Ending Medicare Ryan-style Doesn't Save Any Money

Apparently what they are afraid of is that they will have to attack the Ryan budget and by doing so, they will be bringing the economy back into the campaign when they would rather keep it on baseless attacks.
 
Yes it is purely ideological. Russia has their Marxists, America has their Marketists. They are one and the same.

We have our Marxists here in America. Take a look in the mirror.

Health care does not fit, and will never fit into a 'free market' model.

It fit quite nicely prior to government interference in the mid 20th century.

The whole basis of a 'free market' is the buyer has leverage, i.e. he/she can take his/her business elsewhere. That works perfectly fine when the stakes are 'things' (cars or TV sets etc). But a person's health is not a 'thing', and the consumer's stake is their very life. An unhappy consumer can go buys a different car or TV. If a person has a life threatening illness and is denied coverage for treatment, WHAT leverage does that person have...take their business elsewhere IN ANOTHER LIFE?

“You can't argue with someone who believes, or just passionately suspects, that the poet's function is not to write what he must write but, rather, to write what he would write if his life depended on his taking responsibility for writing what he must in a style designed to shut out as few of his old librarians as humanly possible.” - J.D. Salinger
 
Keep in mind, Romney is promising to repeal Obamacare on day one, or week one, or some one.

The Medicare provisions in Obamacare, which by some mindboggling flip flop double somersault with a twist the Republicans rail against as cuts,

extend the solvency of Medicare from 2016 to 2024.

So Romney and the GOP will immediately move Medicare back 8 years closer to insolvency before they turn it over to the boy genius Ryan to rescue?

lolol
 
Yes it is purely ideological. Russia has their Marxists, America has their Marketists. They are one and the same.

We have our Marxists here in America. Take a look in the mirror.

Health care does not fit, and will never fit into a 'free market' model.

It fit quite nicely prior to government interference in the mid 20th century.

How much did an MRI or a kidney transplant cost in 1895?
 
There is only one logical answer and that is to raise the retirement age. We started to do this with SS, but it needs to go higher, and it needs to include Medicare. People are living much longer than these programs were designed to support people for, so we need to shorten that time up a bit and force people to work longer or pay for their own early retirement. The retirement age needs to be upped to 70 or 71 for both programs. As for the argument that some people just can't work past 65 because of physical disabilities, well those people can apply for disability just as they do now at an earlier age.

Agreed. When Social Security was implemented you could begin collecting it at age 62. It is also no coincidence that the average life span in the 1930s was age 62.

The difference in a plan such as Ryan's and one where we raise the retirement age is that under Ryan's plan, everyone must fund a substantial portion of their own healthcare spending.

That's because that is the only way to bring costs down without denying services to people. As long as the consumer continues to pass the bulk of health care costs to a third party you will continue to see costs rise. It's a distortion of the market.
 
Apparently Romney has decided that he can't win a referendum on Obama and thus it's time to more explicitly hitch his wagon to the GOP's radical agenda to revive his campaign.

So it's worth taking a moment this morning to remember that his new Number Two's plot to voucherize Medicare and shift costs onto the backs of future seniors doesn't save any money. It's ideological drivel that doesn't actually solve any problems that haven't already been solved. Why not? Because per enrollee spending growth in the public health insurance programs has already fallen.

Medicare and Medicaid Spending Trends and the Deficit Debate | NEJM
With the per-enrollee spending growth in Medicare and Medicaid less than that in private insurance and close to the growth in GDP per capita, it's hard to argue that spending on either program, on a per-enrollee basis, is “out of control.” Rather, per-enrollee growth in both programs is near the target often advocated in debt-reduction proposals. Total spending growth, which also includes growth in enrollment, is faster than the economy's growth. But policies that are appropriate when the problem is per-capita spending growth differ from those that make sense when enrollment growth is such an important cost driver. Policy options such as premium support and block grants that entail indexing growth rates to some measure of economic growth will have a hard time achieving lower per-enrollee spending growth than is currently projected. CBO estimates suggest that both approaches may achieve savings for the federal government, but such savings shift Medicare costs onto existing enrollees and, in the case of Medicaid, onto the states as well.3
Rather than pursuing major restructuring of either program, then, we should continue adopting available strategies to contain costs within the programs' current structure, especially since many of those implemented in the past decade seem to be working, and many on the horizon appear promising.

