Posted on 11/11/2016 12:17:01 PM PST by tekrat
House Speaker Paul Ryan has his eyes on privatizing Medicare.
The Wisconsin Republican leader, who has long expressed his disapproval of the Affordable Care Act, will also be the leading voice in health-care reform.
“What people don’t realize is that Medicare is going broke, that Medicare is going to have price controls. Because of Obamacare, Medicaid is in fiscal straits,” Ryan said in an interview with Fox News Thursday. “So you have to deal with those issues if you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Medicare has got some serious problems because of Obamacare. Those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.”
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
#DrainTheSwamp that includes you Ryan.
I don’t want anything from paul ryan...except to see him step down or get kicked out of the leadership position.
See 37... privatization of medicare is a fools errand IMHO... not only from a political standpoint but from a practical reality standpoint. The industry is far more complex than any of these let the private industry solve it types understand... For good or bad.. .and these are some of the most vulnerable people in our population who are needing the most from the health care system.
Understand, 80% of what you spend on health care in your ENTIRE LIFE.. on average is spent during the last 2 years of your life. Private industry insurance, has no clue how to handle pooling for that reality... because guess what? Thanks to medicare they don’t worry about that reality... because if you are over 65 you are on medicare... expenditures related to you are not something their cost pools need to deal with... so their pooling is devoid of roughly 80% of the overall cost of care for individuals.
Could they do it? Perhaps, but it will require complete repooling and will raise EVERYONE’S rates to cover it.. it would also, due to the movement of demographics from more younger people and less as the age group goes up... like a pyramid which made up most of human history... now is more of a column where the number of people at each age group alive today is closer to the same, and only int eh 70s and 80s does the group size really tail off...
This isn’t a simple problem, and its not something you can toss and private industry and hope for the best... it will wind up with the same kind of crap that went on with ITT and others.. where folks will just defraud the government and leave these seniors with squat.
This isn’t a simple or easy problem, not even close, and anyone just claiming let the market deal with it is flippant and ignorant.
I am open to private industry ideas, but flippant just let the market take care of it? Not going to happen folks... whether you like it or not ideologically.
I also recently became eligible for medicare-and kept my military insurance as my secondary coverage-even though I work 40 hrs per week at a physical job, don’t go to a doc unless I’m injured, use only vitamins and natural supplements, do not/have never taken drugs-prescription or illegal-seldom even use aspirin, weigh the same 110 that I did at 17, and eat only unprocessed food, I have the same amount deducted from my survivors benefit check as someone who goes to a doc for every sniffle and takes hundreds of $$$ of prescription drugs every month-and has all the side effects and interactions-totally unfair.
I’d love a private option that would reward me for taking care of my own health with a lower premium-it also bites that even though I’m an independent contract worker, if I make enough money to actually live on in a year, I still pay into the system...
Democrats have to propose entitlement reform. Otherwise it is pissing on the third rail.
Keep it and continue to fund it but start offering new retires at a certain point another option. Make it a better deal and Medicare will kill itself.
Actually, one of my main objections to Medicare is the unbelievable government interference with the ability to contract.
When you became eligible for Medicare, you automatically became ineligible for any other kind of insurance in the US. No company is even allowed to write you a policy once you are over the age of 65 unless it’s in the Medicare framework.
There is no private insurance after 65 in the traditional sense. There is privately managed care, via Part C, or supplemental policies that pick up what Part B doesn’t cover, but everything runs under the Medicare umbrella and regulations.
Nonsense. My company covers 80% of the cost for my insurance. There is no way I could afford to replace it at what it is costing me.
i.e. if health insurance is no longer offered by employers, they would have to find other ways to bring qualified people in. One of those would be higher wages, which they could afford to pay since they were not buying health insurance.
Again nonsense. If no companies are allowed to offer healthcare insurance to their employees then where is the incentive for qualified people to leave, salaries being equal? My employer could easily keep my salary where it's at, say "Sorry for that healthcare thing but blame the government and not us", and I'm still worse off.
Paul Ryan didn’t win the Presidency.
Paul Ryan is a weasel who was no help to Trump and is a turncoat. He’ll flee the 1st sign of controversy.
Take a knee, Paul, you had your chance and you messed up
Like I said-I’d love another option-one that rewards people like me-and there are a lot of us-who intend to work till they drop and don’t use drugs-with a lower rate-not only have we all paid into mediscare for all our working years, we still pay the same premium every month as some obese individual taking a shopping bag full of pills twice a day who just sits and eats junk food and sweets-or they can get a gastric bypass, if they want with no money up front-it pisses me off...
“.gimme, gimme,gimme”
That’s what the govt tells you for about 45 years on every paycheck where the medicare deduction is mandatory.
I do not want Paul Ryan to have the power to do anything. Reps better kick him to the curb
If initially offered as an alternative to existing Medicare I like the idea. I think that the freemarket plan will likely offer more for less.
GOP establishment is so worried about cost of social security and Medicare, but has no problem, no concern about cost of endless unnecessary wars
According to Malcolm Sparrow, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Medicare “overpayments” due to fraud and abuse may be as high as 30%. With a $600 billion cost that means as much as $180 billion is overpaid. At some point in the future the cost of Medicare will simply overwhelm the federal budget. At that point I suspect severe rationing will be imposed.
We need something different that eliminates such an easy target for fraud and abuse.
We agree-privatizing would open options and lower prices-as it is now, the rate of fraud and abuse is appalling-honest competition would stop that s*** cold...
Most of my co-workers-boomers all-are in the same boat and bitch about it, too-we are all working and doing the stuff any sensible individual does all by their little self-an option for catastrophic coverage, rather than one size fits all would be just great for those of us who work...
You are viewing it from the perspective of what we’ve had so far. I’m talking about a pre-WWII type of system where employers can offer all sorts of things, but health insurance is not one of them.
It is expensive now, you bet. But if the only people purchasing it are the ones using it, prices would fall quickly. You would not believe how cheap health care is to those of us that don’t use insurance. And in a world where insurance companies also paid those prices, insurance would be a lot cheaper.
And keep in mind, I called the idea fascist on purpose. I would never really support a law preventing insurance companies from offering health care as part of their incentive package. I’m pointing out the old axiom, “if you want something to be expensive, just make sure the person using it is not the person paying for it.”
If health insurance was paid for like car insurance, it would be a LOT cheaper. One reason I have not even mentioned is that there could be a lot of customized plans. How about “stroke and cancer only” insurance? That means you pay for broken bone resetting, which is pretty darned cheap anyway.
I believe we would see huge deflation in the price of everything related specifically to health care. Equipment prices, services prices, etc.
But I’m only dreaming. However, not having health insurance, I’m living that dream. When I get health care it is VERY cheap and good. And, frankly, Google has made General Practitioners almost obsolete. I self diagnosed my gout as well as found a cure in ten minutes of Google time AFTER my doctor couldn’t figure out what was causing my incredibly painful and red big toe.
That was the last time I saw a GP and just use google to fix all sorts of stuff.
whatever Paul Ryan wants is not in the best interest of US citizens, just in the best interest of himself and his buds.
Gutting sounds good but it must be completely demolished.
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