Elders Beware

The other day Paul Krugman had an op-ed piece titled Republicans and Medicare in which he proved that the Republicans are the biggest hypocrites on the face of the earth.  Their latest ploy to scare people away from supporting health care reform is seizing on the fact that the bill includes cuts in Medicare.  What the bill really does is cut the waste and fraud now in Medicare.  Newt Gingrich leads the pack (no surprise there) claiming that the Democrat health care reform bill would cut $500 billion out of Medicare.  Are you trembling in your boots?  Newt would like you to think that your benefits are to be cut.  

But wait; if Republican Representative Paul Ryan has his way they will be.   Tea Baggers take note.  Especially you idiots who carried signs reading "Don't Touch My Medicare"  Read on.

Paul Krugman states:

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What’s truly mind-boggling is this: Even as Republicans denounce modest proposals to rein in Medicare’s rising costs, they are, themselves, seeking to dismantle the whole program. And the process of dismantling would begin with spending cuts of about $650 billion over the next decade. Math is hard, but I do believe that’s more than the roughly $400 billion (not $500 billion) in Medicare savings projected for the Democratic health bills.

What I’m talking about here is the “Roadmap for America’s Future,” the budget plan recently released by Representative Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee. Other leading Republicans have been bobbing and weaving on the official status of this proposal, but it’s pretty clear that Mr. Ryan’s vision does, in fact, represent what the G.O.P. would try to do if it returns to power. 

The broad picture that emerges from the “roadmap” is of an economic agenda that hasn’t changed one iota in response to the economic failures of the Bush years. In particular, Mr. Ryan offers a plan for Social Security privatization that is basically identical to the Bush proposals of five years ago.

But what’s really worth noting, given the way the G.O.P. has campaigned against health care reform, is what Mr. Ryan proposes doing with and to Medicare.

In the Ryan proposal, nobody currently under the age of 55 would be covered by Medicare as it now exists. Instead, people would receive vouchers and be told to buy their own insurance. And even this new, privatized version of Medicare would erode over time because the value of these vouchers would almost surely lag ever further behind the actual cost of health insurance. By the time Americans now in their 20s or 30s reached the age of eligibility, there wouldn’t be much of a Medicare program left.

But what about those who already are covered by Medicare, or will enter the program over the next decade? You’re safe, says the roadmap; you’ll still be eligible for traditional Medicare. Except, that is, for the fact that the plan “strengthens the current program with changes such as income-relating drug benefit premiums to ensure long-term sustainability.”

If this sounds like deliberately confusing gobbledygook, that’s because it is. Fortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which has done an evaluation of the road map, offers a translation: “Some higher-income enrollees would pay higher premiums, and some program payments would be reduced.” In short, there would be Medicare cuts.

And it’s possible to back out the size of those cuts from the budget office analysis, which compares the Ryan proposal with a “baseline” representing current policy. As I’ve already said, the total over the next decade comes to about $650 billion — substantially bigger than the Medicare savings in the Democratic bills.

The bottom line, then, is that the crusade against health reform has relied, crucially, on utter hypocrisy: Republicans who hate Medicare, tried to slash Medicare in the past, and still aim to dismantle the program over time, have been scoring political points by denouncing proposals for modest cost savings — savings that are substantially smaller than the spending cuts buried in their own proposals.

And if Democrats don’t get their act together and push the almost-completed reform across the goal line, this breathtaking act of staggering hypocrisy will succeed. 

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I think that Obama is cleverly trying to best the Repubs. at their own game.  His proposal to have a televised summit on the 25th of this month between the Republicans and Democrats would educate the people on several things.  First,  the lies told by the party of NO would be exposed.  Next, a thorough examination of their milk toast proposals would show they have no idea at all on how to reform health care.  And last, it would be an opportunity to tell American what is actually in the bill that would be beneficial.

I'm sure that the Republican leadership is very aware of this.  Don't hold your breath if they don't show up.  They have nothing of substance to propose to solve the health care mess.  Now their mantra is 'start over.'  Yeah right!  It took 50 years of starting over to finally get close to getting the job done.  'Start over' is a euphemism for 'kill it.'  

I have been so discouraged that I have not posted on this subject for some time. but it's nearing 'do or die' and I would hate to have the whole bill die.   I don't want the Republicans to celebrate on the grave of one of the most important bills to come before the House since the Civil Rights Act.

To read more on the Republicans proposals, please click on the link to read the NYT editorial in this morning's paper. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/opinion/14sun1.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all