I'm sure Ryan and his sidekick Mittens will defend their scheme by saying it's necessary. Unfortunately for them, that's demonstrably false. The alleged goals of their plan have already been achieved. Dismantling Medicare, throwing seniors into the private insurance market, and shifting costs back onto seniors isn't necessary for fiscal reasons, it's purely ideological.

I suspect we'll hear more about the folly of their ideological agenda in the coming weeks.

I've only asked about 100 times for a full analysis of this argument that has the numbers that back your claims.

Are you ever going to provide it ?
 
Keep in mind, Romney is promising to repeal Obamacare on day one, or week one, or some one.

The Medicare provisions in Obamacare, which by some mindboggling flip flop double somersault with a twist the Republicans rail against as cuts,

extend the solvency of Medicare from 2016 to 2024.

So Romney and the GOP will immediately move Medicare back 8 years closer to insolvency before they turn it over to the boy genius Ryan to rescue?

lolol

Well, we've seen Joe Biden in action when it comes to crunching the numbers and putting out data that clearly shows his case.

Joe is going to get his ass handed to him in the debates.
 
I've only asked about 100 times for a full analysis of this argument that has the numbers that back your claims.

The relevant numbers are in the OP. Ryan and his ilk propose to push seniors from an insurance plan in which costs are growing at 3.1% growth per enrollee (Medicare) into one that's growing at 5% growth per enrollee (Anthem or Aetna or any private insurance plan). Seniors pay the difference and--to make the federal government's books look a little better--the value of the coupon they get instead of Medicare shrinks with time relative to the cost of their new private insurance plan.

Higher costs and spending overall but it's seniors' problem, not the federal government's. Voila! "Savings."
 
I've only asked about 100 times for a full analysis of this argument that has the numbers that back your claims.

The relevant numbers are in the OP. Ryan and his ilk propose to push seniors from an insurance plan in which costs are growing at 3.1% growth per enrollee (Medicare) into one that's growing at 5% growth per enrollee (Anthem or Aetna or any private insurance plan). Seniors pay the difference and--to make the federal government's books look a little better--the value of the coupon they get instead of Medicare shrinks with time relative to the cost of their new private insurance plan.

Higher costs and spending overall but it's seniors' problem, not the federal government's. Voila! "Savings."

From the ground up. The percentages make no difference if there is no ability to look at sensitivities.

Medicare encourages spending and abuse. Vouchers don't seem to do that.
 
Too funny. Your own link provides backing for the Ryan plan, while convienently leaving out the fact that those over the age of 55 will not have to worry about this voucher system, while those under will be given a choice.

Perhaps you're missing the point. So let me help you by stating it again (although it was already made explicitly): there is no expectation or hope that voucherizing Medicare will lead to lower per capita spending.

Pushing someone out of Medicare (3.1% growth per enrollee) and giving them a coupon for a private insurance plan (5% growth per enrollee) doesn't get long-term health spending under control. Assuming that the same number of older folks is insured, which I suppose isn't a safe assumption--Ryan may well leave some with no insurance at all.

All it succeeds in doing is shifting costs onto the backs of seniors, it doen't slow spending growth.

It is a much better plan than simply gutting medicare to the tune of 500 billion dollars for a pie in the sky healthcare plan that has done nothing more than increase costs and stifle business expansion.
Better than? The Ryan budget retains the ACA's cuts.

It's kind of hard to score savings for a plan using a 10-year budget window when you propose a plan that ostensibly doesn't take effect for 10 years. Unless you stand on the shoulders of giants and claim Obama's cuts as your own.
I do understand the point, it is perhaps, you that has failed to understand the problem that staring everyone in the face. The purpose of the voucher system is to bring rising costs in line with acceptable growth. There has never been a plan to eliminate medicare (Unless you count the 500 billion dollars of de-funding that is obamacare) but a plan to stabilize and sustain it.

