I agree that is the right approach. I suspect that is what most will be saying.
Medicare is always very dangerous territory. If it was me in the House 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 off 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 looks’s like those under 55 are thrown off the cruise ship into the ocean(after they retire) and told to swim on their own, to protect important voters OVER 55 on the cruise ship. and that is the big defense of the bill.
You also need a public option (traditional medicare and medicaid) for those in nursing homes with no assets many of those that can no longer make decisions. There is no private option for them. Their private option is you-know-what, ‘Soylent Green Going Home’. That is a bigger problem than many know, a huge budget buster. Example : Nursing homes on the east cost ~ 6K per month, = 72K per year. So lets see, the fellow retiring at a salary of 50K lives 15 years in a nursing home and would have to save 1.08 million dollars plus for his retirement with a boom bust economy. There is no way that is happening so this needs to be approached honestly.
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 over time, carefully attacking laying out the alternatives that Democrats propose, doing nothing but raising taxes.
They never asked me LOL, but I did call up Ryan about a month ago and told his office that they better do a better job selling their plan 'or else'.
So you are saying that somebody who never paid $1mil in taxes...even if all payments over a 40 year working life earned 8% interest...should have their living expenses paid by the working population and borrowing?
And, it doesn't matter if somebody paid $5mil in taxes over their lifetimes. With medical technology and organized care as good as it is today...with folks living well into their 80s and 90s... we could soon see us paying millions of dollars for every retiree.
Well, we would if that much money existed in the world.
It doesn't.
It's not a matter of compassion or the sanctity of life at that point. We will not have the ability to fund every conceivable medical procedure and assisted care "need" for everyone. We simply do not have the resources even if every resource in the country is dedicated to only that.
What then?
Medical care and assisted living have to be "rationed" in some way, shape form or fashion. It could be a government board...an insurance company...the market...the family.
But they will be rationed.