The Rabbi
Diamond Member
- Sep 16, 2009
- 67,733
- 7,923
Currently Medicare helps pay for health insurance.
Again, we've reached the point where I'm simply repeating things that have already been said. Medicare is health insurance; that is, it's shorthand for a public insurer that Ryan is proposing to abolish. Medicare, at present, entails a certain guaranteed benefit that's protected in federal law. This, too, will be abolished.
This is not tinkering, these are not tweaks. This is the end of Medicare, the program that's existed for over 45 years now.
As I've said before, and you're quick to keep pointing out, it's isn't simply a repeal, Ryan is offering a repeal-and-replace. While seniors lose the entitlement to the level of care their predecessors enjoyed, the government will mail a check of fixed value to a private insurer on their behalf. Its value relative to the price of an insurance policy will shrink with time but certainly it's better than nothing. Does that mask that the public insurer offering the Medicare benefit and the Medicare benefit itself (i.e. those things that constitute "Medicare") are abolished under Ryan's proposal? Apparently in your case, yes.
But, beyond the diehards, I doubt most folks will be so easily fooled. And, given that they purposefully declined to bring up these plans before the last election and have opted to delay implementation for a decade, I suspect Ryan and the Republican leadership have similar apprehensions.
I give them kudos for drawing the contrast. If they wish to dismantle Medicare, it's time to have that discussion.
I again ask, for the third time, if this is the end of the Medicare, what will the new program be called? Surely that is a simple enough question for you to answer. Right?