Also, the silly talking point of 'being pushed out of medicare' is disingenuous at best. No one will be 'forced' out of medicare. Fear mongering at its best.
as was pointed out already, the Ryan plan INCLUDED THE $500 MILLION CUT in medicare.

Ryans plan INCLUDES the SAME cuts that obama proposed.

got that? So I guess all the uproar about the obama 500 million cut to medicare was FAKE AND PHONY on the republicans end....just faux outrage....or republicans will go ape sh*t on ryan, and i'm guessing it's the former........
 
and the Democratic budget, care to share? I'll give you 4 years back, have at it...

Hint: Obama has never offered a budget that ends Medicare, cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans and increases them for middle class Americans.

Ryan has offered such a budget and Romney has endorsed it.


don't try that shit on me, you always seem to blow smoke when you cannot answer a question, just don't respond if you don't have an answer or man up and as in, I cannot point to a Democratic budget.

Hint: Obama has offered a budget each year. In none of those years has he offered a budget that ends Medicare, cuts taxes for the wealthiest and increases them for the middle class.

That's not smoke up your ass. That's a fact you need to learn to accept.

see how that works, kiddo?
 
Per enrollee Medicare cost growth is already "in line with acceptable growth." Indeed, it's slower than per enrollee private insurance cost growth.

Are you sure you understand this thread?
I do. Medicare is in trouble and will fail soon unless we continue to throw bad money after good. The cost growth is NOT in line with acceptable growth. The growth that exists is very much like the growth of Social Security. It is smoke and mirrors, propped up by deficit spending.

Address that before you go after some parsed out section of the entire program.

The Ryan plan is the best plan going right now that will extend and help medicare survive. It is not perfect, but it is much better than propping up medicare on the backs of people who won't have it available to them if nothing is done.

There is a very good reason cost growth is NOT in line with acceptable growth. We have a private insurance based health care system. It is a HUGE failure.

HealthCareSpending2009.jpg


High health care costs
Who's to blame?

Health-cost trends shows that these players, in roughly descending order, contributed the most to rising costs:

Hospitals and doctors.
Doctors and hospitals account for by far the largest share, 52 percent in 2006, of all national health spending. There's abundant evidence that some of that spending is unnecessary. Under the present system, hospitals and doctors earn more money by doing costly interventions than by keeping people healthy. And more medical care doesn't necessarily mean better care, according to research on Medicare expenditures by the Dartmouth Medical School's Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

Drug companies. Prescription drugs account for only one-tenth of total health-care expenditures. But drug spending has increased as a share of overall expenditures over the past decade.

Insurance companies. Health-insurance premiums have grown faster than inflation or workers' earnings over the past decade, in parallel with the equally rapid rise in overall health costs. Industry spending on administrative and marketing costs, plus profits, consumes 12 percent of private-insurance premiums.

Politicians and government regulators. Although the government directly controls only 46 percent of national health spending, many of its policies affect the bottom line of the health-care industry, for example, by setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors on which private insurers base their rates, or by regulating health insurance. Between 1999 and 2006, the health-care lobby spent more than any other business sector, according to a study by the Institute for Health & Socio-Economic Policy, a nonprofit policy and research group.

Lawyers. Malpractice-insurance premiums and liability awards account for less than 2 percent of overall health-care spending, according to a 2004 study by the Congressional Budget Office. Defensive medicine, the practice of ordering extra tests or procedures to protect against lawsuits, might add another few percentage points, according to some estimates.

Health-care consumers.

Health-care security, who is to blame for high costs

$600 billion a year in UNNECESSARY duplicate tests, etc.. all because of fear of lawsuits!
But again you are pushing the FALSE argument i.e. insurance premiums!
THAT's never been what the physicians, have complained about the $600 billion a year!

