If it was me I would have proposed a plan with a consumer choice between the privatized Ryan plans and a scaled back traditional medicare option, for EVERYONE, not protecting special voters.
For one thing you cant protect all those over 55 with everyone else footing the bill later getting thrown of the ship. How is a future 67 year old going to get private insurance when those a few years older are part of a massive medicare pool to demand low prices? It's like those under 55 are thrown off the cruise ship into the ocean(after they retire) told to swim on their own, to protect important voters OVER 55 on the cruise ship.
You also need a public option (tradional medicare and medicaid) for those in nursing homes with no assets. There is no private option for them. Their private option is you-know-what, 'Soylent Green Going Home'. Republicans are making believe they dont exist and it is backfiring. That is a bigger problem than you may know.
Something huge like this would have to be phased in to allow market (and political) forces to work, no way around it. And it would have to be sold to voters.
Lastly I will judge Republicans on what they accomplish, if they lose in 2012 without getting anything significant into law that doesnt work for me.
EXACTLY! I have been saying this since this stupidity came out. Say you are 54...can you change your investment strategy to come up with another $2000/month when you retire??? That is what it will take, on TOP of the pittance that they are talking about giving people. Oh, and the pittance is on a "sliding scale"...so once again the useless are rewarded while the responsible pay the price.
And let's talk about the timing, shall we? Great time to trot that out...after you have been perceived as bailing out billionaires around the globe, huge banks, Wall Street, and various assorted deadbeats.
Meanwhile, the people footing the bill visit emergency rooms only to wait 6 hours behind a bunch of obviously "non-paying" consumers...while watching their premiums increase 10-20 percent per year.
We send foreign aid to despots; are paying obnoxious retirements to Government employees; are supporting a failing education system; are supporting a bunch of lowlifes who are allowing their children to roam the streets like feral packs of animals.
We have rapidly rising food & fuel prices, a complete lack of jobs, NO plan to bring capital and jobs back to the U.S., while we are in FACT subsidizing trading partners who are tacitly (and sometimes openly) hostile.
And, they decide to lead with cutting Medicare? Just terrific strategic marketing.
I'm well beyond giving a damn about what may, or may not be, "dangerous territory".
I tell everybody I talk to, liberal or conservative, old or young, that Medicare has to be significantly cut now - and that means that some services now currently available will be provided only on an out of pocket basis - or it will crash and burn in the next fifteen years.
We no longer have the luxury of kicking this can down the alley until all the political stars are perfectly aligned.