Yeah that's right, kudos to Paul Ryan for bankrupting GOP opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). As I recently pointed out on another post.....this guy is advocating near Obama and Romney- care style reforms of Medicare, which is you know, the Canadian part of our health system. Radical conservatives have already vomited from ingesting this reality and firmly rejected the Paul Ryan plan. For these right-wingers, a neo-liberal(conservative?) alternative is just as hard to swallow as the Canadian style social insurance it would replace. Yet, for the most part, the GOP and its rebellious Tea Party insurgency have rallied to support Ryan's run with the budget football. The point is that if Obamacare was socialism....for introducing the concept of consumer minded regulation in the health insurance marketplace with means tested subsidies….just what the hell is the Ryan plan?
Well….it’s not the Affordable Care Act for Medicare….the details pertaining to regulation are rather weak and the subsidies are not indexed to rise with medical inflation, but it does propose to create a minimum catastrophic flooring for the sick and elderly. The whole plan centers on creating savings through competition, to prevent costs from rising past the taxpayer supported subsidies offered.
Erroneously, Ryan compares it with the federally regulated congressional healthcare plans that he gets to choose from as a Congressman….but there isn’t any means test, and regardless of the costs of the plan that they choose, taxpayers are on the hook for a flat percentage, which is, by the way, also indexed to account for medical inflation.
Ultimately, the Ryan plan puts enormous pressure on enrollees to control costs for their own sake. Imagine that. Ryan wants those with the least amount of market information to comparison shop-tell-they-drop, to stretch the purchasing power of the subsidies that they receive. Here’s the problem….medical consumers don’t have access to pricing going into hospitals or provider care centers…and when you need emergency care….the whole concept of market negotiations break down. Stabilizing care is going to happen and someone is going to pay….and if Medicare enrollees are inevitably forced to pay more of this burden…costs are going to rise with the waning negotiating power of government on senior’s behalf.
It would also appear then that this fitness freak is trying to discipline people into managing their own health, to prevent the onset of costly disease and sickness. The voice of Ayn Rand in Paul Ryan’s head has not been suffocated, but assuaged in a grand bargain for political stardom.
As noted, this plan involves a lot of government, in the form of regulated markets and taxpayer supported subsidies, i.e. “vouchers” or “market premiums,” what every you want to call them. This is not free-market libertarianism…but it does move more responsibility for finding healthcare solutions from the government to seniors themselves.
Call it the love child of Obamacare and Ayn Rand, or simply, Katrina-Care for Seniors. The GOP was projecting with their cries of Death Panels during the Affordable Care Act debates. Now, they are ready to initiate the Cleansing for the sake of balancing the budget.
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Look, our health care system is the most DECENTRALIZED in the entire world. It's really 5 systems. Medicare and Medicaid...that's the Canadians and the French Employment based healthcare....that's the Germans The VA and Native American government delivered healthcare....and that's the British Healthcare cooperatives…that’s the Scots Regulated private insurance exchanges..(coming to all states in 2014) .that's the Swiss Then you got system divisions by the political borders of the states themselves,
Look...let's get with it.....Medicare for all and a global payment structure...could radically alter healthcare delivery for the better in the United States. Politically, it's still a tough sell. But I believe the Republicans are going to China on this one, so to speak,…they just don't all know it yet. Hell, even in Texas, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst and our heavy Republican state congress are seeking to implement global payment alternatives to the current fee-for-service payment system for Medicaid.
This is El Prezidente Kaboom, your healthcare reform warrior. Eric De La Cruz & Healthcare Reform Comments are welcome.