors pay a monthly premium and a deductable plus twenty percent of the cost of their care. That may seem negligible to him, but it is very real to the people who are paying for it. So how does he figure that seniors are distanced from the cost. They are perfectly aware of it and make their health care decisions based on it. (Emphasis added.)

Maybe I will come back to this -- it could be fun.