Exactly what are you referring to? Newt’s plan is close to Ryan’s plan. “Paul Ryan (and the House GOP’s) Medicare Plan
Like Ryan and the House GOP, Newt supports a premium support model for Medicare. However, he wants seniors to have the choice to opt into the new system or to stay in traditional Medicare.
Newt agrees wholeheartedly with Rep. Ryan that we must give our seniors more choices than the current one-size-fits-all Medicare model. Both concur that creating the opportunity for seniors to buy private insurance is the key to both improving care and lowering costs.
The one key difference is that under Newt’s plan, as outlined in his 21st Century Contract with America, seniors will also have the choice to stay in the current Medicare system or choose a private insurance plan with support from the government to pay the premiums. The other difference is that Newt believes that seniors should have this option starting next year, not in ten years.
But that’s all in the past, some say. What about Gingrich’s proposals for reforming health-care entitlements today? Gingrich, like nearly everyone in the Republican field, has endorsed block-granting Medicaid, and that’s great. But it’s Medicare that is the most difficult and most dangerous federal entitlement, and the one that anyone sincere about taming the growth of government must tackle.
And it is here that Newt, for all his sound and fury, signifies nothing. He proposes to give seniors “the option to choose, on a voluntary basis, either to remain in the existing program or to transition to a more personalized system in the private sector, with greater options for better care.” But that’s exactly what seniors have today: They can choose between traditional, 1965-vintage Medicare (Parts A and B), or choose a more market-oriented version called Medicare Advantage (Part C).
As the Wall Street Journal puts it, Gingrich’s approach to our most important fiscal challenge is “merely a gloss on Medicare Advantage, which has done some modest good . . . but without turning the fiscal battleship.” Indeed, in a Friday interview with Ben Domenech, Gingrich conceded that his program is designed as a modest tweak to Medicare Advantage, and decried Ryan’s plan as “suicidal”:
[snip]
This sounds nice in theory, but as a matter of policy, it’s wrong. Medicare Advantage has 25 percent of the market in part because, prior to Obamacare, the government paid 14 percent more for a senior in Medicare Advantage than for one in traditional Medicare. (Obamacare significantly trimmed this subsidy.) Medicare Advantage has many qualities, but it has not reduced Medicare spending at all.