Ryan’s ‘Courageous’ Budget Cuts Need Reality Test: Albert Hunt - Bloomberg
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Privatizing Medicare
The Congressional Budget Office suggests that eventually privatizing Medicare as Ryan’s plan advocates, with government “premium support” payments to insurance companies, will result in less coverage and higher costs for senior citizens. Many experts said his proposal to turn Medicaid, the health insurance plan for poor people, into a block grant to states will reduce benefits for the most vulnerable members of society.
In disputing those assertions, Ryan will have to demonstrate he isn’t curbing federal spending on the backs of the poor, elderly and disabled. Almost one-sixth of Medicaid beneficiaries are people with disabilities. Because they have greater health-care needs, they account for almost half of all expenditures.
Ryan is on the high ground when he talks about the need to rein in chronic deficits and the growth in entitlement spending. He loses that advantage if voters believe he’s advocating a massive transfer of wealth from lower and middle-income Americans to the most affluent and asking almost no shared sacrifice.
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