If 1,231 physicians...(90%) Ninety percent of physicians surveyed said
"doctors overtest and overtreat to protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits.
"Defensive medicine is when doctors order multiple tests, MRIs and other procedures, not because the patient needs them, but to protect against litigation based on allegations that something should have been done but wasn’t. according to the survey published Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine.

Besides more time-consuming appointments, patients are left with fewer services and less access to quality care as doctors either narrow their practices or leave the profession entirely."
http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/Examiner-editorial-Obama-wont-take-on-trial-lawyers-in-speech-57953202.html

Lawyers. Malpractice-insurance premiums and liability awards account for less than 2 percent of overall health-care spending, according to a 2004 study by the Congressional Budget Office. Defensive medicine, the practice of ordering extra tests or procedures to protect against lawsuits, might add another few percentage points, according to some estimates.
 
Adding up the annual returns from 1975 through 2010, as shown in the Dow Jones Industrial average yearly returns chart, and dividing the result by 36, the number of years covered, you will learn that the Dow appreciated by an average of 9.28 percent annually.
!

Wait what?!?!?

The DJIA was about 825 in 1975.

Actually when I had my security's license in 1972 the BIGGEST fear the Howard Ruff of the Ruff letter WARNED of economic collapse as the DJI would drop from 800 to 400!!!
Thinking it would EVER break 1,000 was a laugh!!!

By the way the DJI highest was under GWB of 14,164.5 October 9, 2007.

Closing milestones of the Dow Jones Industrial Average - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Adding up the annual returns from 1975 through 2010, as shown in the Dow Jones Industrial average yearly returns chart, and dividing the result by 36, the number of years covered, you will learn that the Dow appreciated by an average of 9.28 percent annually.

Read more: The Average Stock Market Appreciation Per Year | eHow.com The Average Stock Market Appreciation Per Year | eHow.com

Employer/employee starting in 1975 putting the $500/month paid for SS/Medicare would appreciate by 2010 (IN SPITE of the UPs and DOWNs of that gamble called the stock market): $2,358,715!

Think of it! NO government DEBT because they wouldn't own this $2.3 million!
NO Medicare payments! NO SS payments!
AND if the employee after 10 years of retirement has $300,000 left.. GUESS WHAT !!
NEST egg for heirs... college education for heirs!
NO more STUDENT LOANS! NO more Borrowing to pay for college for heirs!

NO there are just too many DOWNSIDES to continue letting the Government grossly mismanaged our lives and more UPSIDES to let us control our destinies!

You are aware that in order to actually spend the money put into the stock market day after day,

there would be constant selling of stocks day after day, do you?

ARE YOU THAT stupid???

YOU OBVIOUSLY have NEVER bought stocks dumb shit!

There are so many ways to get even more then the DJI over 36 years of 9.6%!

GEEZ no wonder Obamatrons are perceived as DUMB f...ks!

I don't know where to begin dummy!

Do you know what the DJI is? Of course not!
30 stocks on the NYSE are monitored constantly regarding buy sell activities!
BY the dummy people who buy/sell go through BROKERS who actually buy/sell!
Dummy the individual or mutual fund or whatever owner CAN keep the stock as long as they want!
Stocks can increase in value in two ways:
1) the dividends or earnings that are paid can be used to buy more share of the same
2) Stocks "appreciate" if people want to pay more then the owner paid for the stock..
OK grade schooler.. this is called "appreciation"!!!!!

I don't know what more to say to someone so f...king stupid!
You really are an embarrassment to even die hard Obamatrons!
 
Hint: Obama has never offered a budget that ends Medicare, cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans and increases them for middle class Americans.

Ryan has offered such a budget and Romney has endorsed it.


don't try that shit on me, you always seem to blow smoke when you cannot answer a question, just don't respond if you don't have an answer or man up and as in, I cannot point to a Democratic budget.

Hint: Obama has offered a budget each year. In none of those years has he offered a budget that ends Medicare, cuts taxes for the wealthiest and increases them for the middle class.

That's not smoke up your ass. That's a fact you need to learn to accept.

see how that works, kiddo?

ryan doesn't 'end' medicare. you apparently wish to start from a false premise, nice- since you can then fashion anything you want pivoting off that...not playing.



no hints- facts;

again, you are blowing smoke, do I need to post the congressional budget process for you?


