Ryan and Romney are making it a point to claim that they would save Medicare. You can use that whopper to fertilize your veggies. The truth is simple. Replacing Medicare’s guaranteed care with a coupon worth less every year to buy private insurance with no guaranteed care will save nothing. Americans know it. However, if Congressional Republicans know it, as they certainly should, they just don’t care. They keep voting for it.
Even as Mitt Romney was introducing Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, his campaign was preparing a defense of the House Budget Chairman’s draconian Medicare proposals. With good reason. After all, in April 2011 the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast that Ryan’s scheme to convert today’s guaranteed Medicare insurance program into an underfunded voucher system would dramatically shift the health care costs onto America’s seniors. And in February 2010, Ryan acknowledged his privatization plan for millions of future elderly constituted rationing.
But it’s not just Team Romney that should be concerned about being caught red-handed with the proverbial gun pointed at the wildly popular program. Last year, 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators—98 percent of all Republicans in Congress—voted for Paul Ryan’s budget and its blueprint to rationing Medicare.
To be sure, the Ryan budget blessed by Republicans on Capitol Hill means de facto rationing for the system that today serves 46 million American seniors. As the CBO documented last year, Ryan’s plan to replace public insurance provided by the government with vouchers for the elderly to buy their own coverage in the private market means getting less care for more money… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>
The Romney/Ryan budget actually codifies the death panels that Republicans falsely attributed to Obamacare. That is the RepubliCare death benefit.
To save Grandmama
Vote for Obama!
11 Responses to “RepubliCare: Less Care for More Money”
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This past weekend I just got back from a 10-day trip from here in KCMO to Minneapolis to visit friends, and then to the Quad-Cities (IA-IL) to take my 95 y/o Mom (who still lives by herself … in a two-story home … as a cancer survivor …. and a stroke survivor … and a hip replacement for a fractured hip … and a pacemaker placement – all in the past 5 years!) to a couple doctors' appointments.
So I put over 1,500 miles on my car. And while I was disappointed in seeing only ~ two dozen Obama-Biden bumperstickers (not counting my own), I did NOT see one single, solitary Romney sticker … EVAH!
But I did see one sticker that I enjoyed:
SAVE MEDICARE
VOTE DEMOCRATIC
For two solid, nonpartisan Fact Checking links on Romney-Ryan's plan to destroy Medicare, here is one from CBS News and one from Kaiser Health:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57491617/fact-check-questionable-claims-when-mitt-romney-introduces-running-mate/?tag=pop;stories
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2012/August/11/faq-paul-ryan-house-republican-medicare-plan.aspx
And for those wanting a little more "red meat" with their Fact Checking, here's one from Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/03/12/442564/on-the-day-he-qualifies-for-medicare-romney-touts-mistruths-about-the-program/
Thanks Nameless. All three links are excellent.
I hope your mom is doing well.
So far, at least, the Republicans haven't been stupid enough (or arrogant enough, depends on your point of view) to come right out and say that their ultimate goal is to destroy the existing social safety net and replace it with a for-profit system. Translated, a "privatized" social safety net equates to "pay or die – either way, don't complain to your betters." The ultimate of this Randian philosophy is "greed is good!" The privileged few will maintain their standard of living while the rest of the world withers and dies.
To anyone who thinks I am carrying things to an unimaginable extreme, let me recommend three books: "1984," which should be required reading for absolutely everyone, "Brave New World," and "Make Room, Make Room" by Harry Harrison. Read all three, think about them, then get back to me.
Excellent, John. I would add one book to your list: Atlas Shrugged. Though sophomoric and sophistic, it is a window on InsaniTEA.
Republicans have been trying for 75 years to kill the Democratic policies that helped stop early death, hunger, and poverty.
They have never had the support of the American people to do that, so they began the "starve the beast" process. Cut taxes until the government was to poor to fund those programs. Here we are, and the Ryan plan is the start of destroying those policies. At least the American people have a stark choice. Now it's up to them.
Republicans offer policies that would increase death, hunger, and poverty to balance the budget, while giving rich people further tax cuts. That kind of twisted thinking only comes from greedy, selfish, elitists. What Randians call "rational self interest."
When Ryan condemns the bailout, but begs for the money, his convictions do come into question.
When Ryan claims to be a deficit hawk but votes for Bush tax cuts that raise the debt, votes for an unfunded war that raises the debt, votes for an unfunded drug program that raises the debt, in fact Ryan has voted for bills that raised the debt 5 trillion, then he is a hypocrite.
Very well said, Steve, I fully agree.
If this dynamic duo wins the RepublicanTs' dreams of death panels will come true.
Amen Patty
After reading a lot of different articles here and on Care2, and understanding the universal healthcare Canada enjoys (which the Rt Honourable PM Twit is trying to dismantle singlehandedly), all I can say is "People before profits!"
That is not the Republican/Teabagger philosophy which would just as soon wheel grandma off the cliff in her wheelchair! Obamacare may not be perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. Healthcare should not be a eugenics programme as the Republican/Teabagger programme proposes. It should be a programme toaid Americans is getting and staying healthy.
With Ryan and Rmoney, it is all about profits, nothing more. So profits get healthier while people get sicker.
I could not have said it better.