"obama's budget(s)" were/was shot down 97-0 and 99-0 in the senate, not that that mattered really. these were not proper budgets in any event as they never went thru the congressional budget process.

so back to square 1- show me a budget , a 2009 and 2010 budget crafted properly and put to a vote in either house....and I don't mean the continuing resolution in 2009 either, that was a balls up because the dems in 2008 did NOT do a proper 2009 budget because they thought, rightly they would win the election, they did, and they never did another budget there after.


so at the end of the day, your democratic congress has produced NO budgets in 3 cycles (keeping in mind there is NO cloture issue, there fore- no filibuster) the gop sent one to the senate where it never even made committee as it was supposed to last year when they took the house.

so thats 4 cycles....




In none of those years has he offered a budget that ends Medicare, cuts taxes for the wealthiest and increases them for the middle class.


forget medicare, I am not discussing it with you so lets move on- taxes.

where does this schlock I have highlighted come from?

who is cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising them on the middle class? :eusa_eh:

Obama said we could not, after a 3.2% gdp quarter in 2010 btw raise taxes on anyone as it might hurt the economy, so he was on board with keeping the present tax brackets/investment tax structure etc.

so what are you talking about?
 
Wow greendpbeard thinks medicare is better than private insurance? So he likes ineffiency, horrible coverage and pound for pound more expensive......what a fuckin moron.
 
Wow greendpbeard thinks medicare is better than private insurance? So he likes ineffiency, horrible coverage and pound for pound more expensive......what a fuckin moron.

Medicare is MORE efficient, cost effective and has done a much better job of keeping medical costs down than private insurance.

So YOU are the fuckin moron.

Here is a market-driven entrepreneur.

brody_243x200.jpg

Bill Brody, M.D. President, Salk Institute for Biomedical Research

Dr. William R. Brody, an acclaimed physician-scientist, entrepreneur and university leader, joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies on March 2, 2009 after 12 years as president of The Johns Hopkins University.

johns_hopkins_medicine.jpg


June 13, 2003

Is Medicare Cost Effective?

I recently spent a half-day in a meeting discussing a number of issues regarding Medicare. Most of us on the provider side of the street view Medicare as this multiheaded bureaucracy with more pages of regulations than the Internal Revenue Service's tax code. However, I came away from the meeting with some (to me at least) shocking revelations:

Medicare beneficiaries are overwhelmingly satisfied with their Medicare coverage, except for the absence of prescription drug benefits;

The administrative costs of Medicare are lower than any other large health plan.


In fact, Medicare is very efficient by any objective means:

According to the Urban Institute's Marilyn Moon, who testified before the Senate Committee on Aging, Medicare expenditures between 1970 and 2000 grew more slowly than those of the private sector. Initially, from 1965 through the 1980s, Medicare and private insurance costs doubled in tandem. Then Medicare tightened up, and per capita expenditures grew more slowly than private insurance, creating a significant gap. In the 1990s, private insurers got more serious about controlling their costs, and the gap narrowed. But by 2000, Medicare per capita expenditures remained significantly lower than the private sector.

Moon argues somewhat convincingly that Medicare has been a success. While not necessarily denying that certain reforms might be needed, she stresses the importance of preserving three essential tenets of the program:

1. Its universal coverage nature creates the ability to redistribute benefits to those who are neediest.

2. It pools risk in order to share the burdens of health care among the healthy and the sick.

3. Through Medicare, the government protects the rights of all beneficiaries to essential health care.

It has been argued that, in part, Medicare's cost effectiveness arises from the fact that it does not need to expend funds on marketing and sales-functions that are obligatory for the success of competitive, private-sector health plans. Moreover, some argue that the competitive model for health insurance has not been successful. In a market-driven economy, the healthy can and will change health plans for savings of only a few dollars a month, while the sick must remain in their existing plan in order to retain their physicians. Such behaviors lead to asymmetric risk pools and cost inequities.

This was all sobering news to a market-driven entrepreneur such as yours truly. However, given the perverse incentives that frequently drive behavior in health care, my take-home lesson is that there are examples in the success of Medicare we can apply to other sectors of our population.
 
I've only asked about 100 times for a full analysis of this argument that has the numbers that back your claims.

The relevant numbers are in the OP. Ryan and his ilk propose to push seniors from an insurance plan in which costs are growing at 3.1% growth per enrollee (Medicare) into one that's growing at 5% growth per enrollee (Anthem or Aetna or any private insurance plan). Seniors pay the difference and--to make the federal government's books look a little better--the value of the coupon they get instead of Medicare shrinks with time relative to the cost of their new private insurance plan.

Higher costs and spending overall but it's seniors' problem, not the federal government's. Voila! "Savings."

On the other hand, once you turn 65 you have no choice but to start paying for Medicare insurance. It's illegal for you to opt out. My father is 65 years old and has to pay $200 a month for his Medicare insurance despite the fact he has insurance through his own company.

Higher costs and spending overall but it's seniors' problem, not the federal government's.
 
Wow greendpbeard thinks medicare is better than private insurance? So he likes ineffiency, horrible coverage and pound for pound more expensive......what a fuckin moron.

Depends what you mean by "better." We know, for instance, that its per enrollee costs are rising more slowly than private insurance costs (i.e. better cost control).

We know that "Medicare Beneficiaries [are] Less Likely To Experience Cost- And Access-Related Problems Than Adults With Private Coverage":

The experiences of people covered by Medicare and those with private employer insurance can help inform policy debates over the federal budget deficit, Medicare’s affordability, and the expansion of private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. This article provides evidence that people with employer-sponsored coverage were more likely than Medicare beneficiaries to forgo needed care, experience access problems due to cost, encounter medical bill problems, and be less satisfied with their coverage. Within the subset of beneficiaries who are age sixty-five or older, those enrolled in the private Medicare Advantage program were less likely than those in traditional Medicare to have premiums and out-of-pocket costs exceed 10 percent of their income. But they were also more likely than those in traditional Medicare to rate their insurance poorly and to report cost-related access problems. These results suggest that policy options to shift Medicare beneficiaries into private insurance would need to be attentive to potentially negative insurance experiences, problems obtaining needed care, and difficulties paying medical bills.

Access And Bill Problems For Medicare Beneficiaries And Nonelderly Adults With Employer-Based Insurance, 2001 And 2010
F1.large.jpg


Some findings from that survey highlighted on the Health Affairs blog:
Some of the key findings include:

  • Eight percent of Medicare beneficiaries rated their insurance as fair or poor compared to 20 percent of nonelderly adults with employer insurance and 33 percent purchasing insurance on the individual market. Among Medicare beneficiaries, only 6 percent of those with traditional Medicare gave a fair or poor rating, compared to 15 percent of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries.
  • Thirty-seven percent of working adults with employer-sponsored coverage reported at least one access problem due to cost, compared to 23 percent of elderly adults with Medicare. Among Medicare beneficiaries, those with traditional plans were significantly less likely to report problems accessing care than those opting for Medicare Advantage (23 percent versus 32 percent).
  • For those with employer insurance, 27 percent reported difficulties paying bills, compared to 13 percent of Medicare beneficiaries. Just one-quarter (25 percent) of adults with employer-sponsored coverage reported receiving excellent quality of care, compared to 37 percent of elderly Medicare beneficiaries. Those with individual (17 percent) and no health insurance (12 percent) reported receiving excellent care at the lowest rates.
  • In describing access to a primary provider, 64 percent of Medicare beneficiaries and 51 percent of those with employer-based insurance said they had a regular doctor or place of care; only 26 percent of those without insurance claimed this degree of access to care.

Hey, I have an idea. For no apparent reason, let's end an extremely popular, cost-effective program that produces good results and satisfies customers!

If ever there was an idea to make the centerpiece of a presidential campaign, it's that. Have at it.
 
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